A Pastoral Letter from Bishop Arnold

I've read it so you don't have to - here is a shortened version of the original text.

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Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ - also all Non-binary and Multigendered Kinspersons!

Today I am writing about three different but closely-related matters of fundamental Catholic teaching.

As our blessed Prime Minister, St Armer of Keir, has pointed out, all the murders, stabbings and other attacks that we have seen this summer are the fault of grumbles by far-right Conservative voters and very far-right Reform voters, and nothing to do with the people who actually committed the crimes, most of whom are peaceful healthcare workers.

It is important for us to stop these extremely far-right trouble-makers, and I take this opportunity of asking you to befriend your neighbours. Ask Mr Mohammed Ali Bayan down the road to come to Mass at my Cathedral - he won't find anything to upset his deeply-held religious beliefs!

Which brings me onto my second subject. Traditionally, September is the Season of Creation, and the Church has been concerned about issues such as the Climate Crisis ever since the 1st Century C.E. (not A.D.!) You only have to look out of the window to see that the weather is hotter colder wetter drier more average than ever before! Why, the plughole in my bath was blocked this morning, causing floods in my bathroom the like of which we have not seen since last week!

God - or at least St Greta - asks us to reduce our energy consumption, to install solar panels in our broom cupboards, to fit windmills under our beds, to recycle our food before eating it, and, above all, to pay more taxes!

The strain of saving the planet has taken its toll on Ms Thunberg.

Finally, connected with both our community building and our care for the environment - and of course with every other important part of Catholic teaching - is SYNODALITY. I have three key questions for you:

How can we persuade people that this is a real Copernican turning point of conciliar ecclesiology?

What would it look like to breathe synodality into each component of academic theology?

Which aspect of 'PLACE' do you think is most important in shaping relationships within the Church?

I must ask that you all participate in the final stages of the synod - by attending meetings, talking a lot, or at least trying to stay awake, and by saying the Diocesan prayer "Stay with us, Lord, in our synodal walking together."

Love and kisses (as Cardinal Tucho would say),

+ Johnny

New ApartTrad system announced

Following the issue of Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis has now decided a name for the new "first class" and "second class" system under which the Catholic Church will be organized from now on - it will be known as ApartTrad.

A typical ApartTrad notice.

First Class (Novus Ordo) Catholics - the ones that Pope Francis expects to see in Heaven with no questions asked - will be given full facilities for offering the post-Vatican II Mass. This will be in "vernacular" of course, although in another ten years from now, Francis intends to insist on Italian ("like Jesus spoke") since all other languages will be condemned as divisive, not to mention racist, fascist and major causes of climate change.

Second Class (Traditional Latin Mass) Catholics - already labelled "Satanic" by some of Francis's attack poodles - will have to struggle to find a place where their perverted liturgies can be offered. At present a twenty-mile walk to Mass is considered reasonable, but as the restrictions begin to bite, there will only be a few "Concentration Camps" in which those old fogeys (some of them as young as 3) will be allowed to congregate.

Amal Clooney is sent to check on Cardinal Nichols's orthodoxy.

Of course there are many people who attend both EF and NO Masses, and they are advised to establish their First Class credentials as soon as possible, before the new "yellow star" system is introduced to identify the TLM plebs.

Other sacraments will soon be denied to the Seond Class Catholics. No Marriage ("we don't want them breeding!" joked Francis), no Confession/Reconciliation (this has already largely disappeared in the Novus Ordo, since so many sins have been reclassified as "no problem, guys"), and of course no Ordination ("MORE Satanic priests? I think not!)

Of course some sins are still recognised.

Already the Vatican has received worldwide condemnation for its new ApartTrad system, with such paragons of religious freedom as China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan reeling in horror at the cruel persecution seen in the Catholic Church. So there are hopes that President Francis may yet moderate his policy.

The Book of Covidicus 20: the Synod of Glasgow

Continued from Chapter 19.

1. It came to pass that Bo-sis tired of preaching the good news about masks and vixens, and turned his attention to prophesying the end of the world.

2. For the children of Br-tain were obediently getting their first jabs, their second jabs, and even their very important Booster Jabs.

3. Although, owing to a fault in the the supplies, some received Wooster Jabs instead, and cried out, saying, "What Ho! It is time to go and steal a cow-creamer!"

Entrance by invitation only.

4. However, Bo-sis was more worried that the world was about to be consumed by fire, and so he summoned a mighty synod called COP in the far wilderness known as Glasgow.

5. Thus from distant lands there came all the great and good, or at least all the rich, such as Bill Gates of Hell, Greta Thunderbird, Prince Charles (the mighty ruler who talked to the trees), and Joseph of Bidenia, who came with a train of four score and five camels, all bearing sanitary products.

