Mogg turns to the dark side

The scene is breakfast at Mogg Towers. The Right Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council, one of the UK's most senior Catholics, is eating breakfast, watched as always by his faithful nanny, Nanny Ogg.

Jacob: That's all, I've finished!

Nanny: No you haven't, you naughty boy. Eat up your kippers.

Jacob: I ask the honourable nanny to note that I have never liked kippers.

Nanny: Jacob, you will eat those kippers or go to your bedroom!

Mogg at the breakfast table.

Jacob: Oh, all right, Nanny.

Nanny: There's a good boy. Now, Jacob, I want to have a serious talk with you. Are you still a Catholic?

Jacob: You know I'm a Catholic, Nanny! Didn't Helena and I go to Mass in the private chapel on Sunday? Didn't we take the children, all the way from big Prima down to little Quartus Decimus? Father O'Blimey said he was delighted to see us. And you were really good as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, Nanny!

Fr O'Blimey's sermon on "The best bits of Laudato Si'" fails to grip.

Nanny: Yes, all right. So perhaps you could explain why you are member of a government that is doing so many wicked things?

Jacob: Wicked things, Nanny?

Nanny: Yes. For a start you are trying to remove abortion restrictions in Northern Ireland. Fr O'Blimey says you can be excommunicated for that.

Jacob: Oh heck, that was Bozza's idea. You know Bozza - blond, unkempt, bit of a sex-maniac, but basically a good guy. He's my boss now.

Mogg's choice of anti-virus mask should have warned us.

Nanny: And now I hear that you're changing the divorce laws to make it easier to put asunder those whom God hath joined, or at least whom a spotty man in a grey suit in a registry office hath joined.

Jacob: Still, we did scrap one of Bozza's ideas, which was that randomly-selected people would be contacted by the Home Office and told "Surprise, surprise! We've just given you a divorce! From now on your registered address is the garden shed."

Nanny: It's not good enough, you know. Also the nation's Catholics want to go to Mass - even the bishops want to, and they're the last people you'd think of getting involved! Moreover, the Anglicans are missing the helter-skelters and crazy golf that their own cathedrals normally provide. And all you can do is witter on about needing a haircut!

The inside of the Mogg private chapel, St Mogg's.

Jacob: Can't the Catholics go to their private chapels, as we do? No, I suppose not.

Nanny: It's not good enough, Jacob. You're a naughty boy. What are you?

Jacob: A naughty boy, Nanny. Sorry!

Nanny: We had intended you to be the next Prime Minister but three.
But after this, my patience fails. Go off and govern New South Wales!*

*Hilaire Belloc.

Cardinal Marx redefines sexual morality

Fresh from his silver-medal triumph at the World Cup of Bad Cardinals, Cardinal Reinhard Marx has announced a "binding synodal process" in the German Catholic Church to look at "questions of present-day sexual behaviour".

"The sort of thing I have in mind," he said, "is the case of a man who has six wives. He divorces the first (the Roman Catholic Church would not accept this, but the German Catholic Church is more broad-minded), and beheads the second. The third dies, probably of natural causes, although it may be a merciful release for her. He divorces the fourth, beheads the fifth, and settles down with a sixth, who is destined to survive him. Now, is there a problem with that?"

Cardinal Marx (H/T an anonymous well-wisher).

"Well, clearly all his actions can be justified by a careful reading of Amoris Laetitia. He is only divorced and remarried twice, so there should be no objection to his receiving Holy Communion. The double beheadings may be harder to excuse, except by a process of accompaniment, discernment and possibly Ignatian yoga, but Pope Francis has not explicitly spoken out against this practice - and anyway, he is not the head of the German Catholic Church."

"We German bishops are struggling to make ends meet, in spite of the Church Tax, and so another process to be justified by synodal progress is a dissolution of our remaining monasteries. This will inject much-needed cash into our pockets."

Himmerod Abbey. Soon to be a centre for LGBT activities. Or maybe just a Disneyland.

It is true that many German bishops are known for their dissolution.

Marx continued: "Another idea that our synod is going to consider is the execution of heretics, by which we mean people who adhere to traditional Catholicism. I strongly advise Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinals Brandmüller and Müller not to set foot in Germany again: they may end up at our German Education and Execution Centre in Teibürn... Walter Kasper has got an axe and he's not afraid to use it."

Pope Francis declares himself fallible

The Catholic Church enjoyed a rare moment of unity today, when Pope Francis made an ex cathedra declaration of the doctrine of the fallibility of the Pope. For nearly 150 years, successive Popes had enjoyed the status of "infallible", but under such restrictive circumstances that the doctrine was almost meaningless: the Pope must speak ex cathedra, he must speak on faith or morals, he must have the permission of the editor of the Tablet, he must be wearing the holy socks of Pope Pius IX, and he must speak in Latin. All this is now (infallibly) swept away.

Pope Pius IX, the possibly fallible.

There has always been a slight paradox in the notion of papal infallibility, since Pope Pius IX was not infallible until he declared that he was, and so maybe he was never infallible after all. By that logic, anyone who declares himself infallible (e.g. Richard Dawkins or Giles Fraser) could be regarded as such.

Note that Papal infallibility has always been misunderstood by non-Catholics, who make trolling remarks such as "Hee, hee, hee, if he's infallible, why doesn't he tell us who's going to win the 2.30 at Newmarket today?" In fact the Pope KNOWS but he is not allowed to TELL (cf. the secrets of Fatima).

And the winner is Pope's Fancy at 100-8.

Still, there was a general sigh of relief today when Pope Francis renounced infallibility. Some Catholics were worried that he was going to declare that carbon dioxide was the Devil's gas; others feared that he might declare that Jesus's words about divorce were in some sense part of infallible Catholic teaching. (Which bits of Jesus's teaching are to be regarded as infallible is another good question for Catholics: apparently this will be answered at a forthcoming synod.)

The Holy Father himself is greatly relieved, now that he no longer officially infallible. He commented: "I admit that I contradict myself on a daily basis, and so it is a great weight off my mind to know that it really doesn't matter. Actually - what am I saying? - I don't contradict myself, and it does matter. Oh never mind."