Fortune tellers cannot save you

Pope Francis has reminded people that salvation can only come through Jesus Christ, not through tarot readers and fortune tellers.

A liturgical abuse by an unsaved priest.

This news has come as a shock to many liberal catholics, who were expecting Pope Francis to be more sympathetic towards arcane practices than his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Said Catherine Pepinster of the Tablet, "We are gravely disappointed by what the Pope said, and he is losing the support of Catholic newspapers such as ours. After all, the Tablet's new horoscope column, written by the mysterious Madame E. Curti, gives explicit instructions on how to achieve salvation. For example, all Aquarians should try an attend a mass with liturgical dancing this week, and join a pro-choice demonstration."

Madame E. Curti looks into the future.

Over in the dark lands of Roehampton there is also disquiet. Said Madame Tina, another well-known clairvoyante, "I predict that Pope Francis will be visited by an aged German called Küng, who will persuade him to allow women priests, same-sex marriage and easy divorce, as an integral part of Catholic life. Trust me, this morning I saw three magpies and a large white cloud that looked a bit like Vincent Nichols. That always means doom for someone."

Hans Küng - the cards foretell his arrival in Rome.

Continued Madame Tina, "I haven't been getting many speaking engagements lately, but as a leading Catholic fortune-teller, I am always available for gay masses, first communions, clown masses, ordinations, or, if all else fails, my ever-popular mind-reading show Madame Tina's Lumen Gentium. After all, Mother Julian of Norwich was a mystic, so why shouldn't I try my hand?"

Madame Tina knows your future!

It is thought that Pope Francis may not be entirely pleased with this new trend in liberal Catholicism. And to everyone's surprise, it appears that Pope Benedict, in his retirement, has also been practising simple conjuring tricks.

Abracadabra! There's now a rabbit inside the box!

Bad Hymns 18

Today's nomination for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award is the song most frequently played at funerals, namely "My Way." Accordingly, we invited Paul Anka, the original lyricist, to discuss the work with us.

He did it his way.

E: Paul, good to see you here. I started my researches on your hymn by reading the Wikipedia entry. It seems to have been written by a doctor of moral philosophy.

The lyrics of "My Way" tell the story of a man who, having grown old, reflects on his life as death approaches. He is comfortable with his mortality and takes responsibility for how he dealt with all the challenges of life while maintaining a respectable degree of integrity.

A: Yes, that seems to sum it up, Eccles. In this modern era, where we don't believe in good and evil, can we not say, Regrets, I've had a few, But then again, too few to mention?

E: Well a certain Pharisee would definitely have agreed with you. By the way, it says here that I travelled each and ev'ry highway. Are you a great walker?

A great walker, who did it his way.

A: It doesn't do to take the words too literally, Eccles. Likewise, And so I face the final curtain isn't referring to a literal curtain.

E: Actually, in a crematorium there often is a literal curtain, through which the coffin slides away. But never mind. I see that your hymn asks, For what is a man, what has he got? Have you been reading Psalm 8? What is man that thou art mindful of him?

A: Except that I come to a different conclusion, Eccles.

E: It seems to me that what the song is saying is that the late lamented was a smug, selfish, egotistical, pig-headed, arrogant fool. Of course, many late lamenteds are like that, but should we really say so, explicitly?

Totally irrelevant image.

A: You've got it, Eccles. These are the words the mourners really have in their heads:

He was a pain, we're glad he's dead,
He made his family's life a misery.
He never listened to a word we said,
What's more, he always had to do things his way.

E: Paul Anka, thank you for explaining this hymn to us.

"And more, much more than this, I did it my way."

---

Previous entries for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award:

Lord of the Dance.    Shine, Jesus, shine.    Enemy of apathy.    Walk in the Light.
Kum Ba Yah.    Follow me.    God's Spirit is in my heart.    Imagine.    Alleluia Ch-ch.
It ain't necessarily so.    I, the Lord of sea and sky.    Colours of day.    The red flag.
Go, the Mass is ended.    I watch the sunrise.    Bind us together, Lord.    Our god reigns.