6. And for forty days and forty nights (or at least it seemed like it) the synod raged on, as the guests explained how the the world could be saved if only all the people not present were to stop eating, drinking, taking shelter, and heating themselves, but would pay more taxes.

"Zzzz!" Boris payeth attention to the wise words ("Blah blah blah") of Greta.

7. Meanwhile, the COP synod had received a blessing from the Lord, and nobody present needed to wear masks, to take the vixen, or to be socially distant. Except the servants.

8. Then the rain descended, and the winds blew, as is normal in Glasgow for three hundred and three score days of the year. And the guests at the COP synod said, "Verily, this is due to climate change.

9. For, as the psalmist saith, Fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds which fulfill his word: all these are signs of climate change."

"Zzzz!" Another gripping moment at the synod.

10. So, after feasting and drinking, Bo-sis returned home, and planned what more he could do to serve the children of Bri-tain.

11. "Now we must ban fossil fuels," said he. "No longer will people be allowed to burn the Ammonites, the Belemnites, or the Trilobites."

12. For these were neighbouring tribes that the children of Bri-tain were wont to burn to heat their homes.

13. "From now on we have Net Zero," he explained. "In the day time, the sun will heat your homes, and at night ye shall use heat pumps. And probably die."

"Each time thou burnest an ammonite part of Manchester disappeareth under water. So there's a plus side to everything."

14. Thus the children of Bri-tain learned that the plague was not the most serious thing that threatened them.

Continued in Chapter 21.

Pope Francis snubs Glasgow

The Climate Change^TM world is reeling in horror today with the news that Pope Francis will not be attending November's prestigious COP26 conference in Glasgow. In his place, he will be sending Vice-Pope Parolin, with various useful bits of advice such as "A Glasgow kiss is a head-butt, Pietro, so don't ask for one in Mass just before the Agnus Dei" and "Deep-fried Mars Bars are so disgusting that only Cardinal Dolan will eat them."

Naturally, there has been speculation about the Pope's reasons for crying off. Was it when he heard that Climate Change^TM had not actually reached Glasgow and the weather in November will be (in the local vernacular) "cald enow ta freeze the haggis off a poop, ya ken"?

Pope Francis shows an admiring audience how to save Mother Earth.

The Holy Father had already explained that he was attending in a purely secular capacity, and would not be creating any Scottish saints, attending Masses (och aye, use of the Scottish vernacular would have been a good way to prove its superiority over Latin, the noo), or even handing out Pachamama dolls. As a purely secular pope, he would have been attending as Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Vatican State), wearing a simple business suit made from the wool of low-carbon Argentinian llamas. But it was not to be.

Another theory to explain the Pope's absence is his well-known fear of St Greta of Thunberg. After her moving speech to the Swedish toddler group this week, where the words "blah blah blah" led to riotous applause, Pope Francis is naturally nervous in case she accuses him of stealing her dreams and childhood or describes his finely-crafted empty words as "blah blah blah". As he explains, "I've been getting enough of that sort of language from the Catholic Church ever since I decided to kick the TLM brigade in the teeth."

Greta is not the first person to wish that the pope would go on strike.

Well, so be it. COP26 will have to survive with Parolin, and without the pope jetting in we must expect Mother Earth to die just a little bit sooner. As St Greta puts it "HOW DARE YOU?"

Alyssa Milano gives a moral lead

Although Catholic bishops (with very few exceptions) no longer give a moral lead, all is not lost as the great actress Alyssa Milano, star of, um, the 1980s television series Who's the Boss? (er, has she done anything since then?) has called for a Sex Strike - something to do with the fact that real feminists like to have sex and abort babies, so if they can't do one they won't do the other.

"When I grow up I'm going to organize a sex strike!"

This moral lead has been widely praised by people on both sides of the divide - and Alyssa has gone on to provide more guidance:

1. Thou shalt not steal. A burglars' and muggers' strike is being organized, to last until theft becomes legal in Georgia (or wherever it isn't yet legal).

2. A drug strike. No more cannabis, cocaine, etc. to be consumed until it is made legal. Yes, this will probably bring Hollywood to a halt, but it is worth it to show how much we care about this issue.

Alyssa models a mantilla suitable for Catholics on strike.

3. An adulterers' strike. Although the Pope has not yet got round to answering the Dubia, or ruling definitively on whether adultery is still frowned on in the Catholic Church, the Blessed Alyssa has called an adulterers' strike - no more sleeping around until you can get away with it!

4. In a devastating blow against climate change, Alyssa promises to use no electric fires and to wear no fur coats whenever we have a hot day. If that doesn't show CO₂ that we mean business, nothing will!

The end is Nye! A mad "scientist" explains.

