Answering your Catholic questions

In these turbulent times, leadership of the Catholic Church is not all it should be, and so many people come to this blog for spiritual guidance. Let's go!

Q. Who is Luce? What is Luce? Why is Luce?

A. The year 2025 sees a Jubilee of the Catholic Church. Now, we had a very exciting Jubilee of Mercy in 2015-16, with the wonderful logo of a 2-headed 3-eyed cyclops on skis designed by Top Catholic Artist Marko Rupnik. This one will be different, and Luce, designed in the well-known Anime Christi style has been chosen to represent the true essence of the faith.

Of course this is not the first time a woman has had top billing in the Catholic Church. For many years the Blessed Virgin Mary was an object of veneration and adoration, but she has now fallen out of favour with the Vatican, perhaps for being too "traditional".

St Joan of Arc - also rejected for being too rigid.

Anyway, if you are a faithful Catholic, you probably already own a crucifix, some rosary beads, quite possibly a scapular. BUT IF YOU DON'T HAVE A LUCE YOU AIN'T SAVED! Got that?

Q. What is a synod on synodality?

A. Well, nobody really knows. Some say it is like a meeting on meetingality, or a workshop on workshopality. Perhaps it is more like a congress on congressality, or - like Vatican II - a council on councilality.

Of course, instead of putting a lot of moaning minnies in a room for several weeks, the whole business could have been settled more cheaply another way (see below):

Pope Francis summons his experts for a Zoom on Zoomality.

Laurie Penny and the Pope's views

We are deeply honoured to have as our guest columnist the lovely Laurie Penny of the New Statesman.

An oil painting of the lovely Laurie Penny.

Urgh! Wasn't Pope Benedict ugly! With his squinty evil grin and his red shoes he looked just like a Sith Lord!! Except that Sith Lords don't wear red shoes, do they? Well never mind. Anyway, it proves he wasn't worth listening to!!

If Pope Benedict had looked like this, we'd have had to take him seriously.

Pope Francis is different. He doesn't wear red shoes. He doesn't look creepy. He doesn't eat babies or kick beggars in the street. You won't find him pulling the wings off butterflies - well, only on special occasions, I expect. Rumour hath it that Francis is keen on charitable actions. He radiates love to all mankind, almost at the level of a typical New Statesman columnist.

Pope Francis - handsome and saintly, but he will insist on talking.

But then Pope Francis spoilt it all by talking about his religious views - a mistake made by popes throughout the ages. He spoke of "children, victims of abortion" being "discarded as 'unnecessary'". WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS, THE EDITOR OF THE NEW STATESMAN OR SOMEONE?

A butterfly, spared (for the moment) by Pope Francis.

Shut up, Francis, you right-wing extremist. They might hear you in Spain, the United States, even Ireland, where there are still people who call themselves Catholic. What about abortion rights, eh? Have you ever been a baby in the womb? I doubt it very much! I have, so there! We all want the world to be better, and allowing women full access to abortion is the way to make it so!

Trust me, I'm a mother. Oh, in fact I'm not (I just checked my CV); but I could be. Well, you never hear people speak of "The Holy Grandmother", and this proves that Pope Francis never even had a mother. Anyway, you don't see female Catholics supporting "pro-life" issues, do you?

This is what Catholics do to women.

I'm running out of steam, drat it. Oh yes... institutional sexism... medieval moral code (Christ was medieval, wasn't He? Could someone check?)... the right to control what happens to our bodies... placating conservative Catholics... how many more words do you need, Editor? Could you copy and paste some more clichés, please?

We love clichés.

Even in the 21st century there are still women giving birth to children. IS THAT RIGHT? IS IT? IS IT? Until Pope Francis dies, he has no right to talk about matters of life and death. And maybe not even then. Phew. Can I go, now?

New blogger

William Thompson (age 11).

In recognition of the fact that James Delingpole's little brother has followed him into the glamorous world of Telegraph blogging, we are pleased to announce that Damian Thompson's nephew William will be writing today's guest post for us.

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Hello, I'm William Thompson (age 11), and my uncle Damian is jolly pleased that you're letting me write on this blog. At first I was a bit jealous when I heard that my great friend Ginger Delingpole was going to be blogging on the Telegraph. I know I am better than him at Latin and RE, but he knows a lot about wind farms, and especially how to blow them up with things from the school science labs!

My chum Ginger Delingpole (age 11) with some of the girls in our school.

Like my friend Ginger, I am very keen on war games. At weekend my gang and I dress up in medieval costume, and we re-enact the historic religious controversies of the past. At first it was a bit dull, as we were recreating the Synod of Whitby, when St Hilda was forced to accept the Roman date for Easter rather than the Ionan date. What a yawn!

The critical moment when St Wilfrid convinces St Hilda.

Later on, we got onto the religious disputes of the middle ages, and I had a super time making torture implements out of the garden tools in Uncle Damian's shed. However, Mummy told me off when I set fire to little Violet Elizabeth Odone, as part of our "Joan of Arc" re-enactment.

"I'll scweam and scweam and scweam until I'm thick!" says Miss Odone.

Like Uncle Damian I am very interested in what the Catholic church is doing. I tried to go with him to Westminster Cathedral to see the Pope, but Uncle Damian confiscated the catapult I was going to use to fire pebbles at Cardinal Cormac. I don't know whether he used it himself!

The Cardinal drinks tea.

In my next blog I will go into the differences between Novus Ordo Masses and Extraordinary Form. This is something that I know a lot about, because we spent last weekend re-enacting Vatican II. In fact, I was sent to bed early for putting a worm down the back of Hubert Lane (who was playing the part of Basil Loftus).

I'm sorry, Father, but my Uncle Damian says that Ad orientem is best.