On
March the eleventh 2013, a group of cardinals within the Catholic faith, went
into the Sistine chapel to admire the roof, play Cliff Richard LPs, shoot the
breeze, play some poker, discuss who should run the PayPal organisation
(the result of a misunderstanding) and work their way through Monk: The Complete Series box
set. Eventually, around about season 5 of Monk, the goblet of fire produced a
great plume of white smoke and revealed forth the name of the new pope: Pope
Francis. He was from Argentina, although the British claimed he was one of them
no matter how in-Argentina he was when he was born.
On
March the nineteenth, he gave his first mass as Pope. He appeared clearly
disgruntled at still having to do that, stating that he “would have thought
that in his new management role he would simply sit in the back office, do the
odd bit of paper work and indeed papal work and count the churches profits at
the end of the day (and indeed prophets).” He gave a classic mass befitting a
man of his years. There was none of the clapping or laying on
of hands that the American audiences seem to like. There was wine drinking and
bread eating and licking the roof of the mouth where that bread got stuck. The
Pope took as his text for the reading the book of The Bible - a classic choice
- and people sung hymns. The moment came for the first Papal sermon of Pope
Francis I. It is traditional for the Pope to make his first sermon something
big. A tradition that dates back to St. Peter who said that God wanted peace
and love throughout the kingdoms of Heaven and Earth and all that stuff with
the genocides and child murder at the start of the bible was just a bluff. The
tradition carried on right through to Pope Benedict who
said much the same thing about Nazis. Pope John Paul, before him claimed that
God had come to him in a vision and revealed his two favourite Beatles and Pope
Gregory III revealed the postcards St Paul sent to the Corinthians from his
holidays. Pope Alexander VIII produced evidence of the long-lost
Acknowledgements page of the bible and the footnotes missing from the ten
commandments. Francis I considered preaching that maybe mocking his predecessor
for being part of a youth movement he joined as a child because he was forced
to by law was a bit of a dick move even if it’s used
to make a satirical point, but could see the problem in a Christian complaining
about indoctrinating people into belief sets young. Francis elected to reveal a
previously unseen chapter of the bible that had been unearthed in an
archaeological rummage through Pope Innocent XII's desk drawers. He gave his
address in Latin for religious reasons rather than to show off. Here is a translation
of the new bible extract, entitled The 10 Distractions
that is
reported to be from the F.A.Q. section of the scriptures.
And
lo, now all the apostles were dead and were met by The Lord and welcomed into
his kingdom. A tour was arranged and the important people - Moses, Abraham et
al. - were introduced and the apostles were humbled. At the conclusion of the
tour The Lord spake unto
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John saying "Any questions?" And Luke did ask
what time the meals were served. “In eternity the concept of time is
meaningless,” mocked the Lord, kindly.
Then
Mark did step forward and nervously say unto his holiness: "Just one
little thing, oh Lord..."
"Speak
and I shall hear," boomed God, needlessly and overdramatically, in his
wisdom.
"Oh
Lord, a few of us, the lads down there on Earth that is,
were wondering...well,
if you are an all
powerful God..."
"I
am," proclaimed the Lord, producing a bunch of flowers from the sleeves of
his elaborate robes.
"Well," spake Mark,
shaken, "the lads were wondering, how comes so much bad stuff happens in
the world?"
"Who
said that?" demanded God encircling Mark's lapels in his loving
fists.
"Oh,
no one really," squeaked Mark. "Heretics."
"It
is true," lamented The Lord, "that I have not been able to fulfil my grand
duty of bringing about world peace. You must understand this is down to the 10
distractions of the Lord."
"Always
some excuse," said John, clearly joking.
The
Lord waved his mighty hand and did, with great Mercy, condemn
John to Satan’s pits for all eternity.
"What
are these distractions if you don't mind me asking, Oh Lord
who is both merciful and wise," grovelled Mark, who noticed Matthew wasn't
saying anything out of sheer awe, the coward.
And
the Lord did speak, and the disciples did
hear, and the reporters did not write it down for they were all in Hell.
"The first plague of the Lord is that I, almost constantly, believe
someone is talking to me. I believe that people say my name all the time. 'Oh
My God!' they say, and I look over my shoulder trying to work out who called.
Normally, they say 'What are you wearing?' or 'Oh my God! Shut up! Oh my God!'
and I realise they are talking to someone from Essex not to me. I lose my trail
of thought. And then I think, why
aren't people talking to me? Am I not loved? And then I fall into a terrible
depression and cause a few earthquakes.”[1]
"The
second curse of the Lord, your God,
is...just a minor bugbear of mine but I really can't stand it. Campanology."
"Campanology?"
said Luke.