Impressed by Alyssa's moral lead, Pope Francis is planning a trip to Hollywood, with a view to meeting the actress and benefiting from some of her popularity. It is rumoured that he is going to star with her in a bio-pic about a now obsolete British band. It will of course be called Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

The Pope warns of Climate Change

Now that climate change is generally agreed to be the greatest threat facing the world, rather than, say, war, famine, disease, abortion, etc., Pope Francis is making this the topic of his next encyclical, of which we have seen a draft copy. Here are some of the highlights.

"We'll need a bigger ark," says Noah.

In the book of Genesis it is recorded that God punished the world for its enormous carbon footprint by sending down a great flood. Noah was the only righteous (i.e., environmentally-aware) person around at that time, and he survived the great flood by making an ark out of recycled wood; being keen on biodiversity he took two of every species with him, except possibly dinosaurs and unicorns.

Our climate model predicts a plague of at least one frog.

Over to Egypt now, and the many different forms of climate change that arose from the Pharaoh's insistence on fossil fuels. Water turned to blood, flies, frogs, hail, fire and thunder. Sounds familiar, eh? Things got worse, though. The Red Sea was parted, and this was all because the Egyptians refused to recycle their plastic bags.

Jericho - no wind-farms, and inevitable climate change effects.

As Christians we know that 100-watt bulbs are sinful, and that wind-farms are blessed. It is our mission to preach this gospel to the heathen, or face the environmental consequences, as they did in Jericho.

In April I was lucky to entertain some of the world's leading experts on climate change, as they turned up in their private jets from all corners of the world to tell me of Christ's new message "GET THEE BEHIND ME, CARBON!" Remember the fate of the Gadarene swine? The climate changed, and they had to run into the sea to cool. themselves down.

Jesus and the man possessed by demons (what we would nowadays call a "climate denier").

Finally, we read of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, symbolising the doom we may expect at the end times. Their names were Phew-what-a-scorcha, It's-Brrr-itain, Turned-out-nice-today, and Scattered-Showers-With-Sunny-Intervals. St John was warning us of the threat of Climate Change, and no mistake!

I want you all to pedal very hard to get this plane off the ground.

The Pope's Encyclical on Climate Change

Blessings upon you, my flock. Before we start, may I just mention that you're all suffering from spiritual jetlag and climatological hangovers, you brood of vipers. Indeed, the purpose of my addressing you today is to warn you that you are destined for the furnace of fire, as warned in Matthew 13:50. For unless we instantly ban all cars, lightbulbs and washing-machines, the Earth will be consumed by flames, and that can be pretty disagreeable, I'm sure you'll agree.

You have been warned!

Now, in this letter I want to concentrate on the teaching of two doctors of the Church. The first is his eminence Michael Mann, who saw a mystic vision of a hockey-stick, which, like the Holy Grail, turned out to be very elusive when people searched for it in this world.

Sir Michael de Mann seeks the Holy Hockey-Stick.

The second learned doctor is his eminence Albert de Gore, author of An inconvenient truth, which correctly predicted that the world's temperature would rise by fifty degrees in five years, the seas would rise by twenty feet, and that the whole of the UK would disappear under the waves, except for Ben Nevis, UNLESS we bought carbon credits from him and banned all things that emit carbon dioxide, including pet cats, bishops, and bottles of Coca-Cola. A prophet is without honour in his own country, as someone once said - I can't remember who, off hand - and it is to the shame of the human race that the blessed Albert was so cruelly mocked.

Albert Hallin Kensington Gore.

I myself have noticed a change in climate. Since I moved to Rome, I have observed that July and August have become far hotter than they ever were in Buenos Aires. Admittedly, January and February have been a bit disappointing, but since they insist that I wear heavy papal vestments, rather than the humble rags favoured by St Francis, I never find it very cold.

You may think that there are more serious issues we need to address in the world: the complete massacre of Christians in the middle-east is undeniably irritating, and I shall be writing a stiff letter to Mr Jihad-John pointing out that he is slipping into neo-Pelagianism. Some of you may think that world famine is an inconvenience, and others may wonder whether letting 600,000 people per year die of malaria is a Good Thing or not. But that's all peanuts compared with the threat of having to turn the heating down by a degree or two in the next hundred years.

Dangerously hot weather in Egypt!

The Catholic Church is taking a lead here: from now on we'll have no more candles, and no more burning of incense - these are nasty traditionalist warming rituals that smack of Donatism, as my expert on heresy, Cardinal Nichols, assures me. Stop sniggering at the back there, Cardinal Pell. I'll deal with you later.

Right! Stop that at once!

Since China is building dozens of new coal-fired power stations, you may wonder whether there is really any virtue in our turning off the heating and dying of cold this winter, simply in order to reduce our own CO₂ emissions. Well, when the Apocalypse comes, the unbelievers will suffer first, mark my words. In the words of Jude 1:7: Shanghai and Guangzhou, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

Meanwhile, I am doing my bit for the salvation of Cardinal Burke, by driving him out into the cold. What a thoughtful pope I am.

