How to resign as head of your church

Mostly on this blog we content ourselves with giving advice on "How to be a good pope" - and you can see the results! However, the Catholic Church can learn something from the Anglicans (apart from useful advice on how to take over other people's church property, how to mess around with the Bible, and how to ordain lesbians). So let's see what we can learn from the dignified resignation of Justin Welby, sometimes called the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"I confess that one of us has sinned. Not me, of course."

It could not happen in the Catholic Church, but suppose you, as head of your church/ ecclesial community/ cult/ coven were revealed to have have protected people guilty of sex crimes. One day the outcry will be too great, and you won't have popesplainers imamsplainers primatesplainers to protect you. So you stand up and make a speech.

Here are some useful tips on how to do this. They can also be useful if you go into the confessional.

* Tell weak jokes. This is always a good move. "I say, I say, I say, Father. I've just killed my parents. Go gently with me, as I am an orphan."

Pause for laughter. Not a sausage. Oh well, carry on.

* Don't take any blame. "I regret, Father, than some grievous sins have been committed by members of the church to which I belong." Don't add "It was me, in fact."

* Another tasteless joke. "They say that heads must roll. Let me tell you a joke about the archbishop whose head was used as a football. You'll laugh, I know you will!"

* Finally, make yourself out to be a martyr. "It was inevitable that someone should suffer for these sins, and it had to be me. Now all I have left is a fat pension and a book deal for my memoirs."

The bishopess of London cannot stop giggling.

False communications to be rebranded as jokes

In the UK (and probably other countries) legislation is being formulated to prevent false communications on social media - you know, statements like "Covid-19 is best treated with a dish of prunes and custard", "Vaccines make children big and strong", "Joe Biden is a Catholic". These may even be punished by a term in prison.

As it stands, even joking could be punished. No more "While hunting in Africa, I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How it got into my pyjamas I'll never know." Unless it really happened.

The answer is simple, of course. All false statements are to be rebranded as jokes, usually introduced with "I say, I say, I say!"

I say, I say, I say, this is a real bishop!

Catholics have seized on this with alacrity. Whenever Pope Francis stands up to speak, there will be a loud chorus of "I say, I say, I say!" alerting people that a new piece of doctrine joke is expected.

"Dico, dico, dico, no one can exclude themselves from the Church, we are all saved sinners!"

This device will also be useful when we look at statements from the German Synodesynodesynodekartoffelsalatsynodesynode, their own Synod about Synods about Synods...

"Ich sage, ich sage, ich sage! Let's get the Church to bless homosexual couples!"

So the panic is over. You can what you like, provided that you brand it as a joke. This lets Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau (fill in your own names here) off the hook, as nobody will take them seriously.

"I say, I say, I say, horses really appreciate LGBT propaganda!"

Of course everything you see on this blog is simply the complete and unvarnished truth, so we shall not be using the "I say, I say, I say" formula. Others are not so lucky...

A Morecambe and Wise tribute act: the tall one with glasses and the little one with short fat hairy legs.

Why Eccles will tell no more jokes

Eccles's new law states that it is impossible to tell any joke without someone being offended.

Take for example the Tommy Cooper joke: "I bought some pork chops and told the butcher to make them lean. He said, 'Which way?'"

With this joke the late Mr Cooper (99 today) has managed to offend Jews and Muslims (mentioning pork), fat people (mentioning "lean") and people with one leg shorter than the other (the other meaning of "lean"). So watch out for Mohammed Ben Fatwa, the overweight Muslim with a limp!

One man's comedy is another man's tragedy.

The same law has applied to me recently, and here are three examples.

Case 1. Someone on Twitter asks what she should do during the present crisis, if it is impossible to get to Confession.

Witty Eccles reply: Stop sinning.

Audience reaction: Let's be more charitable here, please. Accusing S. of being unable to stop sinning is the height of rudeness.

Well, that went down well!

Case 2. We have the usual St Patrick's Day dispute about whether St Patrick was English, Scottish, Welsh, or something else. Someone says that he was Scottish.

Witty Eccles reply: You're thinking of St Andrew.

Audience reaction: (patiently). No, no, he's the Patron Saint of Scotland. If he was Scottish, his brother Peter would also have been Scottish.

St Andrew relaxes after a hard day's apostling.

Case 3. An American priest (who claims to have a sense of "humor", whatever that may be) tells us that he tried to give up chocolates for Lent, and failed.

Witty Eccles reply. "This is the face of true evil."

Audience reaction (and this, if anything, proves that British irony doesn't travel well): I hope you didn’t give up "calling priests evil" or "exaggerating" or "joking not joking" or what New Yorkers called "joking on a square" for Lent.