A tribute to Richard Dawkins

Last week saw the 72nd birthday of Professor Richard Dawkins, scientist, theologian and comedian; we are happy to reprint some tributes to the great man, which we found hidden away on http://www.richarddawkins.net/.

FACT: Dawkins shares his birthday with Fred Karno, inventor of the custard-pie gag.

Richard, I was a devout Catholic until the age of three, when my teddy-bear's head fell off. I prayed for it to be mended, but nothing happened. At that point I realised that God was an illusion, and that the Bible was a tissue of lies. Thank you for letting me share my pain with the world, so that no more three-year-olds suffer as I did. S. Fry.

Richard answers: Well, that sums up the whole fallacy of Christianity, doesn't it? Thank you for sharing those wise words with us.

Nancy Pelosi, a strong opponent of Catholic teaching, also shares Richard's birthday.

Dear Professor Dawkins, I just saw a bus go by with the message THERE'S PROBABLY NO GOD on it. Genius! I'll bet that Julian of Norwich and Thomas à Kempis never thought of that one! If only they'd known of your brilliant arguments, they'd never have wasted their lives as they did. P. Toynbee.

Richard answers: Yes, they tell me I am very good at presenting powerful slogans without any distracting attempts at justifying them!

And Pierre Boulez, another misunderstood genius.

Dear Mr Dawkins we read the God Delusion at school, and it is so clever when it says that bringing kids up as Catholics is like child abuse. Also when you talk of sky fairies and men in dresses I see just how stupid it is to believe in God. My teacher tells me that you are a very clever man who invented genes, and so I know that what you said must be true. A. Grayling (aged 9).

Richard answers: Yes, your teacher is right, I am a very clever man. Well done.

Leonard Nimoy, another cult figure, shares Richard's birthday.

Richard, will you stop wasting your time on that dreadful egotistical website. The chicken has escaped again, and K9 needs a walk. Love, Lalla.

Richard answers: Yes, dear, of course.

Also, William Hague, Foreign Secretary.

Infidel dog of a Dawkins, I hurl my shoes in your general direction. Unclean pig of an atheist, beware lest you suffer the death of a thousand cuts! Best regards, Abu McTavish.

Richard answers: Oh dear, have we been hacked again?

What class are you?

Don't have time to use the BBC calculator to find out which social class you are in? Don't trust your butler to do it for you? Let us help.

Am I tourist class? Business class? First class?

Simply match yourself against one of these profiles, and see which one you have most in common with.

---

Sorry, I could only find an old photo.

You live in a big house in London, with your husband and some dogs. Whenever you visit someone they force you to listen to a piece of music (always the same one, in fact). Your picture is on all the postage stamps. You really enjoy watching reruns of Morecambe and Wise on TV, but instead they make you attend Royal Variety Performances, where you are bored to death by Ricky Gervais and Marcus Brigstocke. Upper class.

---

Owen Jones.

You grew up in the rough tough gritty wastelands of Stockport, the scion of a deprived family (a humble local authority worker and an IT lecturer who were forced to work in order to make ends meet). You went to a run-down polytechnic - well, Oxford, actually - and you write a column in the second-most-depraved newspaper in Britain. Not interested in girls. Working class, obviously.

---

Old enough for a bus pass.

You are 76 years old, but still forced to work in order to make ends meet. Although an immigrant from South America, you recently moved into a tied cottage in Rome, and tend to dress simply. You have met many interesting people in the course of your work, and also Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Very keen on religion, but not much of a hymn-singer. Lower-middle class.

---

Is this one of your best friends?

Originally from Wales, you became an MP, and then one of the most senior politicians in the country. Interests include pies, croquet-playing, Jaguar cars, and claiming toilet seats on expenses. No obvious achievements when in politics, but was rewarded with a seat (well, two seats) in the House of Lords. Middle class.

---

Do you like to dress up as Mrs Hudson in your spare time?

