 |
|
|
|
It's official: Everyone's going to hell and there's nothing we can do about it. This sensational news was revealed at an emergency press conference, called by the Vatican just two hours ago. In what must surely have been one of the most embarassing moments ever in the church of Rome's history, His eminence Pope John Paul II told incredulous world media representatives that every human being alive, without exception, was destined to an eternity of firey damnation in the darkest pits of Hades, following a clerical error which meant that "breathing" had accidentally been made a mortal sin. Apparently, the error was made by a junior cardinal working part time as a data entry clerk in the Vatican's morality database centre. The Catholic church has, of course, always kept an exhaustive list of all possible sins, categorised according to the extent to which they transgress God's holy law. This has served as the church's chief reference work in deciding matters of penance and punishment for many years, the Bible being as one Bishop put it "hopelessly out of date". The list has been updated periodically, over the centuries, as and when new sins have been invented, on a more or less ad hoc basis. By scribes. Recent technological advances, however, such as television, the internet and curling tongs, have resulted in a huge number of new sins being devised, many of which would have been impossible just a few years ago, and the Vatican has to keep track of them all. For this reason, in the mid seventies the Vatican installed its "morality database": a computerised repository, containing details of all known sinful behaviour. Sins on the system range from category '1' (e.g. stepping on the cracks in the pavement) to category '6' (e.g. not being Catholic). Unfortunately, the ham-fisted cardinal responsible for today's blunder appears to have inadvertantly entered "breathing" as a category 6 sin: Eternal damnation with no chance of parole. "We think he meant to type 'bathing'", the Pope explained to the world's media, "but now that it's on the system, there's nothing we can do about it" "If only he'd entered it as a category five we could have got away with giving away our worldly goods and a couple of hail Marys". His eminence went on to formally apologise for the mistake, and for the hoardes of disillusioned cardinals running amok raping and killing everyone, though conceded that there was little that could now be done about it. "The whole damn thing's gone tits up", he admitted. The end. |
|
|