Addendum: I did not make this up. Just as Richard Dawkins became an instant theologian, the Holy Father has become an instant climatologian.

Why I Love Liberal Catholics

Following Fr Dwight Longenecker's piece Why I Love Trad Catholics, we have come across a companion piece that he decided not to write.

A liberal Mass. Note that the Cross is replaced by something Greener.

One of the riches of the Catholic Church is her unity and diversity. Within the Catholic big tent we have many who accept the Church's teaching - informed by scripture and tradition - but there are also many who want to make up their own rules, because they know better.

Do you really need to follow Christ to call yourself a Christian?

What liberal Catholics have concluded is that all this stuff about "eternal verities" is simply nonsense. It is the duty of the Church to adapt to the Spirit of the Age. We mustn't get left behind, trying to teach something different, must we? People might think of us as "different" from atheists, cranky, even. They might even stop inviting us to fashionable dinner parties!

St Paul - wrote nothing important.

Liberal Catholics understand that we have to rewrite our religion from scratch. Out goes all that old-fashioned stuff believed by Christ, the Apostles, the Saints and Martyrs, the Popes, and lots of other dead people. We have to find new religious teachers: Leonardo Boff, Hans Küng, Tina Beattie, David Cameron, Barack Obama, and Polly Toynbee! Only by taking a little wisdom from each of these sages can we move forward.

"Let us pray." Pol replaces Paul.

Now, if you want to understand modern liberal Catholicism, you need to watch the BBC, or read the Guardian. Remember even Jesus, in one of His more advanced moments, said, And you shall know the comments, and the comments shall make you free (John 8:32). He saw that one day His teachings would be superseded. The teachings of Alan Rusbridger are more modern, and their scriptural authority is undeniable, since the writers are all still alive, and can be located in your nearest nursing home.

Of course liberal Catholics do not reject all moral teaching: adultery, murder, and false witness may no longer be sinful, but we must still condemn all bigoted attempts to impose ideas of sexual morality, any attempts to obstruct Choice, and the denial of climate change.

Forgive us our carbon dioxide, and deliver us from climate change.

I realize that traditionalists may not appreciate my take on the matter, but like it or not, the second Vatican Council has taken place. And although nobody ever talks about what it decided, God (if you don't mind my using an old-fashioned term) has sent His Spirit of Vatican II to tell us what it should have decided, and liberal Catholics are in the vanguard of inventing new things that could have been decided.

The vernacular Mass is now accepted as the Ordinary Form, and modern liberal Catholics see this as an opportunity for further development of the rite. Since most of them don't attend Mass very often, anyway, they cannot get used to the new translation, and so they have invited Kevin Mishmash, the publisher of Walk in the Light, Follow Me, and so much more, to produce a version without any of the hard words.

Do your hymns make people ill? If so, Kevin Mishmash may want to publish them.

Out goes: We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

In comes:

We believe, We believe, We believe, 
That the Father's been making things!
Earth and Heaven, Heaven and Earth, 
The Father's been making things!
Things that we see, things that we don't.
The Father's been making things! Yeah!

© 2014 Kevin Mishmash.

I, for one, am glad that the liberals are there to interpret Catholicism as it was never interpreted before. They are a gift to the whole church.

Thought for the Dazed

By Giles Fraser

"We're DOOOOMED, I tell you," says Fraser.

Being a clever chap who reads books without pictures in them, I was given the works of St Augustine for my birthday last year.

It's astonishing how St Augustine was concerned about the same issues that worry us Guardian journalists who appear on the BBC and do a little praying in our spare time. For example, in his "City of God," he says:

To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented.

Nowadays we recognise that he was expressing serious concerns about climate change.

St Augustine - terrified by the thought of climate change.

Luckily, the horrifying effects of carbon emissions were averted in the 5th century, but we shall not be so lucky. We're DOOOOMED, I tell you. One of the books I have on my shelves - but haven't yet got round to reading properly - is called "The Holy Bible." At the end of it, in a section called "Revelation," there are many shocking predictions of the effects of climate change.

Like me, Augustine was a keen Socialist, and anticipated those great thinkers Marx, Engels, and Miliband. As I always say to my parishioners, I'm on the side of the Engels!

Another subject that Augustine anticipated was the modern Freudian theory of sex. When he wrote in his "Confessions," As a youth I prayed, "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet," he was setting out the basis of modern psychoanalysis, which is SEX.

Freud - his theories explain our basic need for lesbian and gay bishops.

Sex is a very exciting subject, and I love writing about it. The thought of a young woman priest in a tightly-fitting cassock... Phew, is it just me, or is it getting hot in here? Must be all that climate change that we hear about...