The (Clockwork) Orange Catholic Church ready to be wound up

Under the plan, the Pope will issue an apostolic constitution, a form of papal decree, that will lead to the creation of “personal ordinariates” for Anglicans who convert to Rome. These will provide a legal framework to allow Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving distinctive elements of their Anglican identity, such as liturgy.
But, but, but... if it is now possible for Church of England vicars to achieve full communion with Rome and yet still remain Church of England vicars, if the Anglican liturgy is to be incorporated into the Catholic creed... then Rome cannot any longer be Rome. It will have become, at least in part, the Church of England. The Reformation has reached the Vatican.
Of course, I dare say that Archbishop Cranmer would never have seen the Reformation as fully complete until the conversion of the Jews, that being their obsession back then, but I think he might have settled for the conversion of the Pope as a fair compromise. The Jesuits of his day, however, would have demanded an auto da fe and stuck Benedict on top of it themselves. To them, Holy Mother Church would have welcomed the Protestant heresy into its very heart.
Benedict is smiling at the supposed cleverness of his plan. Thousands of Anglicans will defect to his new half-way house, his modified Catholicism, and this will be a deadly blow to the enemy. I would humbly suggest he may not quite thought this through... so uncharacteristic of the present Pope. If married clergy are absorbed unchanged into the Mother Church, are not existing Catholic priests going to feel snubbed? Is it not as likely that disgruntled cradle Catholics may also defect to this new constitution as Protestants?
The Pope has already shown his determination to reunite Christendom at almost any price, welcoming back the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X despite a Holocaust-denying bishop in its ranks...
The Vatican is acting like Seth Brundel, just after he has been through the telepod. It feels masterful, renewed, all-conquering. After a while, though, evidence of the weird mutation it has undergone will to start to appear. It is not going to be pretty. It will dawn on Catholics around the world that their faith has become a completely new animal, one they thought could never exist in nature.
Maledict could win 400,000 disgruntled Anglicans now, and lose far, far more Catholics later. He could forfeit all of Brazil, for instance. Evangelical missionaries are gaining ground in South America and they now need only point out to hesitant converts that there is no risk to their souls in making the leap, as the Vatican has already smoothed the way!
St Malachi’s prophesy is fulfilled. Maledict is indeed the last ever Catholic Pope. He has destroyed the church, as it was foreseen that he would. As I commented when Mr Blair converted, I trust that the bears’ personal sanitary arrangements remain unchanged, but in future, whenever anyone asks “Is the Pope a Catholic” the answer will have to be ’...er, well, no actually...’
See also: 400,000 former Anglicans worldwide seek immediate unity with Rome
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6879293.ece

Dead or No Dead?

I just spotted this report on the website of the German newsmagazine Die Stern. It is all about a new game show on Japanese television. It is not unlike the 1980s British prime time, er, ‘entertainment’ Game for a Laugh but this one, though, ramps up the fear factor a little bit more than Jeremy Beadle used to. Just a little...
The German-language commentary starts off roughly like this:

“Do you find hidden camera shows boring? The Japanese do. That’s why they’ve taken to ‘pranking“ people with fake terror attacks in the popular “Candid Camera” style show, Panic Face King. The unwitting victim in this edition thinks that he alone has survived a terrorist onslaught - how his friends and the audience laugh as he tries to escape what he thinks is certain death...”

You shouldn’t need much in the way of translation after that. The pictures speak for themselves. This makes The Endurance Game that Clive James made his name laughing at back in the 80s look, well, almost gentle. I think the bit that gets me the most is the inset picture of people laughing. What a great joke!
“Der Clip hat im Netz zweifelhafte Popularität erlangt the reporter comments, noting that the YouTube videos from the show are proving a massive, though morally dubious, hit.
What next for Japanese TV fun? Well, The Endurance Game is still going and I recall seeing a report not long ago after a contestant lost all his fingers in one of their stunts, so there is only one place left for them to go. Saw, Hostel and My Little Eye the gameshow... but the twist? It’s a comedy! Laugh as they die! It’s hilarious. Naturally, they will want Noel Edmonds as a consultant. He's got previous on that one, of course. Which box has the Semtex under the lid, eh Noel?

Pithead Ballot

Good ol’ Normo Tebbs. Bless him. Such an innocent lamb. Heard him last night on the radio reacting to the visit of the now-released Brighton bomber to the Houses of Parliament. Cracking stuff. All about how he hopes there is a Hell so that the bombers can suffer the worst punishments in the lowest pits of all. Classic! I love the way he thinks his Earthly snobbery is going to be continued into the afterlife. Those dirty working-class terrorists are going to be at the bottom of the nastiest, grungiest dungeon, whereas my mate, the Devil, is going to have a Lake-of-Fire-side penthouse apartment ready for me on the upper levels, where I can look down on you in your pain and grin. Really, Normo? Is that what you think? That’s what it’s going to be, then? Listen, sweetheart, Lord Satan is going to sort out your ironically-appropriate torment soon enough, straight after you check in. Quite frankly, at your age, I wouldn’t go putting any ideas into his head. If the Dark Prince knows you don’t want to be near any Irish terror-merchants, where’s the first place he’ll put you? You’re not so naive as to imagine he’s going to reward you for being such a good servant of his up here, do you? Sorry, Norm, but it just doesn’t work that way. Read the instruction manual again. They’ve got their own class system down there. See, unless you’re one of the original angels who fought with him against God, then... Sorry? What’s that, Norm? You’re not going to Hell? You’re going to be up in Heaven, with the Baby Jesus? No, it’s okay. I am still listening. It’s just that you’ll have to excuse me because I think I’ve just given myself a hernia laughing...

Let us now praise famous men

When I saw the phrase “Minor tears in PM’s eye” on the BBC website I did wonder if Gordon Brown’s heart were melting, at last. Was he feeling a tinge of sorrow for the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe sympathy for the victims of the recession? I was, just for a moment, touched that he might cry for us all, instead of just for himself.
Then I heard it pronounced and realised it was the other kind of tear, the one that rhymes with bare. Oh well.
As for Obama’s peace prize, I was surprised, but pleased enough. Why not? As I was fond of saying when he was elected, it is good to see an Irishman back in the White House and so this is yet another Nobel peace prize success for Ireland... Of course, I was being silly about O’Bama sounding like an Irish name, but then I flicked through a recent copy of the Irish Enquirer and discovered that County Cork’s finest genealogists have outdone themselves, proving that both he and Michelle Obama are as Irish as the shamrocks. Well done to them. I wonder if they can do as well for former Japanese prime minister Ohara.
Anyway, it is a good omen. On the bright side, I suspect that the prize was given more in hope than anything else... and was that not his poster campaign slogan? On the dark side, I have a horrible suspicion that the Norwegian committee have chosen to laud him now because they secretly fear that he may not be with us the next time they convene.