Transylvanians fear Pope's visit

In Transylvania, honest peasants are decking their homes with garlic and crucifixes, and refusing to go out after dark, as Pope Francis arrives on the latest of his world trips.

No, it is not the Holy Father, "He who can never tell lies," that they fear; rather it is the entourage of journalists, theologians, priests, vampires, and werewolves, who accompany him wherever he goes.

Fr Antonio Spadaro.

Said Bram Stoca, a humble peasant from Bran, "Probably there is no truth in the rumours that Austen Ivereigh sleeps in a coffin, that Robert Mickens can turn into a bat, or that Fr Rosica can only be killed with a stake through his heart, but I am taking no chances."

The local Lord of the Manor, Count Dracula, is equally perturbed by the prospect of the invading hordes, not least as they are likely to take "customers" away from his own private Banca de Sange.

"Any chance of a job with the Tablet?"

Some say that the Transylvanians' worries are unfounded, but for hundred of years peasants have told their children in hushed tones of the legend of the National Catholic Reporter, of Michael Sean Winters, of Fr Thomas Reese SJ, and even of Count Massimo Faggioli himself, of whom it is said in 1 Maccabees 5:4 (and no we are NOT making this bit up):

And he remembered the malice of the children of Bean: who were a snare and a stumblingblock to the people, by lying in wait for them in the way.

Fighting an NCR journalist with the only thing he fears.

Sex education for five-year-olds

It seems that my Mummy, today we played lesbians has been overtaken by events, since the present government now wants to give sex education to five-year-olds, and Labour even plans to inflict "LBGT" education on five-year-olds.

This is where babies come from these days!

Now that fewer and fewer kids are being produced by ordinary sexual relations between two adults of opposite sexes, and more are being produced in laboratories and clinics (anyone want some GM kids?) it is getting harder and harder to answer a five-year-old who asks "Where do babies come from?"

Mummy, was it the stork that brought me? Was I found under a gooseberry bush? Did Mummy and Daddy do something sensuous such as holding hands in the cinema? Or did Dr Frankenstein produce me in his laboratory? So many possible answers...

How babies used to be made.

The thinking behind Labour's proposed "LBGT" indoctrination programme is that kids are calling each other "gay" as an insult in the playground. Naturally, very few five-year-olds know much about sexual relationships unless they have been watching the BBC. (However, Iain Dale claims to have been "gay" since birth, which must have made his watching of the Teletubbies an unusually erotic experience.) From now on, kids will be encouraged to use more scientific terms of abuse such as "you're suffering from same-sex attraction, fish-face" or "your emotional gender does not match your biological gender, bozo."

When Jenny grew up, a lesbian lizard swept her off her feet.

But if unusual sexual relationships will soon be fully accepted by everyone, we shall have more opportunities to fall back on traditional insults, comparing kids to member of the new despised sections of society. "Christian", "Catholic", "Anglican", etc. "Mummy, the kids keep calling me a 'Tablet-reader'..." Or "Headmaster, my little boy came home in tears. The other kids were calling him a 'Member of Parliament'."

Here's how you can test your own political correctness. Do you agree that the scene below is perfectly normal, and that using "flowerpotman" as an insult is a homophobic hate crime? Of course you do.

What two men and a weed get up to in their spare time is no concern of ours!

Progress - ain't it grand?

Justice for Tina - the fight goes on

We are shocked to read in the Tablet that Professor Tina Beattie, the "Catholic" "theologian" has been banned by Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh from speaking on Church property in his diocese. This blog has long been a supporter of "lovely Tina", without controversially going so far as to describe her as either Catholic or a theologian, and it is time to revive the Justice for Tina! campaign.

Theology? An ology? She gets an ology and she thinks she's failed?

Of course St Paul notoriously wrote "Women keep silent in church" (1 Corinthians 14:34), but modern theological scholarship has concluded that this was probably an over-reaction after the day he took his Auntie Moly to church with him and she kept up a constant commentary of "Woeful!" Archbishop Leo's interdiction - according to the Tablet - is even fiercer, and dear Tina will not even be able to speak on church property. So even a "good morning, bruvver Eccles" will be a hanging offence if she says it while standing in the church car park.

Archbishop Cushing.

Leo Cushley was apparently acting on instructions from the Inquisition (now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), and this is evidence that even in Rome the writings of dear Tina are scutinised for heresy. Tina, as a close friend of yours, may I give you some advice? If one day you are lecturing in Roehampton and you find Cardinal Gerhard Müller sitting in the audience, BE VERY AFRAID. Drop your plans to explain how abortion and same-sex marriage are key Catholic doctrines, forget any possibility of comparing the Mass to an act of homosexual intercourse: go for something uncontroversial, like the parable of the sower and the seed, while keeping off rude jokes about seed.

The campaign goes on.

To be banned once (Clifton), Tina, may be a misfortune; to be banned twice (San Diego also), looks like carelessness. To be banned three times (Edinburgh) looks very much as though someone thinks you've been misbehaving. But we're not going to take this lying down, are we, Tina? Forget the massacres of IS/ISIS/ISIL/SS (Satanic State)! Forget the fact that Cardinal Kasper was cornered by 20 cardinals led by George Pell, and had his head pushed down the Vatican toilets! Forget the fact that the Catholic Church in Scotland is now run by the SNP! No, the burning issue today is JUSTICE FOR TINA! Write to the Pope now! Write to Gerhard Müller! Write to the Tablet! Write to the Beano!

45% of Scots said that Tina was welcome to lecture in their homes!