A letter from the Poap

It is with great concern that I write to to you as God's only true representative on Earth. It seems that some of your Irish bishops have been very naughty - very naughty indeed.

Some bishops in your country of Ireland have shown an inadequate response to the problem of a tiny proportion of priests (no more than 5% - tops) having sex with your children. Before you get all too concerned, let's not forget that other people abuse children too. Indeed there are more abusers outside the church than inside, so let's keep things in proportion, OK?

Coincidentally, a few bishops in other far flung places in the globe have behaved exactly the same - I can't think why. Thank God I handled things so much better when I was an archbishop. But don't dwell on this, just remember how brilliant the Irish church is. I'll pray for you to get over the mess you've made of everything. Remember too how your forefathers stood up to protestants and remained stubbornly loyal to the Holy See. What a bunch of selfish traitors you'd be to give up on that loyalty to me now. You've all been getting a bit too secular nowadays and haven't been paying enough attention to what I tell you to do. Now look where it's got you.

None of this would've happened if people followed orders. Unfortunately, a few rogue Irish bishops, doubtless through a misplaced loyalty to the reputation of the Church, haven't notified the proper ecclesiastical authorities and so haven't done the cover up properly. I've done everything I could to clean up after the Irish bishops' total bumbling incompetence on this, stonewalling every request for cooperation from the police. I told the Irish bishops to find out the truth, then bury it as quickly as possible but they even messed that up.

I really am most terribly sorry that some of you were raped by Irish homosexual priests. For some reason, in a society where being gay was an imprisonable offence, we seemed to attract a lot of them. I've known about the whole thing for decades, but now that everyone else knows about it, I really am very sorry. It must be awful for you, especially when you spoke out and were threatened and leaned on to shutup just like in every other diocese in the world. (Anyone would think someone had sent secret instructions to all the bishops telling them to hush the whole thing up.) But please don't worry, we've started an even more intense persecution of homosexuals. Yeah! And if you come back to us in a spirit of penitence and humility, we'll welcome you back to the Church and will happily hear your confessions and forgive all your sins again.

To the priests who caused all this trouble for me, you've been very, very, very bad indeed. Very bad. Don't do it again or you'll have to be moved to yet another parish.

To parents, I can only say that it is every child's right to be brought up a Catholic. It's a great shame that in so doing some of them have been scarred for life, some have even killed themselves (which I need to remind you is a mortal sin and so they won't go to Heaven), but on the plus side they still got to hear about how great we are.

To children - stay Catholic. It's really important that you keep contributing funds, kneeling in front of us and kissing our rings. It makes us feel really important you know.

To Irish bishops - for god's sake get your act together. This is a PR disaster.

To all the faithful of Ireland, I hope these words of encouragement and support make you feel much better. You face a difficult task after the mess that you and secularists have made of things. But don't worry, the priests of Ireland are right behind you and they're willing to go all the way with you.

And now to specific steps that I'm going to take to address all of this. First I think you should pray a lot. Pray really, really hard. Next, come to Confession more, and come back to the Adoration of the Eucharist a bit more too - congregations are getting a bit too patchy and takings are down. I'd also like the Bishops to go on retreat, do a bit more praying, a bit more apologising and figure out how you're going to handle this a bit better next time round.

And now, a prayer for Ireland. Dear Jesus - keep everybody Catholic. Amen.

There - now that everything's fixed, I've said I'm sorry, can we please move on.

"Platitude of the Day" See it here.

Child forced to sing about a god on a donkey

Dear

I was discussing religious assembly with my son last week when he mentioned that he sang along but made up his own words because his lack of any belief in a god meant he felt uncomfortable singing songs of praise. I suggested that he just chose not to sing.

It would seem that he took me up on this and exercised what I thought would be his right not to join in an act of worship. He informs me that Miss ******* then told him to sing or she would make him sing solo in front of the entire assembly.

I think it is important for children to come together for assembly, despite the constraints placed on it by the requirement to provide a daily act of Christian worship and I would not wish ***** to be withdrawn from such an act. It doesn’t hurt to stand through a hymn or two or to sit through a prayer but I don’t feel that it is right for my son to be forced to take part in an act of worship under threat of humiliation.

I would expect the same concessions for ***** as are given to children of different faiths, who I doubt would be ‘encouraged’ to join in in such a direct way.

I have no wish to make an issue out of this. It was ***** who asked that I follow it up on his behalf and I am sure he would welcome the opportunity to discuss it further.

Yours etc.