The best and the worst

Nothing new here, just a list of the winners of all the world cups we have conducted. I will keep it updated as new competitions are held.

BAD HYMNS November 2018

Gold: Lord of the Dance
Silver: Gather us in
Bronze: Shine, Jesus, Shine
Fourth Place: Kumbayah

Sydney Carter, Marty Haugen and Graham Kendrick.

BAD CARDINALS (I) February 2019

Gold: Blase Cupich
Silver: Reinhard Marx
Bronze: Walter Kasper
Fourth Place: Francesco Coccopalmerio

BAD CATHOLIC JOURNALISTS October 2019

Gold: James Martin
Silver: Austen Ivereigh
Bronze: Massimo Faggioli
Fourth Place: Antonio Spadaro

LITURGICAL ABUSES July 2020

Gold: Idols
Silver: Changing words in the liturgy
Bronze: Communion in the hand
Fourth Place: Consecrating ordinary bread

UGLY CHURCHES November 2020

Gold: St Francis de Sales, Norton Shores, Michigan
Silver: Eglise Sainte Bernadette du Banlay
Bronze: Newman Hall, Holy Spirit, Berkeley
Fourth Place: Parroquia Santa Monica, Rivas-Vaciamadrid

FRANCIS ACHIEVEMENTS September 2021

Gold: Pachamama worship
Silver: Traditionis Custodes
Bronze: Treatment of the church in China
Fourth Place: Rehabilitating Uncle Ted McCarrick

INSTRUMENTS IN HELL March 2022

Gold: Vuvuzela
Silver: Bongo drums
Bronze: Kazoo
Fourth Place: Tambourine

PATRON SAINTS OF ENGLAND May 2022

Gold: Thomas More
Silver: Thomas Becket
Bronze: John Fisher
Fourth Place: John Henry Newman

BAD CARDINALS (II) October 2022

Gold: Blase Cupich
Silver: Arthur Roche
Bronze: Reinhard Marx
Fourth Place: Francesco Coccopalmerio

UNCROWNED SAINTS April 2023

Gold: Pope Leo XIII
Silver: Thomas à Kempis
Bronze: Pope Pius XII
Fourth Place: G.K. Chesterton

ROYAL SAINTS July 2023

Gold: Jadwiga of Poland
Silver: Elizabeth of Hungary
Bronze: Stephen I of Hungary
Fourth Place: Louis IX of France

SYNODAL HORRORS September 2023

Gold: Abp Víctor Fernández
Silver: Fr James Martin
Bronze: Cdl Arthur Roche
Fourth Place: Dr Austen Ivereigh

SYNOD JARGON December 2023

Gold: a new way of being Church
Silver: a kenotic de-centering
Bronze: a listening Church
Fourth Place: respects the protagonism of the Spirit

BAD CATHOLIC WRITERS March 2024

Gold: Víctor Manuel Fernández
Silver: Austen Ivereigh
Bronze: James Martin
Fourth Place: Massimo Faggioli

MISUSED CHURCHES April 2024

Gold: Borgloon (Belgium), Holy cow
Silver: New York, God is trans
Bronze: St Edmundsbury, Masonic dinner
Fourth Place: Rochester, Crazy golf

Coming next: the World Cup of Great Catholic Leaders.

World Cup of Great Catholic Leaders - nominations, please!

Well, the World Cup of Misused Churches has been a bit of an anti-climax, as the polling was probably the slowest of any of these World Cups. Maybe we can do better this time.

Various people (some of them extremely implausible) have been described as Catholic Leaders, or similar. So we will vote to see who best deserves that description.

The rules:

1. Candidates must be living Catholic priests/bishops/etc.
So hard luck, Austen Ivereigh, Taylor Marshall, Joe Biden, ...
 
