The adventures of Amelia

Amelia, the AI creature who is mainly an advocate for traditional English values, was recently rebranded as a traditionally-minded Catholic. Here are some of her adventures, as seen on Twitter.

Note that originally she was not dressed appropriately, but she later improved her costume.

Amelia had a polite word with the great Austen Ivereigh, hoping to persuade him not to be so nasty to Bishop Barron.

Then Amelia had an unhappy encounter with Cardinal "Tucho" Fernández. What on earth could he have said to her?

It was Sunday, and of course Amelia went to Mass. However, her kneeling got her into trouble with Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte.

Being a good Catholic, Amelia is anxious to keep up with the most important aspects of the faith. Thus, she had a meeting with Sr Nathalie Becquart, who has devoted her whole life to synodality. The good sister told her, "One day we shall find out what the point is!"

A bad day for Amelia when she went to visit Fr James Martin LGBTSJ. Can you see what the problem is?

Finally, on St Blaise's Day, Amelia paid a visit to Cardinal Cupich. It seems that they disagreed on a few issues.

All pictures compiled by Copilot.

Muddled Jorge gets provisional Vatican approval

The Vatican on Thursday issued a statement acknowledging that some spiritual fruits had come from the regular apparitions of Muddled Jorge, also known as Pope Francis.

A statue that could be anyone but is probably supposed to represent the Pope.

Although these apparitions have come under a lot of criticism, since some of the messages uttered are said to be in direct contradiction to Catholic teaching, the Vatican still felt able to issue a "Nihil Obstat" (or "See No Evil") to the cult of Muddled Jorge.

"The positive assessment that some of the messages of Muddled Jorge are edifying does not imply a declaration that they have a direct supernatural origin" said the note from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Indeed, compared with some of the documents for which Dicastery Prefect Víctor Manuel Fernández is directly responsible, such as Fiducia supplicans (signed off by Pope Francis when he thought someone was simply asking for his autograph), many of the papal teachings have been completely orthodox.

This book is still waiting for a Nihil Obstat.

Thus, as a result of the Vatican's statement, pilgrimages to Rome will be allowed to continue, but no reponsibility will be borne for any teachings passed on to visitors.

Pope Francis decides to reform all masses

Pope Francis the Peacemaker has finally found a compromise between all the different factions in the Catholic Church (including those who find spiritual nourishment from Traditional Latin Masses, Novus Ordo masses, LGBTF masses, Clown Masses, etc. etc.).

A few minor changes are expected.

"There was only one possible solution," said the Holy Father. "We can't have people offering different types of masses, while still believing them to be valid. Therefore we must find an alternative!"

Of course there is only one possible alternative - synods! "On Sundays and Holy Days we expect faithful Catholics to go into their churches, sit round tables, and attempt to bore the pants off their neighbours!" explained Cardinal Roche of the Dicastery for Divine Worship. "Coffee and cake - lots of cake - will be provided, as that is definitely a form of worship!"

Preparing for the Synomasses

Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith agrees. "Of course, kissing will be allowed, as that is also a form of worship. We shall extend the ever-popular 'kiss of peace' to thirty minutes and make it more touchy-feely."

The new services - to be called Synomasses - will of course be conducted in "Vernacular", so that everyone can understand them, even if they go to Norway, Mozambique or Samoa. "Those Vernaculans knew a thing or two - they invented a language that everyone could speak!" explained the learned Professor Massimo Faggioli.

Preparing for the Synomasses!

Of course, not everyone is immediately satisfied: "Can we guarantee that every church will have a Rupnik mural?" asked Dr Austen Ivereigh. "Will Pachamama still be revered?" asked Mike Lewis. "Will rainbow flags be flown?" asked Fr James Martin LGBTFSJ. Fear not, Pope Francis the Peacemaker has promised that all of these will be a COMPULSORY part of Synomasses!

The Synod of Comics and the Synod of Despots

As a by-product of the Synod on Synodal Synodality, Pope Francis is enjoying synods so much that he decided to hold two more.

Getting ready for some kenotic decentering.

First, the Synod of Comics. A bit of a mixed bunch here - Fr James Martin LGBTSJ made the cut, but Austen Ivereigh didn't. Then Stephen Colbert, was there, chosen for being Catholic but not too Catholic, and certainly not too funny.

Colbert likes to needle people.

Also Whoopi Goldberg is about as anti-Catholic as they come. But she will be walking with the rest (or perhaps waddling), all the while looking for a new way of being Church. Oh, that's enough, let's move on to the synod of despots.

"Could you jump-start my brain, please? The battery's flat."

All the great world leaders - by which we mean acolytes of Soros, Schwab and Gates etc. - will be attending the synod of despots. Well not all - you would expect to see despots such as Arthur Roche and Victor Fernández attending, but Uncle Arthur dropped out when he was told there would be no cake, while Tucho was told he would not be allowed to kiss anyone, not even Ursula von der Leyen.