Born in the slums of Reading, you reached Oxford University on sheer brilliance after writing a prize essay about custard. At one stage you worked for the Catholic Herald, but now, instead of bringing religion into every conversation, you prefer to blame addiction for all the evils of the world. A brilliant pianist who is at much at home with the toccatas and fugues of Gladys Mills as the honky-tonk tunes of Johnny Bach. Intellectual, upper middle class.

---

The Johnson twins

Coming from a privileged background, you attended Eton, and initially went for a job in journalism. After that everything started to go wrong, and in your degraded career you became first an MP and then a local government official. Occasionally, like the disgraced rector of Stiffkey, you appear in the public eye in a humiliating position. Evidently suffering from an incurable addiction to publicity. Upper middle class, but vulgar.

Well, I hope that helped. Not much spiritual nourishment today, sorry.

Saint of the week

In the beginning was the wood.

St Pinocchio is venerated in many South American churches.

Pinocchio is an unusual saint, having originally been constructed as a wooden puppet. His life is well documented in Carlo Collodi's biography, but his main claim to fame is the story of his nose. As Pope Francis explained in his sermon on St Pinocchio's day: "The nose of St Pinocchio is a lesson to all of us. It grew in length whenever he told lies, thus teaching him the Christian virtues of truth and honesty."

Pinocchio, before he became human (and saved).

Knowing that the new Holy Father looks favourably on the representation of St Pinocchio at Mass, many traditionalist parishes - such as Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen, the Church of Our Saviour in New York City, and Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini in Rome - are expecting to employ giant dolls as an aid to worship in the near future.

The Brompton Oratory - when will we see Pinocchio puppets at Solemn High Mass?

St Pinocchio himself later became human - indeed, the wood became flesh, as St John almost put it. The circumstances of his eventual death are unclear, and some versions of the legend state that "he lived happily ever after." In that case he is still around somewhere, perhaps even writing a blog.

Other religious figures seen at High Mass (note Melvyn Bragg behind Our Lord).

Eccles outs himself

Well, it had to come. I couldn't keep my identity secret much longer: one or two people had already begun to guess who "Eccles" was. It's time to confess.

Yes, Eccles is Fr John Zuhlsdorf, priest, blogger, and licensed to kill.

When you think about it, it is obvious that Eccles could be nobody else. Why does Eccles never post comments on Fr Z's blog? Why does Fr Z never mention Eccles? Of course... it's simply modesty.

Look at Fr Z's blog today. You see a brilliant post, asserting that SSPX is setting up an ordinariate for disaffected traddy Catholics. Doesn't the style look familiar?

What the well-dressed priest is packing.

Admittedly, some people thought that "Eccles" was really Damian Thompson, Tina Beattie, Giles Fraser or Richard Dawkins - why else would he give publicity to such obscure individuals? But no, these were merely comic characters introduced to make the blog more spiritually nourishing.

Well, the game is up now, so, apart from reminding you always to Say the Red and Do the Black, and to stock up on Mysterious Monk Coffee, I say goodbye for now.

The ideal gift for a liberal Catholic.

Darkins denies the existence of light

Professor Richard Darkins has launched another scathing attack on those "gullible" folk who believe in the existence of light.

Richard Darkins - refuses to walk in the light.

Darkins is well-known for his books written in Braille, such as The watchmaker with no disability and The Light Delusion. These books insist that light does not exist, because if it did he would be able to see it. Darkins is prepared to remain open-minded on the existence of the sun. "Sometimes it gets quite hot, I can feel that," he said, "but no rational person believes that there is such a thing as 'light.'"

A "vile and bigoted" sun-worshipper.

The good professor set up the Richard Darkins Foundation for Reason and Science, in order to propagate his ideas that light does not exist. One sect that he has particularly attacked is the Lunatics - fanatical believers in the light of the moon, who use the crescent as their symbol. Two days ago, the RDFRS website was hacked by lunatics, and the general view was that it was a great improvement.

Mrs Darkins with Richard's guide-dog, K9.

