A Cardinal Has A Great Idea

How very moving! I was chocking back vomit for hours!

And it came to pass a Cardinal woke up one morning and had a bad feeling about his own Baptism. Particularly because his baptism has been – he can’t remember, but he was reliably informed – a Catholic one.

In times in which a Pope pays attention his Jewish buddy, the Rabbi, really eats kosher – he might make a mistake, you see; which would be very bad -, the Cardinal must have thought his baptism was too one-sided, stained with “excessive doctrinal security”, not at all “inclusive”. This Cardinal is a member of a very exclusive group of Cardinals, you see. He must show he can go with the flow.

Even the Cardinal understood, though, that what is done is done. You can’t undo a baptism and ask to have another one in an ecumenical ceremony. It just doesn’t work. What to do?

At this point, the Cardinal had a brilliant idea: at the next “ecumenical” service down at the Methodist an overweight woman thinking she is more than a layman will perform a strange ceremony of renewal of Baptism, or “reaffirmation”, or such like crap. A bit as if Baptims was like silver, with the need of being polished every now and then lest it loses beauty. It also is, you see, a ceremony. They love these things, the Proddies. Fuzzy feelings all around, and a way to revive past emotions of one’s childhood, like the First Communion. Oh, how good and saintly one can feel!

“Great”, the Cardinal must have thought. “If I can’t undo my baptism, I can at least send a clear message the overweight woman is, in a way, a bit of a priest, and I can go and receive something from her my postman could not do. It doesn’t get more ecumenical than that. I must check the press is there, though. Yes, I will not ask for the ceremony to be performed on me from a man. It must be a woman. Otherwise people might say I am being sexist even when I am being ecumenical”.

I am pleased to inform you everything went according to script.

The Cardinal went, saw (not easy to miss, the woman) and received. The photo is everywhere. The woman “minister” (or whatever) had to “choke back tears for hours” (see above: they really are junkies for fuzzy feelings. Thank, God, that you made me a Catholic!). A triumph of ecumenism, with the modest Cardinal now firmly following the example of the Bishop of Rome, He Who Will Make You Eat Kosher.

“Who knows?” – the Cardinal thinks – “if the Blessed Virgin might have thought she had been lied to, than perhaps she also thought God was too sectarian? The boss says God isn’t Catholic! Perhaps he is a closet Methodist?”

The Cardinal is now thinking of the next steps. Should he ask the Jews to get his Bar Mitzvah? Hey, he is a bit old for that, but he has a beautiful singing voice. Or he might wash himself in the Ganges: the river stinks, but the trip would be beautiful. Another idea could be to take part to the Friday thingy in the Mosque, with genuflections and all. Photographers alerted beforehand. “Islam Is Religion Of Peace, Says Cardinal”. Beautiful headline…

Alas, for the moment the Cardinal will have to be happy with the tears of the well-nourished woman. But who knows where Francis is going to lead the Cardinals to…

Mundabor