"How nice to meet someone who's even more unpopular than I am!"

Of course, Pope Francis will be at both synods. His own Amoris Laetitia is packed with jokes as funny as anything Colbert ever said, while his despotic skills have never been questioned.

Well, that will take people's attention away from Rupnik, won't it?

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?

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.

The World Cup of Bad Catholic Writers - nominations requested

In 2019 we had the World Cup of Bad Catholic Journalists (loosely interpreted as including anyone who scribbled), so now it's time for another. Last time the winners were: GOLD, Martin; SILVER, Ivereigh; BRONZE Faggioli; 4TH PLACE, Spadaro.

The winners last time.

I've changed the title slightly, in the interests of Diversity - remember, as St Paul said: And now there remain equality, diversity and inclusion, these three: but the greatest of these is diversity.

To qualify for this prestigious competition, you need to be (a) alive, (b) Catholic (or claiming to be), and (c) a journalist, blogger, author, ... on Catholic subjects. The referee's decision (mine) is final.

So please let me have nominations. We'll give an automatic place to all those who reached Round 2 last time, as well as a few of my own favourites, and then see who else is nominated: to do this, either reply here or on Twitter. We'll close nominations when I think we're ready to start.

John Allen Jr
Tony Annett
Tina Beattie	 
Liz Bruenig	 
Dean Dettloff	
Massimo Faggioli
Víctor Manuel Fernández
Dawn Eden Goldstein	
Daniel Horan	
Austen Ivereigh	
Christopher Lamb
Mike Lewis
James Martin	
Robert Mickens	
Mike O'Loughlin
Catherine Pepinster	
Thomas Reese	
Thomas Rosica	
Mark Shea	
Antonio Spadaro	
Stephen Walford	
Michael Sean Winters	

Over to you!

Most promising newcomer?

We'll exclude Pope Francis to give everyone else a chance in respect for the office he holds.

Tucho embarks on a book-signing

Cardinal "Tucho" Fernàndez, Head of the Vatican Dicastery for Naughty Things, is now embarking on a tour of Rome's bookshops, signing copies of the reprinted version of his hard-porn best-seller "Mystical Passion", which, he explains, he wrote as a "clarification" of his previous soft-porn book, "Kiss me, Cheeky!"

For those wishing to obtain signed copies of the learned treatise, described by Mike Lewis of Where Pacha Is as "A little intellectual for me, but otherwise fine", Tucho will be at "Dirty Books 'R' us" at 9 a.m., the "Porno Emporium" at 10, and the Vatican Library at 11.

One satisfied customer (until the Pope changes his mind).

Meanwhile, we have had no comments from Pope Teflon, so it seems that he is still entirely happy to see Tucho directing the doctrine of the Catholic Church. There are others equally qualified to take over Tucho's job, such as Pope Teflon's good friends Marko Rupnik and Gustavo Zanchetta, but it seems that they may miss out this time.

"The buck never reached me, so how can it stop here?"

Addendum: no comments yet from Lamb, Ivereigh, etc. as far as I know. But they probably need to read the book thoroughly - say half-a-dozen times - before commenting.

How to confuse the Catholic Church

Yes, another instalment of our long-running series on "How to be a good pope", designed for those readers who, by kenotic de-centering, respecting the protagonism of the Spirit, and finding a new way of being Church, have managed to make it to the top job in the new listening Church!

The story so far. After ten years, you sense that your days of Peronist dictatorship are coming to an end. All that remains is to nominate your successor - Touchy-Feely, Fat Arthur, or perhaps Pa-Oh Lin, the inscrutable Chinaman - and you can expire peacefully to cries of "Make him a saint!"

Santo Subito!

But all is not well. Obviously little Ivory, C.N.N. Lambchop and "Where Potato Is" Mike are too polite to mention it, but there is some unrest among the faithful. What can you have done that could possibly upset Catholics? Was it your naughty story Amorous Letitia? Could it be your devotion to Pachamama? Surely not your treatment of the Church in China? Or was it Trads Cussed (memo: get Arthur out of the cake shop and send him off to close down more TLMs)? Or is it your protection of dirty old Rapenik? Then again, surely nobody could object to your attempts to starve a certain American cardinal into submission?

It's all a big mystery, but you know your conscience is clear. So how can we confuse the Church today?

"I do wish he wouldn't stand so close."

In walks Cardinal Touchy-Feely, blows you a kiss (this time you have taken care to keep behind a solid table), and makes a suggestion. "Tell them that priests can bless burglars," he suggests, "but only if they leave their masks, striped pullovers and bags marked SWAG at the door of the church. The burglars, I mean, not the priests."

"They already can," you reply, puzzled. "What difference will it make?"