Pope Francis will not eat his choco-Luther until Lent is over.

O.K. from now on I will stop telling jokes. Here instead is a purely factual piece of spiritual nourishment.

New Catholic helpline.
Worried about / whom to consult.

Climate change - Pope Francis.
Coronavirus - Cardinal Nichols.
Sexual problems - Cardinal Marx.
Sin, redemption, etc. - Er, position still vacant.

To which someone added: Liturgical Dancing / Cardinal Tagle. See? People are starting to appreciate my serious comments.

Pope Francis II?

Pope Francis makes an infallible joke

Theologians, canon lawyers, professors, journalists, Jesuits, and Catholics worldwide are currently trying to get to grips with Pope Francis's latest claim that he is the Devil. Should this be interpreted as an infallible statement? Or at least part of the Catholic Magisterium? Well, if not, does it have the "ex aeroplane" authority of an in-flight declaration? Or maybe it's just a load of Scalfaris, and never happened at all?

You see the problem. If some of the Pope's statements are deemed to be jokes, how are we to tell which they are? Is Amoris Laetitia just one big joke? Or is it just the footnotes? Will it be necessary for Cardinal Burke to issue another Dubium along the lines of: "Are you really the Devil, Holy Father?" Was the appointment of Cardinal Cupich ("the world's nastiest cardinal") a joke that was accidentally taken seriously?

"From now on, if I'm wearing the balloon hat, I'm joking, otherwise I'm being Magisterial."

Fortunately, Catholics are asked to respect the views of the Pope, but do not need to agree with them unless they bear the authority of the Magisterium. Unlike many of the Pope's utterances, the "I am the Devil" claim does not contradict the teachings of previous Popes: on the other hand, Catholics are still not obliged to believe this new doctrine.

So, please let us have no more queues of people at Confession saying "Father, the Pope says he's the Devil, but I cannot believe this teaching. I think he's just a very naughty pope."

A red nose indicates a Magisterial statement where the "infallibility" button has not been pushed.

We are looking forward to hearing jokes from Pope Francis along the lines of "A cardinal, a bishop and a seminarian went into a bar." If the papal balloon-hat is not being worn, this means that the event actually happened (and Archbishop Viganò has all the details).

Colbert tells a joke, and Fry is prosecuted

The world was in shock this week when it was revealed that Stephen Colbert, the leading Catholic and bosom friend of Fathers Martin and Rosica, had told a joke.

Spot the comedian!

An angry fan protested: "I have been a watcher of the Dead Show since the days of David Letterbox, and I was told that when Stephen Colbert took it over, he would maintain the tradition of hurling insults and dirty innuendos at Christians, Conservatives, and anyone else who didn't buy into the liberal secular consensus of Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood, etc. But now he has actually told a joke!"

"I was on this show for 94 years, and they still haven't gotten any curtains for the windows."

Colbert's joke, admittedly an old one, went like this:

Two Jesuit novices both wanted to smoke cannabis while they prayed. They decided to ask their superior for permission. The first asked, but was told no. A little while later he spotted his friend smoking cannabis. "Why did the superior allow you to smoke cannabis, but not me?" he asked. His friend replied, "Because you asked if you could smoke cannabis while you prayed, and I asked if I could pray while I smoked cannabis!"

Fr James Martin SJ is an old friend of Colbert and a Vatican consultant on theology. His input to Pope Francis's next apostolic exhortation What Laetitia did next, correcting various errors in the New Testament, will be greatly valued. Jim was also horrified at this betrayal. "I expected Stephen to make some harmless allegations about homosexual intercourse between Trump and Putin," he explained. "These would have offended nobody, indeed at our Jesuit Community of New Heresies we would have been delighted. But then he starts introducing inappropriate elements such as humour into his monologues."

"Blah blah blah Trump blah blah blah."

Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, trouble is brewing for Stephen Fry, the comedian, actor, television presenter, author, activist, polymath, Renaissance man, brain surgeon, celebrity chef, nuclear scientist, composer, lion-tamer, plumber, jockey, that's enough things that Fry does badly... Under ancient Irish anti-boredom laws he is to be prosecuted for causing excessive tedium, having driven several people into a coma by droning on with his infantile views on religion. These are basically at the level of "If I can't get my own way on everything, I'll thcweam and thcweam until I'm thick. That will make God buck his ideas up a bit. Not that He exists of course."

Stephen Fry's son Elliott reassures him that he is really a very interesting person.

Curiously, Fry's views on God - namely that He has got things wrong and can learn a lot from us humans - are not all that different to Fr Martin's. Oh my goodness, perhaps he IS James Martin. No, they can't both be so ubiquitous, can they?