2. We will, as usual, do this by Twitter polls.

3. Marko Rupnik is disqualified.
 
4. The umpire's decision (mine) is final.

So far I have the following nominations (ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, but you will be able to decide which is which):

Athanasius Schneider
Carlo Maria Viganò
Charles Chaput
Dwight Longenecker
Gerhard Ludwig Müller
James Martin
John Zuhlsdorf
Joseph Strickland
Joseph Zen
Mario Grech
Pope Francis
Raymond Burke
Robert Barron
Robert Sarah
Thomas Reese
Timothy Dolan
Víctor Manuel Fernández
Wilfrid Napier
Wilton Gregory

You are encouraged to nominate further candidates, either by replying to this post or by replying to the advert on Twitter. If I have never heard of your nominee, then he probably isn't eligible, however #saved he may be.

Also disqualified!

This one is SERIOUS, even though you may agree that some of the candidates are complete no-hopers.

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Addendum: We now have 48 entrants, which is an appropriate place to stop. The World Cup begins tomorrow (April 25th).

Compromise found in the Rupnik case

Fr Marko Rupnik, you will recall, is accused of a variety of sexual offences, including rape, some of them so disgusting that even Cardinal Fernández has said "I couldn't have used these ideas in any of my pornographic books - nobody would have believed them."

However he is a GOOD FRIEND of Pope Francis, and must not under any circumstances be laicised, burnt at the stake, or otherwise inconvenienced. And even his dreadful "artwork" is still on prominent display in the Vatican, the Ivereigh Towers Art Gallery, etc. etc.

Luckily, Dr "Expert" Ivereigh has come up with a compromise solution.

"These works raise our minds and hearts to God, so the answer is..."

"... QR codes!"

Yes, from now on, we keep the Rupnik daubs in prominent places, adding a little QR code which conveys the message: "By the way, some Puritan heretics don't like what Rupnik has done, but who are we to judge?"

Rupnik himself has agreed to wear a little lapel badge carrying a QR code (but we don't recommend any ladies to get close enough to scan him), and Ivereigh Towers also has a little QR code on the door warning people about what they may find inside. Cardinal Napier - another Rupnik fan - has agreed to have the QR code sewn into his mitre, as a gesture of solidarity with the "Don't let's be beastly to Marco" campaign.

The Rupnik QR code - note the traditional merging of two eyes.

As a result of these new ideas, it is possible that the sacrament of Confession will also be modified in the near future, and that people will be allowed to create QR codes linking to a description of their sins, which can be scanned by the priest - surely this is less embarrassing all round?

A history of popesplaining

Although the word "popesplain" is of very recent origin (it has not yet reached the Oxford English Dictionary), popesplaining as an activity has been around for 2000 years, as it has always been necessary to explain the bizarre actions of the current pope.

It probably started in about A.D. 33, when St Peter thrice denied Christ (an incident involving a cock crowing, should you need reminding). That same night the popular blog What's Peter Up To Now?, through its editor Michaēl Levis, was explaining that denying Christ was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and anyone who criticised this was a heretic. Also, he'd be writing to their bishop. Peter's support of the disgraced artist Judas Rupnikus was also justified on the WPUTN blog.

Six hundred years later Pope Honorius I got into trouble, being accused of monotheletism (also of keeping a collection of Pachamama statues and kneeling before them). His biographer Austen Iverius rushed to his defence, and, pausing only to call all his critics "neurotics", dashed off a seventeenth biography of the pope, entitled "Honorius, the Great Reformer", which explained how Catholic teaching had evolved.

Later, Pope John XII was accused of gross depravity and worldiness, also of attempting to bless same-sex relationships. However, his good friend Giacomo Martino SJ, author of "Come out of the closet" (which he claimed were the exact words of Jesus), was there to add his support, although he was rather disappointed that the pope did not agree with his support for "trans" people.

Pope Alexander VI, one of the Bergorgia family, was also backed by many popesplainers, such as Christoferus Agnus and Maximus Leguminus, whose coverage of his iniquities was selective, to put it mildly.

So, let us be thankful that the current pope is not only infallible but also impeccable, and we no longer have any need of popesplainers!

Mike, will this do? If you think it's OK, you can post it on your blog. Eccles.

Misused churches - the final rounds

We introduced the World Cup of Misused Churches here.

