The supreme pontiff of the Universal Church of Christ, Pope John Paul Ringo IV had just ascended the throne. Voted in by the College of Cardinals and according to the canon of apostolic succession, the new Pope meant business. He hiked up his cassock and tightened his mitre in order to begin the arduous task of spring-cleaning the Catholic Church.
Years of grime and secrecy had blackened the institution and the supreme pontiff began scrubbing at the slur stains spat all over the edifice by the likes of Martin Luther.
With the discerning eye of an experienced charwoman the Italian Primate peered into every nook and cranny, and hung rugs upon rugs of dirty doctrine and ancient dogma out to dry.
Cheap baubles and shoddy ornaments had no place in the snazzy new house of God. The voodoo trinket of transubstantiation was a revolting relic of an ignorant age – it went crashing out the window.
The termite colony of saints that had been breeding frenziedly in the basement had to go for they threatened to bring down the entire edifice of the church. So the veneration of saints was no longer acceptable.
The dirty sheets of pomp and pageantry were sent to be laundered and came back bleached clean. He swabbed and scrubbed at the seven sacraments and flushed scrolls of putrid liturgy down the drain.
Pope Ringo, in his desire to deodorize the house of God, decided that the doctrine of infallibility was stinking up the place. It had to go. Popes were no longer thought to be incapable of making a mistake.
This opened a whole new can of worms and pretty soon the Curia was crawling with maggots of dissent. Chief among their concerns was how to now deal with the mistakes of previous Popes.
Pope Ringo decided there was an easy solution to this. He would apologise.
He apologised for the Spanish Inquisition.
He apologised for the burning of heretics.
He apologised for the crusades.
He apologised for the banning of contraception.
He apologised for chopping off the gonads of the castrati.
He apologised for the paedophile priests.
He apologised for the monetary wealth of the Vatican.
He apologised for the medieval sale of Indulgences.
He apologised for the Vatican’s support of Hitler.
He apologised to the Jews.
He apologised to the Protestants.
He apologised for the barbaric missionaries.
This litany of apology went on for days. But the Pope was determined to cover everything. Sleepless and bleary-eyed he continued. Pretty soon he was apologising for having shot J.R.
Madonna was pregnant again. Pope Ringo apologised for that.
Tony Blair converted to Catholicism. Pope Ringo apologised for that too.
McDonald’s was making people fat. The pope apologised for that as well.
After an entire week of apologising Pope Ringo was finally through. He collapsed in exhaustion, his mission complete. Just then a Cardinal walked in looking as if he had something important to say.
“What is it?” asked the weary Pope.
“Pardon me your Holiness, but you forgot to apologise to Galileo.”
The Pope writhed in frustration and finally said, “Just send him an ‘I’m-sorry-we-tortured-and-imprisoned-you’ card.”