Darkins's views are not universally accepted, and many people ridicule his aphosist stance. A few years ago he was slightly injured when trying to drive a bus round London, bearing the message "Light probably does not exist": after going strongly for half a mile, he then crashed into a lamp-post.

We spoke to Francisco Bergoglio, a retired chemist who now holds an administrative position in Rome. "Darkins means well," he said, "but he doesn't have a sound academic background in logic and reasoning, and he does tend to get confused. He sends me hate messages, because some of my staff like singing songs such as Newman's 'Lead, kindly, Light.' He tells me that a belief in light is responsible for everything that's wrong in the world."

A totally pointless "light" house.

Renewing the Church's relationship with men

How can the Pope renew the Catholic Church's relationship with men?
by Catherine Lefftie. This is a shortened version of a New Statesman article.

Catherine Lefftie - the thinking man's old boiler.

What do you call a man who has become the leader of 600 million men?

Pope Francis.

The vast institution he now leads is the oldest in the western world; its relationship to men characterised by paradox. Go into any Catholic church and you will see far more women than men. Accordingly, Pope Francis urgently needs to take steps to make the Church more attractive to those who have XZ chromosomes (Ed., please check this, I'm not very good at science. CL.)

Men do the dull jobs in church, such as arranging the flowers...

... while women have fun stoking the boiler.

It was not always thus. Although the most important non-divine person in the Catholic church is the Virgin Mary, men have also played their part in its history. For example, the first person to see the Risen Christ was a man, Melvie Braggdalene, who went to the tomb to interview Him before the women got there.

Melvie Braggdalene poses at the site of Christ's tomb.

Of course, other men have not had such a good press. For example, arch-villain Judas Iscariot is widely accepted to have been male, and a very poor role-model for modern men.

Another poor role-model.

What Pope Francis needs to do, and I know he bases many of his decisions on New Statesman articles by bitter old lefties, is to make the Church more friendly to men. For example, the Church encourages the blessings of motherhood, and these tend to be enjoyed far more by women than men.

A woman enjoying her blessings.

Religious life is skewed in favour of women. For instance, men are expected to worry about what clothes they wear in church, and to make fashion statements, whereas women are allowed to dress simply and plainly.

The height of fashion.

Of course the priest plays a fairly important part in the life of the Church, but it is well known that every priest must listen to the voices of an army of women telling him what to do. It is no coincidence that the most influential person in British Catholic life is a woman, Catherine Pepinster.

A priest receives his holy orders.

I have devised a ten-point plan (which I have modestly called the "Ten New Commandments") by which Pope Francis can renew the Catholic church's relationship with men. My vision is a stirring one, but time will tell whether it will be realised under Pope Francis's pontificate.

Is this interview with God genuine?

The following interview, allegedly with God the Father, appeared on the Diocese of Salford website. According to the Press Officer, Fr John Flynn, "I am sure it is real."

On reflection I think the interview has to be fake, but I am reproducing it on my blog just in case it is a genuine scoop.

Our distinguished guest, creating life.

JOURNALIST: Welcome, God. Er, how should I address You?

GOD: Oh, don't stand on ceremony. Abba, Father, Lord, Sir, Boss - any of those will do. Even "Lord Sugar."

J: Can I assume that You are speaking as God the Father right now?

G: Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is a little complex, but take it that I'm also speaking as God the Son to Johann Hari at the Independent, and Ruth Gledhill at the Times has booked me as God the Holy Spirit.

J: How do you see Your job? Is it a job for life, or do You think You may retire some time?

G: Oh, definitely for life, which means for ever in My case. After all, who could replace me?

J: Richard Dawkins, maybe?

Richard Dawkins cuddles another fossil for comfort.

G: Oh, poor Richard thinks he's God, but he's not got much of a clue. We converse regularly - well, I speak, and he sticks his fingers in his ears.

J: Tell us what you think of the new Pope, Sir.

G: Oh, a good man, I'm sure. A little different from Pope Benedict, of course. Perhaps it's a shame that he bundled up all his ceremonial robes and sent them to a charity shop.