This post will be used for the results of the quarter-finals and later rounds. Here are photos of those remaining churches that were not already mentioned in the previous post.

Vienna - giant sweater.

Borgloon (Belgium) - holy cow.

Washington - light and sound

New York - God is trans.

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THE QUARTER-FINALS

St Edmundsbury, Masonic dinner 76.8 v Vienna, Giant sweater 23.2

Westminster, Amal puppet 37.9 v Rochester, Crazy golf 62.1

Canterbury, Silent disco 49.6 v Borgloon (Belgium), Holy cow 50.4

Washington, Light and sound 11.4 v New York, God is trans 88.6

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THE SEMI-FINALS

St Edmundsbury, Masonic dinner 47.6 v Borgloon (Belgium), Holy cow 52.4

Rochester, Crazy golf 20.0 v New York, God is trans 80.0

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THIRD PLACE PLAYOFF

St Edmundsbury, Masonic dinner 75.0 v Rochester, Crazy golf 25.0.

Bronze medal to the St Edmundsbury Masonic dinner. Bon appetit!

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FINAL

Borgloon, Holy cow 51.5 v New York, God is trans 48.5

Holy cow! Borgloon takes the Gold (just) and New York the Silver.

The Book of St Richard, Chapter 31

Continued from Chapter 30.

1. It came to pass, the following Easter, that strange events took place in the mighty city of Lon-don, of which the mayor was Genghis Khan, a fierce Muslim warrior.

2. For the people were ordered to ignore the holy events of Lent and Easter, but to celebrate Ramadan, a month in which the Muslims fasted in the daytime and ate all night long.

3. Unlike other people, who fasted at night and ate in the daytime.

The mighty city celebrates Easter.

4. And Richard spake out, saying, "I was horrified to see this. For I am a cultural Christian, who likes hymns and carols. Also, I like cathedrals and churches."

5. For Richard had not heard the worst hymns such as "Lord of the Dance" or "Shine, Jesus, Shine", nor had he visited the cathedral of Clif-ton.

Nor had Richard seen this statue of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

6. Richard went on to explain that he enjoyed hot cross buns, Easter eggs, and sweet little bunnies (cooked in a red wine sauce).

7. However, although the Islamic faith also had its beautiful mosques, its great hymns such as "Shine, Mohammed, Shine" and delicacies such as hot crescent buns and sheep's eyes, Richard could not be a cultural Muslim.

8. For (he said) the religion of Christ was fundamentally decent, whereas the other one was fundamentally indecent.

Richard is obliged to disguise himself when he attends Mass.

9. For was not Islam hostile to women and to those men who chose to lie with other men?

10. Where were the female Imams shrieking "Wakey-wakey! Put your food away! Allah is great!" from high towers at the crack of dawn?

11. And where were the LGBTQ+ Mohammedits writing trashy books about "Building a Bridge"?

12. No, Richard could not say that he was a cultural Muslim.

"All Glory, Laud and Honour to Thee, Redeemer, King. Culturally speaking, of course."

13. "BUT I DO NOT BELIEVE A WORD OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH," insisted Richard.

14. Which was perhaps a slight exaggeration, as Richard had never been known to murder or steal. Not even culturally.

To be continued.

The Book of St Richard beginneth here.

Muslim synod announced

Following the striking success of the Catholic Synod on Synodal Synodality, our Islamic brothers have announced a Muslim Synod on Synodalised Synodding, which is to be seen as a follow-up from the "Mecca II" Council of the 1960s.

The strangely-familiar synod logo.

We spoke to Mike Al-Potato of the "Where Ali is" blog. "Of course, the Ayatollah Farhan-Zees is always right, and his Synod should bring the Islamic churches kicking and screaming into the 11th century," he said. "By the way, everyone who disagrees with me deserves to be stoned."

Sister Nat-Ali Burqua, one of the proposed "synodal mothers", is delighted with this opportunity to change Islamic teaching. "Should men really receive 72 virgins in Paradise?" she asked. "Cannot they make do with, say, 24? Also, what's in it for us women?"