"Can't
stand the awful cacophony of
it, and people are always doing it on a Sunday morning which is supposed to be
my lie-in. I wish I knew why they were doing it. I would do something about
it."
"Oh. That
is awkward," said Mark.
"Let’s just
not tell him," said Luke.
Matthew said nothing
but maintained a reverential fear for his creator.
"What
is the third distracting curse, oh wise one?" Mark pressed
ahead.
"The
third plague to afflict my holy concentration is the plague of
plagues!"
"Eh?"
spoke Christ's brothers, except Matthew.
"You
recall Egypt. There was a situation there a while back. A bit of naughtiness I
had to sort out."
"The
10 plagues," said Luke.
"Precisely." God
seemed impressed, "well one day, four million years ago, the plagues all
got loose from the cupboard we keep them in. We spent the next 3 million years
chasing locust and diseased livestock around this great realm – in the darkness
– trying to round them all up. There
are still
some missing frogs around here somewhere.” At this the Lord’s mighty beard did
quiver and appear to ‘ribbit.’
“There
seems to be a theme linking your style, God, if I
can call you God? 10 plagues, 10 distractions, 10 commandments…”
“Oh,
and that was another distraction. Stone carving is a difficult art to master my
young, newly deceased servants. It took me years and many lessons to do that.
Look.” He pointed to the Holy Receptacle, the sacred waste paper bin that
resided ‘neath the
Lord’s desk. “These are all the ones I made mistakes on.” The Hand of God
turned it’s magnificent fingers to point at a pile of rocks with scratches and
cracks strewn all around them. “I wasn’t happy with the final one I gave to
Moses. It was meant to read ‘Thou shalt not convert thy neighbour’s ox.’
Far too many farm animals were becoming Christian and coming to Heaven when
they were slaughtered for meat. It made a mockery of my whole operation. You
can’t have a Christian goldfish. It makes us all look silly.”
“Tell
us the rest of the distractions, my Lord,” grovelled Mark too much even for a
disciple.
“Distraction
of the Holy Father number 5: The cricket. Blinding test match between England
and the as yet undiscovered landmasses I created in the south.
“Distraction
6, Jesus. I am a father you know, and Jesus gets so excited about his birthday.
He gets excited about it earlier and earlier each year. What do you buy for the
Son of God, The boy who has everything, literally?”
“We
always got him wine and a bread board,” advised the
apostles and The Lord did make a mental note of this and by doing so created a
huge floating bread selection out of thin air using his imagination. "With
that powerful imagination, oh great one, how do you struggle to come up with
Birthday presents?"
"I
used to have a man for it, a fat man with a big white beard, but he took on
other customers and now serves most of the world presents but all on the same day.
I don't think he ever got how birthdays work. But now each year I have to get
Jesus extra stuff so he feels he's more special than everyone
else. Last year I got him the whole universe and the power over all life on all
the planets in the cosmos – well, they say the cheap handmade presents are the
ones they love the most don’t they – and the year before that I did the old
making a girlfriend out of one of his ribs trick."
The
Creator yawned deeply and for a long time and sucked in a lot of air and that's
how the vacuum of space was created. The Lord did not apologise.
"What
was that?" Luke did gasp when Oxygen had returned to the office.
The
Lord apologised for his state of beautiful fatigue but said that he "didn't
want to talk about it." The Lord's booming voice - which had been causing
the rooms to shake and that scientists denied caused all the waves on the
oceans in the Kingdom of Men - was reduced to a conspiratorial whisper. "It’s nothing
you need to concern yourself with. Just some minor annoyance." The photos
of Jesus and Moses’s outing to the Garden of Eden did shake and fall from the
wall. The empty chair where John had been sat flew across the room and
shattered on the wall. Some other photos He had, more secretly, taken of the
Garden of Eden flew up from the photo album and hit the ceiling. The holy light
grew dim and flickered and the apostles wrapped themselves tighter in their
cloths.
"What
was that?" their plea repeated.
"What
was what?" came the Lord's reply
as he hurried them towards the door into another a plane of existence and the
coffee bar.
The
Apostles recalled the descriptive passage in the verse above.
"That
was nothing, don't worry about that. Just
the ghost."
"G-G-Ghosts" quaked Matthew
and God transported him to Hell.
"Heaven
is haunted. The Holy Ghost,
you were warned about this; we clearly mentioned it in the Bible to warn you
all. You will never achieve world peace so long as there is a ghost keeping you
awake all night," as He spoke this wisdom, a glass flew from the table and
smashed itself about His majestic head. "Distraction number 7." The
Lord proclaimed with blissful restraint. He squeezed a little red stress ball
between his extraordinary hands and wiped out all life on Mars.