"I've come for a blessing, Father. Because I've got another job planned."

"Can't you the the headlines in America Rag, the National Catholic Fishwrap and the even more secular press? "POPE FRED SAYS THAT BURGLARY IS OK", "NEW CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THEFT", "TEN COMMANDMENTS? THROW THEM OUT!" "WHO IS THIS SAINT PAUL ANYWAY?" "GERMAN BISHOPS VOTE TO ORDAIN BURGLARS", "FATHER MARTIN JAMES SJ SAYS 'COME INTO THE CLOSET AND HELP YOURSELVES!'"

Of course! Nobody is going to talk about anything else from now on. As you draft your new letter "Fiddling the Supplies" (an homage to Cardinal Becciu), you reflect that Touchy-Feely will make a great Pope Fred II.

The eight worst synodal horrors

So the World Cup of Synodal Horrors, a little diversion to prepare you for the heretical bedlam expected in October, has reached the quarter-final stage.

The knockouts start on August 22nd, and the results of the final stages of the competition will be reported here.

Here we go... Treebeard the Ent is coming along too.

The draw is as follows:

Dr Austen Ivereigh 69.6 v Sr Nathalie Becquart 30.4

No congratulatory kiss for Sr Nathalie, as Austen's great experience gives him an easy victory here.

Bp Georg Bätzing 22.2 v Fr James Martin 77.8

Class tells, as Jimbo's long experience of undermining Catholic doctrine easily brushes aside the promising newcomer.

Cdl Blase Cupich 47.8 v Abp Víctor Fernández 52.2

The world's worst cardinal loses his first ever battle: sheer nastiness is not enough to see him through against the kissing bishop.

Cdl Jean-Claude Hollerich 37.1 v Cdl Arthur Roche 62.9

Uncle Arthur takes the cake here. The Hell Choir (anag.) cannot stop him.

---

SEMI-FINALS

Dr Austen Ivereigh 31.7 v Abp Víctor Fernández 68.3

Ivereigh the veteran horror is swept away by the passionate newcomer.

Fr James Martin 69.1 v Cdl Arthur Roche 30.9

Two old friends of this blog slug it out, and England's last hope is eliminated.

---

THIRD PLACE PLAY-OFF

Dr Austen Ivereigh 47.6 v Cdl Arthur Roche 52.4

Bronze Medal for Uncle Arthur, as he brushes aside the poison Ivereigh to take 3rd place.

FINAL

Abp Víctor Fernández 54.1 v Fr James Martin 45.9

Golden-calf "Tucho" pushes past silver-tongued Jimbo to win the competition. Now, boys, no fighting - please kiss and make friends.

---

To finish off, a few horrid synod-related pictures, most of which have already appeared here.

A little-known novel by Jane Austen

Spiritual exercises.

Our experts have been told how to respond to all enquiries.

No room for Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, but never mind.

Nobody expects the Argentine Inquisition

Nobody expects the Argentine Inquisition! Our main weapon is kissing... kissing and healing... two main weapons. And a fanatical devotion to the Pope. Three main weapons. Oh, and adultery. I'll come in again.

You are charged with the crime of quoting Monty Python yet again.

Consider this post as another item in our long-running series "How to be a good pope" - designed for those who went to a conclave and were elected to the top job by an overwhelming 120 votes (this slightly surprised you, as there were only 115 cardinal-electors, but then your mates in the St Gallstone Mafia weren't taking any chances!)

Remember the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition? Well, it's now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which doesn't sound nearly as impressive. And it needs a new boss. The first chap to run the show was Antonio Ghislieri, who later became Pope Pius V and a saint, so you must be very careful to choose a successor of equal merit.

St Pius V - not known for writing books about kissing.

Anyway, you seem to have found the ideal candidate. You already have a track record of brilliant appointments to dicasteries - the Catholic World is lost in wonder at the exploits of Arthur "Two-dinners" Rogue in the Divine Worship office - and your old pal Archbishop Victor, alias "Touchy-feely", looks like a worthy successor to Pope St Pius V.

A quick look at his CV shows that he wrote a book called Kiss me quick, baby. A guide to healing. We're hoping that this will be made into a blockbuster film, with Austen Ivereigh in the role of the great healer. Moreover, Touch-feely helped ghost-write your own bestselling Amorous Letitia, the story of a libertine who was welcomed back into the church and (I never got that far, but I'm guessing) ended up as a Jesuit priest. This sort of thing is guaranteed to annoy the rigid backwardist indietrists who are making life so difficult for you.

Now, Touchy-Feely, how do you plan to "sex up" Catholic teaching?

Good. You've made another brilliant appointment. Box ticked.

What's next on the agenda? Oh yes, sending the boys round to beat up Bishop Strickland, who's been stepping out of line by giving a moral lead. No problem...