Sister Nat-Ali.

One of the synodal experts is Ustan I-Verei, Professor of Canon Law at the Islamic University of Bradford, and regular contributor to the Taliban magazine. However, as usual, he had nothing interesting to say, so we'll move quickly on.

The Mecca II prayer-mat used by Ustan I-Verei.

Another topic up for discussion at the synod is the Islamic prohibition on alcohol and pork. Given that the synodal dinners are to be supplied by the "Saracen's Head" public house ("Beer and sausages our speciality") we may expect some changes in this respect.

Possibly a bit tactless.

The God Bless Eccles Bible

Donald Trump has sent out the message, Happy Holy Week! Let's Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.

The author (no, not really).

I supposed at firat that this would be a Bible written by Mr Trump, in which case it would have the following features:

All in capitals. 
Silly made-up names for people he doesn't like
   (I would never do that, would I?) 
All the disciples wearing red hats.
God referred to as "Donald".
"Make Heaven Great Again" the main message of the Gospels.

But, I admit that I was wrong. It is simply a King James Bible with a few add-ons.

After all, the new Pope Francis Bible includes extra books - the books of Laudato Si', Amoris Laetitia, Traditionis Custodes, and Fiducia Supplicans - and I can't imagine anyone objecting to that!

"Not only did he sack me, but he gave me a copy of his book."

What Donald actually adds are things such as the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. Mere Britons may wonder why the US Constitution is so sacred that it keeps getting amended, but again I refer to Pope Francis's treatment of the Gospel...

Uncle Joe is working on a God Bless Biden Bible, with innovations like the Ten Commandments being deleted, and the inclusion of extra documents, such as advertisements for Planned Parenthood and Graeter's chocolate chip ice-cream.

Recommended to all DEVOUT Catholics!

So finally, we come to the God Bless Eccles Bible. Only $50, so it should outsell the God Bless The USA Bible (which costs $60). With the popular advertising slogans Make Eccles Rich Again and Become Saved By Reading This Book! this is a Douai–Rheims Bible with some of my most popular blog posts (more than 3 readers!) added as bonus chapters to be read out at Mass. These include

Why the Pope is right about everything;
How to preach a royal wedding sermon; 
The toxic tradition of the Latin Mass;
The World Cup of Bad Hymns; and
Is Pope Francis a Trad?

So I'll stop there, as I have to do a few Bible-signing sessions today - Westminster Cathedral, Waterstones, etc.

The World Cup of Misused Churches

Yet another World Cup to be settled by Twitter polls. The churches can be Anglican, Catholic, Lutheran, whatever (so far they seem to be Anglican cathedrals that were once Catholic). The misuse is to be some significant secular event that took place in a place normally used for worship - so liturgical abuses don't count (we have plenty of those anyway!)

We have nine nominations so far, all from England, so please nominate others worldwide (with location and preferably a link or a photo):

Canterbury - Silent disco

Durham - Globe

Liverpool - Globe

Norwich - Dinosaur

Norwich - Helter-skelter

Peterborough - Dinosaur

Rochester - Crazy golf

St Edmundsbury - Masonic dinner

Westminster - Amal puppet

I won't start until after Easter, but let's have nominations in now.

Oh... and this is not the place to discuss the theft of Catholic cathedrals...

Pagans in Communion Conference

Yes, presented by www.christrecovery.com, it's the conference for all whose pagan leanings have been affected by Catholicism!

Nothing to do with this event, honest!

If you are a Pagan formerly associated with or affected by Catholicism, or are seeking to understand the effects of Catholicsm on our Pagan faith, then this conference is for you!

We feel your pain. Rigid Catholics who use words like "sin", "redemption" and "Christ" can cause untold distress to good Pagans such as ourselves, and it is important for us to have a conference as a way of giving each other support.

Two keynote speakers!

Yes, we are honoured to welcome Joe Biden, part-time president of the United States, who will give a keynote address on the subject of "Urgle burgle who am I splunge where's the ice-cream?" explaining how he was traumatized when a Catholic told him that killing babies was wrong.

