Humor

Just because there is something fun about the Pope trying on a tricorn hat of the Spanish Guardia Civil..

Ferrari delegates have one again been received by the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Ferrari members had previously visited Pope John Paul II and this trip was to meet with the new Supreme Pontiff, Benedict XVI and make a charitable donation to the church.

Ferrari delegates including President Luca di Montezemolo and Vice President Piero Ferrari presented the newly elected and somewhat controversial Pope with a 950 000 Euro donation. This money was raised from the auctioning off of the 400th and final Enzo roadcar at a Sotheby’s auction.

Ferrari’s previous visit to the Vatican, was to meet with the late Pope John Paul II and present to him a 1:5 scale replica of an F2004 car. This time, Pope Benedict XVI was presented with Michael Schumacher’s F2004 steering wheel which was dedicated:

"The Formula 1 World Champion’s steering wheel to His Holiness Benedict XVI, Christianity’s driver." [Source]

Well at least it wasn’t a 1:5 scale replica this time. Though a wheel is appropriate since when the pope speaks infallibly he won’t steer your wrong.

Matt C. Abbott has a story about Father Vijaya Kumar Nalla who is the vicar general of the Missionaries of Faith order in Rome getting married in Vegas. He now reports that Father Nalla has been suspended. I hear that Father Nalla is suing the Las Vegas Tourism Bureau for false advertising for saying "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."

EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. – Virginia Voiers thought she was taking part in a rambunctious holiday custom, but a carriage driver thought differently and called police when he saw the 70-year-old grandmother stealing the baby Jesus from the city’s nativity scene.
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Voiers was ticketed for misdemeanor theft by an officer who quickly caught up with her van after she foisted the statue.

"It was a lark, it wasn’t any serious stealing," Voiers told the Lovely County Citizen newspaper of Eureka Springs. "My granddaughter commented that no one had taken the baby Jesus this year and said, ‘Grandma?’ I said, ‘Oh, what the heck.’"

Usually, the baby Jesus is returned by the thief. Voiers said her Saturday caper was the first time she’d taken anything from the nativity.

"I didn’t know we had a tattletale downtown," said Voiers, who is also a Sunday school teacher at a Methodist church. She said she told her pastor what happened.

"He said, ‘Bless you, child. Go and sin no more,’" she said, and added that he asked, "’You didn’t tell them you are a Methodist, did you?’"

Voiers was caught because the Beta Sigma Phi sorority, which erects the nativity scene, accessorized this year’s edition with a security camera that is monitored at police headquarters. [Source][Via ‘Not So Quiet’ Catholic Corner]

Maybe she is actually part of a group I wrote a parody story about two years ago.

(Roto Reuters) A rash of recent thefts of baby Jesus’ and other Christmas items has lead investigators to discover a previously unknown group. These nativity thefts had at first seemed unrelated and attributed to anti-religion zealots or bored teenagers. Locally a suspicious sheriff had radio tagged baby Jesus’ with a special transmitter across the county and when they turned up missing he found that all of them had been relocated and stockpiled in the same warehouse.

After a search warrant was obtained they found in the warehouse hundreds of crèche christs, Christmas tree, and other ornaments carefully labeled with the address of where they were taken from. The owners of the warehouse turned out to be a group called MARCH (Militant Adventists Restore Christmas Holiday). Search of the premises found signs such as "Santa sucks, St. Nicholas Rules", "Christmas starts on the 25th", and "Hey, Hey, Ho Ho Ho, Advent is for penance you fool."

A lawyer speaking for the leader of MARCH, Mr. Pen Attent, released this statement. "Our purpose was not theft and we fully intended to return all items after midnight on the 25th of December. We were sick and tired of Nativity cribs containing the infant Jesus up to a month before he was born. Since otherwise well meaning people had not done this on their own, we just wanted to help them out. We wanted to stop the crèche creep where every year the celebration of Christmas is started earlier and earlier. While starting shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving might be a penitential activity at many malls, we wanted to restore the fuller meaning of Advent to awaiting the birth of the Messiah."