Distraction
Number 8, The Lord explained, was continually keeping a watchful eye on Satan
who had made many attempts to tempt mankind into evil. Since being banished to
Hell he had given snakes a bad name, tempted Jesus in the wilderness and booked
out all the rooms in all the inns in Bethlehem one time “as a prank.” God kept
a commanding all-seeing eye on his fallen angel to see that he did not slip out
of the Kingdom of Darkness in some disguise – He took away the horned one’s
dressing up box, so his guise of a Celtic singer who had never been kissed
would have to be a bit rough.
His Holiest
glided, upon a small cloud, to a stately mirror that did not only reflect the
physical image of the Lord but also the generosity of his Godly soul and his
dreams of one day learning to play the Harp as well as Gabriel. The Lord
shuffled and stirred upon his cloud and surveyed the glory of His anus. Luke
did pick up, at this point, and examine, with concentration, the blueprints God
himself had drawn for the male genitalia, to avoid the awkwardness of the
moment. “Would…” said God, “You say I am attractive? Remember it is a sin to
lie.”
Luke
did pull mightily at his collar while Mark reassured the Lord saying unto him,
“you are the creator of all things. Beauty was created in your eye. The essence
of what it is to be truly beautiful can only be seen by man and understood by
them and their kin with the understanding of your hand in all things. Without
your power and awesomeness there is no beauty.”
“Shit-licker,”
Luke mumbled thinking God would not hear.
But
the Heavenly Father begged to know if he was fat or not. The Lord pushed at his
vast white cloak until it hugged his eight-foot and broad-shouldered frame.
“All the angels,” he emoted, “are depicted by your
types” (the
Lord’s wrath was righteous as always, and because he is God, not a bit racist)
“as having cute tiny bottoms and yet I saw this graven image of myself once
that one of the Israelites had
done and it looked…I don’t know…there was just something about it. I don’t think
the Jews capture my good side in their work. In the end I had to ban you lot
from making graven images all together – which was a great pain in the arse for
the Vatican souvenir gift shop I can tell you[2] -
do you think I should change the colour of my huge grey beard?” These were the
Lord’s first and only doubts since his invention of the Giraffe. A single tear
made a path through the Lord’s face, navigated the turns and twists of his
bushy beard, dropped from the tip of it and drowned the city of Atlantis.
The
buttocks of God’s newest arrivals tightened at the awkwardness of the moment
that literally could last an eternity. “No. No. No. Not at all. You don’t want
to listen to what the Jews say about you,” Luke defended his God, though the
Lord did look deep into his soul and see that he thought he could cut down on
the chocolate eggs he comfort ate when his son died. Mark said something
borderline racist about the Jews in defence of his God -
the only circumstance in which God allows us to be racist to anyone other than
Romans – and they left it at that.
Mark
touched the Lord's desk
with his finger tips and was overcome by the feeling of Love of the God who
worked at it or static electricity, he did not know for certain which. Luke
approached the mantel
piece over the fire, which he realised on closer inspection was the sun. He ran
his finger along the mantel shelf and, although his fingernail did melt into a
small puss, he realised there was absolutely no dust at all. "The
reputation of this realm's beauty
is well founded," Luke commented.
"Yes
it is," grumbled The Father as he appeared with a cloth and removed Luke's puss-fingernail
from the surface. He
wiped a duster of feathers from angel's wings
over the offending spot. "Doesn't maintain itself does it? Look at
this," God turned a screen the disciples did
not understand for them to see. "Look at this Trip
Advisor we
got five years ago."
And
the text did read: I
felt like I had died and gone to Heaven, but only because I had. The mugs are
dirty, the place is a mess and there was a snake hanging from the fruit trees
and the toilet facilities were a joke! Filthy!! Poorly maintained!! And barely
a hole in the sky above the Croydon area. Heaven? Better the Devil you know I
say.
"And
that," the Lord explained, "is why there is so much sin in the world.
It destroyed our business, everyone started to opt for Hell. We had to build
this place up again and that means maintaining the reputation promised in our
brochure." He rapped his fingers on the bible on his desk. He pulled taught
over his enormous, and much spoken of, hands a pair of gloves made from
enchanted marigold flowers. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to clean the
hair out of the plugholes after Samson's shower.
Gabriel will answer all your questions."
"But erm..."
said Matthew, "what is the secret to world peace?"
"The
answer to that is within you, my son," said God high-fiving Gabriel, who
loved when God did these mind-fucks, as their floating clouds passed.
[1]
Academics believe that the tendency amongst modern homosexuals to say “Oh my
God!” to one another is the most likely reason for right-wing Christian
preachers to blame Earthquakes on them.
[2]
Scholars say this is not in the original text, but appears to have been written
on in biro by the Pope himself. The Pope denies this and is, of course,
infallible so who knows.