We shall also be hearing from Fr James Martin LGBTSJ, author of "Are you gay? If not, why not?" - a manual for seminarians.

We shall hold synod-style bonding sessions!

We shall obviously play down the religious side of our beliefs - it is much more important to focus on OURSELVES rather than GOD - but we shall certainly sing a few happy songs (we don't use the h-word these days!) such as "All are welcome", "Gather us in", "On eagle's wings", etc.

As we meditate on just how horrible Catholicism is, we shall discuss the wonders of alternative beliefs, such as in Pachamama or the following message, seen at King's Crescent Railway Station.

The Stations of the Crescent - a lesson to us all.

Actually, some of us are a little unhappy with using words like "sinners", so there will be a trigger warning on this, and those likely to be offended may wish to miss out on this session. We are now trying to persuade the station to display more friendly messages such as "Remember, you are perfect already!"

Anyway, we are not here simply to moan about Catholicism, we will be partying as well! One of our keynote speakers, Blase Cupich, has donated some birthday cake, and all are welcome to share it (except Arthur Roche, who has his own cake).

This gluten-free, vegan and climate-friendly cupcake is also guaranteed Catholic-free!

LATE NEWS: Some orthodox Catholics have been detected trying to gatecrash our conference. All future bookings must be accompanied by a letter of support from either (a) a Jesuit; (b) Austen Ivereigh; or (c) Someone who writes for "Where Peter Is".

Pope Francis's autobiography - the 3rd and last phase

In this final instalment of Pope Francis's autobiography Life: My Story Through History, subtitled Why I was right and all other popes were wrong, which is published today, the Holy Father explain his most brilliant decisions of the last few years.

Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

Traditionis Custodes.

My evil predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, died in December 2022. I was very pleased to comfort him in his last few months by phoning him up three times a day to tell him that I was repealing his own Summorum Pontificum and banning the traditional Latin Mass.

My main ally, with one of his great interests, cakes.

It was not going to be easy. At the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments there was one of my arch-enemies, Cardinal Sarah. A man who not only read books without pictures in them, but even wrote them. Yes, an intellectual, and a backwardist who kept quoting the Bible!

Luckily his deputy was quite the opposite, and had never been accused of being an intellectual. An overweight power-mad bully, he reminded me of someone: who could it have been? Well, never mind. So out went Sarah and in came the Yorkshireman Arthur Roche. Uncle Arthur was delighted to have this opportunity to serve me. Provided that he was made a cardinal, he would do anything I wished: "Make the TLM compulsory? Hold all masses in the Yorkshire dialect? (I must admit that the idea of the Italians and Polish reciting 'Ee ba goom, tha Lord be with thee, luv!' was rather appealing.) Just tell me what you want and I'll do it!"

So we agreed to ban the TLM, and to lean on bishops to make sure it happened. It would take a while to remove these masses entirely, so we made it hard to find them. Advertising them in the parish newsletter was OUT. Even mentioning them was now a SIN. The bishops knew that promotion was now conditional on persecuting traditionalists. AND WE ARE WINNING!

Austen Ivereigh.

I first encountered Austen in the Vatican gardens.

Dr Austen Ivereigh has been one of most loyal allies. Because he keeps dogs, he is entitled to call himself an expert on Canine Canon Law, and as is well known, he has written many biographies of me. In the first he portrayed me as a wise and holy man, in the second he upgraded me to saint, and in the third he saw me as the fourth person of the Trinity.

Recently we have been holding a synod on synodality, and Austen has been a lively and vocal participant. I gave him a little badge marked EXPERT, and he is very proud of it. Of course I haven't broken it to him that whatever the synod decides is irrelevant since I will make the final decisions. Did I ever mention that I am infallible? Sometimes it embarrasses me, being so infallible!

The synod logo. Silly, but not by Rupnik. Sorry, Marko!

Fiducia Supplicans.