WASHINGTON, DC (Roto Reuters) A group of progressive Christians from different denomination in a new group called Commonwhine meet this week at The Fairmont in Washington, D.C. The main agenda was dominated with talk about the second coming of Christ. Acting president of Commonwhine Rosemary Jones speaking for the conference issued the following statement.

"Christians for two thousand years have been talking about the second coming and yet we are still waiting. What is God’s exit strategy for the human race? What is the timetable for our withdrawal? Yet still time goes on and on and sin continues. In the global war on error we do not see any decline in error. Jesus very early on declared mission accomplished when he said "it is finished" and then "but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Where is the evidence of this in the modern world? Adam and Eve were evicted from their land and then their descendents were promised a ‘new heavens and a new earth’, but yet we are still refugees on this earth."

"We demand that God give us a timetable for withdrawal from earth and that he keep all promises made. We don’t buy his not knowing the day or hour and that not even the angels in Heaven are not kept in the loop. If this is true that only the Father knows, then this is a ridiculous level of compartmentalization within the Trinity and we demand that the Father be transparent and at least let the other members of the Trinity in on his exit strategy for the human race. Two thousand years is long enough We can not sustain six billion people and yet our deployment time keeps getting extended."

"We also have some concerns about God being corrupted by big oil. In the Gospel of Matthew he tells a parable where women are actually discriminated against and denied entrance because they did not fill up on oil. He even went so far as to say that he didn’t even know them just because they hadn’t sucked up to big oil and were concerned about global warming and the effects of oil lamps on the environment. We are also very concerned about a passage in Ezekiel that says ‘Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you, and anointed you with oil.’ I must reiterate what our group has repeatedly said ‘No blood for oil.’ "

Presenting the Politically Correct Eye Test where you can check your vision.

Holiday Tree	Christmas Tree
Fetus or tissue mass	Unborn Child
Cultural Hero	Murderous Thug
Delayed Success	Failing

Theoretically there are differences between each set of images since these images present a moral optical illusion based on a persons moral vision. If you selected one or more captions on the left then you might need contacts. That is contact with reality since you must be currently wearing ruse colored glasses.

Being that this is the first Sunday of Advent I thought it might be useful to give some information about this season. Advent is a shortened form of the the word Advertisement, of course you probably already knew that. This time of year we get blasted by advertisements day and night to buy gifts and to attend sales. There are some groups that contend that Advertisement actually starts on Black Friday and that this is in fact the first day of the Celebration that merchandiser consider Good Friday. During the season of Advertisement we are suppose to be of good cheer for some amorphous reason that is never quite mentioned. Rumor has it that it all leads up to the event of some child born a while ago that takes place on Christmas Day. Who this child was is not important just that we should know that the season is all about family and buying stuff. During Advertisement people say Happy Holiday’s to each other. The reason for this is that during this time Malls decorate with lots of Holly so people have considered this to be Holly days. There are also other joyful greetings like Season Greetings and 40 percent off. People spend time in thanks that they have not yet exceeded their credit limit and they might forget that they have a Savior, but they will remember the savings. During the season of Advertisement the days are still 24 hours but are measured in shopping days instead. It is also a tradition for this season to be some what penitential. Penances such as having to park in overflow parking two miles away from the mall are common. After Christmas comes Advertisementide. This is the ad season of after Christmas sales and even more discounts. Later on in the shopping season comes the season of Lent. This is because you have to get money lent to you to pay off your shopping bills.

There are also some customs associated with Advertisement such as the Advertisement Wreath. Each week you take all of your junk mail and roll it up and tighten it with a rubber band and place it in your Advertisement Wreath. The third week it is traditional to use advertisements from red tag sales. You can also make or order a Advertisement Calendar, though most calendars come advertisements this is a special edition where you mark off shopping days so you know when to panic when you haven’t got everything on your list. So relax and have a happy Advertisement for whatever reason we are suppose to be sellebrating.