You too can wear a fanon - modelled here by Pope Paul VI.

J: Many of our readers will be asking whether you are a "Traddie" or a "Liberal," Lord.

G: Ha ha ha, good question. Just think of me as being very orthodox. Can't abide those fools at the Tablet, though.

J: Oh, You read the Tablet?

G: Yes, I skim through it - when you're basically omniscient it's best to keep up with the enemy. Here's an example: TINA BEATTIE CALLS ON VATICAN TO SURRENDER. No, no, she's lost it.

J: These days, the Church seems to spend a lot of time arguing about abortion, same-sex marriage, and so forth. Any comments?

G: Oh get real. I made My views clear on those issues, centuries ago. By now everyone should have understood the basic moral principles of Christianity, and got on to more serious things like loving their neighbour.

Love your neighbour, François Hollande style. Les plods gassing les enfants de la patrie.

J: What do you think of the other burning issue of the day: the decision of the Telegraph to charge for its content?

G: Apparently, they have to pay for Geoffrey Lean to jet off to more conferences on global warming, and the airlines are threatening to charge double the price for fat people. I see their dilemma.

J: Will You pay the £1.99, O Lord?

G: No, for obvious reasons I won't need to do that. Besides, I really only read it for the cartoon and some of the blogs.

J: Do You listen to the radio?

G: Yes, I simply adore Thought for the Day. St Peter and I play this game in which we listen to Giles Fraser and count the number of theological errors, inadvertent blasphemies, and examples of sheer foolishness that he makes. I've seen St Peter rolling on the floor, laughing at some of Giles's blunders.

Giles Fraser has fans in very high places indeed.

J: One final question, Sir. Vatican II - what did you make of it?

G: Oh, it had some good points, but then some of what happened afterwards was simply hilarious. All that stuff about priests standing with their backs to Me, so that I couldn't see what they were up to. Totally clueless. And the hymns they make Me listen to these days - I do wonder why Paul Inwood and his friends hate me so much.

J: God the Father, thank You very much.

G: PAX VOBISCUM, and I'll be seeing you again in - oh, about 38 years from now.

J: Oh, er, right.

Not-very-relevant photo.

New Pope criticised on all sides

Jerusalem, AD 33. Pope Peter, the new occupant of the Chair of St Peter, has been severely criticised both by traditional and liberal commentators following his taking office two weeks ago.

Pope Peter - a new era for the church?

Since the departure of Jesus, last seen mysteriously disappearing into a cloud, Pope Peter is now the leader of several hundred Catholics worldwide, all of whom are waiting to see in which direction he will take the Church.

Traditionalist bloggers, led by Roar at Galilee, have already criticised Pope Peter on the following grounds:

1. He has abandoned the tradition of walking on water, probably because he is not very good at it.

2. He seems unwilling to celebrate Masses in Latin, preferring a modernist Aramaic service.

3. Following a rather sordid incident involving a cock crowing, Pope Peter has been accused of complicity with the repressive Pontius Pilate junta.

4. So far Peter has refused to wear the traditional halo.

Roar at Galilee has called for a return to the age of miracles, saying that what Pope Peter needs is a little more Spirit. With Pentecost rapidly approaching, it will be interesting to see whether the new pope can satisfy such critics.

Meanwhile, liberal Catholics are equally disappointed. The Tablistines People's Front (Pepinster, Curti, Beattie, Stourton, ...) has observed with dismay that the new Pope is showing himself distinctly reluctant to embrace abortion, euthanasia, same-sex relationships or women apostles. "I feel let down - I only joined the Catholic church for way-out sex and violence," complained one Tablistine.

Ed Stourton, who has complained that a baboon keeps peering through his window.

At this stage the general feeling is one of disappointment. It is clear that Peter will not be able to match the record of his illustrious predecessor: nonetheless, some have said that dropping the "King of Kings" role and presenting the Pope as a simple fisherman may be just what is needed to increase the popularity of the Church.

Simple fish and chips - a dish fit for a modern 1st century Pope.