You will remember that the main message of Amoris Laetitia was "Hey, adultery's cool!" Now, more recently, I thought I would try out "Hey, same-sex marriage is cool!" To do this I needed the cooperation of someone at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ladaria was no good, he might actually have had some moral scruples, but I knew just the chap to replace him.

Yes, we had come full circle. I chose my old mate Víctor Manuel Fernández, known as Tucho. Since the days of our friendship in Argentina, he had made a career out of working as a male kissogram and also by writing dirty books. Just what we needed.

So - and here my Jesuit training came in handy - we decided to make it permissible to bless same-sex couples, provided that we didn't call them that. They could be described as an alliance, brace, coalition, confederation, deuce, doublet, duo, dyad, item, pair, partnership, twain, twosome or union, but NEVER a couple.

Unfortunately, Fr James Martin LGBTSJ gave the game away!

If you want any more, you'll have to buy the book. It should soon be available from second-hand bookshops for about 50p. Eccles.

Pope Francis's autobiography 2 - our hero starts work

Our serialization of the book continues from Part 1.

Me with my troublesome predecessor!

The Year of Mercy

Quite early in my reign I decided to institute a Jubilee Year of Mercy. As well as being very humble, I am also a particularly merciful man - except to people I don't like - so I initially proposed a slogan "Be merciful like the Holy Father!" However, owing to a clerical error (the cleric in question has now been mercifully laicised), it came out as "Merciful like the Father", which isn't at all the same thing!

My great friend Marko Rupnik was in Rome, and so I asked him whether he could provide one of his artistic masterpieces as a logo. "The most appropriate thing would be a two-headed skiing instructor with three eyes," he said, "just as soon as I finish some work I have to do with my 'Nuns in Bondage'." The NIB wasn't an order I had ever come across, but I was pleased to know that Marko was reaching out to these ladies.

An artistic masterpiece!

Amoris Laetitia.

One of my early triumphs was the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which followed two Synods on the Family. In those days I hadn't yet got hold of the best way to run a synod, namely, to invite trouble-makers to chatter to each other, flatter them by calling them experts, and then ignore everything they say!

A few weeks before the report was due, I received a letter from Adolfo Nicolás, who was then head of the Jesuits, saying "Holy Father, your recent documents have been too easy for people to understand. Please insert some ambiguity, heresy and confusion into the next one, or we may have to review your membership of the Jesuits."

I think I did rather well. The result was that four turbulent cardinals sent me five Dubia. These were questions such as "Are you off your head?" and "What do you think you are playing at?" and they were very difficult to answer! So I ignored them completely, but made a note that a bit of Merciful Persecution would be needed.

Luckily, two of the cardinals died quite quickly, and one was very old. This just left my ARCH-ENEMY, Raymond Burke! I gradually took my revenge, so that now, at the time of writing, he is penniless, homeless, and under order to walk around ringing a bell and shouting "UNSAVED! UNSAVED!"

Here I have him in a painful grip known as the "Chinese Burn".

Pachamama

One of my great triumphs as pope has been to welcome other religions into the "big tent". Muslims, Hindus, Aztecs, Fire-worshippers, Pagans - even Anglicans - they're all just following slight variations on Catholicism. So when the time came to welcome the Amazonian indigenous groups, we bought a job lot of Pachamama idols and showed reverence to them.

My dear friend Austen Ivereigh, who has already written six seven books about me, including "The Pope Francis keep-fit book" and "Pope Francis's insect-based recipes", told me that Pachamama was actually just a name used by the Blessed Virgin Mary: this sounded a bit TOO Catholic for me, but I let it pass.

Then what happened? Newspaper headlines worldwide!

POPE'S IDOLS NOW IN SANTA MARIA CHURCH.

FRANCIS IDOLS THROWN IN TIBER

POPE APOLOGISES TO PACHAMAMA FOR EARLY BATH

What nonsense! As if I would ever apologise to anyone, even an Amazonian fertility goddess!

Just a perfectly ordinary day in the Vatican.

You may be wondering where the sex idols are now. Well, I passed them onto my great friends Marko and Tucho. They were delighted!

Part 3 is the last part. Honest.