Seminarian Bryan Jerabek sent me this photo of a Pope Benedict XVI ice statue in Oberhausen, western Germany made for the Ice and Snowstatue Festival.

This photo is worthy of some good captions so I will start off.

• How progressives view the Pope.
• I told you not to excommunicate Mr. Freeze.
• I think we need to fix the heater in the papal apartments.
• Vatican document on homosexuals in the seminaries meets very cold reception.
• Cold and chill, bless the Lord. Ice and snow, bless the Lord — Daniel.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching and Advent right on its heels it is time for the annual posts and reactions about the whole "Merry Christmas" greetings controversy. With store clerks and fellow employees confused about the greeting protocol that is to be accepted people are using the most generic terms possible for fear of offending. With stores such as Wal-Mart ordering there employees to use "Happy Holidays" we need something to help reduce the fear of simply saying "Merry Christmas."

I propose a Holiday Greeting EULA. This End-User License Agreement could be worn on your clothes so as to be easily seen by others.

Of course there should be a EULA for those who don’t want this greeting.

And why is it that Seasons Greetings is only used during Christmas? Why not year long? Why are we discriminating against the other seasons?

(AgapePress) – A Virginia congregation says it has left the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) — and the pastor of that congregation fears his former bishop may take retaliatory action against the parish.

South Riding Church is the first parish to leave the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia after two years of conflict over ECUSA’s ordination of an openly homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. But Pastor Phil Ashey says his problems with the Episcopal Church run much deeper than its approval of Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

"Really the issue of Robinson’s consecration and the blessing of same-sex unions is simply the presenting issue of a deep, deep disease in the Episcopal Church and its leadership," Ashey explains, "which is the abandonment of Holy Scripture as the basis for what we believe."

I do wonder how an Episcopal bishop tells a church that splits that schism is a bad thing?

Though I do think this can be all explained by the theory of Ecclesial-refractive half-life. This is the measure of the tendency of churches to "decay" or "disintegrate" after splitting from the Catholic Church. The Ecclesial-refractive half-life is a defined as the time it takes for half of the members of a congregation to to move to new churches or to start their own. The decay time is dependent on a number of external stimuli. For example some churches have a relatively long half-life if they are more closely wedded to a nation such as the majority of Orthodox churches. Your local neighborhood "Bible church" non-congregation congregation might have a half-life measured in days or months. Half-life’s have a tendency to increase in frequency as time goes on.

The basic unit of measure for describing the activity (Ecclesial-refractivity) of a quantity of ecclesial structure is the curia (not curie, but the Maria part still holds) or the measure of magisterial fidelity to Christ’s Church. Since the gates of Hell will never prevail against the Church the curia formula is 1C = 1 X ∞. Now the Church has infinite Mass as prophesied by Malachi "For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts." Though even with the infinite Mass of the Church there are other effects that can strip an individual from the one true Church. For example free will caused the first Adam to split causing a new clear expulsion. In fact the the Garden of Eden was wiped out.

Sometimes members of the Church (the elect or electon) when excited by more active liturgies will jump from an orbit close to the nucleus of the Church to orbits farther away. This usually happens due to a weak catechesis field. The electon moving away from the nucleus is normally done in good faith where they believe they are actually moving closer to the nucleus which is the Body of Christ – the Church. This is one of the effects of ecclesial relativity where an observer within the Church can see an individual that is trying to move forward but is actually moving farther away. This would present a problem if grace was not all pervasive and not slowed by any barrier except free will. You can tell when you are actually moving closer to the nucleus of the Church when the effects of Mass increases. The distance and energy it takes an electon to move from a lower to higher orbit is known as a Tiber. Sometimes an electon can be excited by effects such as church history causing it to make the leap. Surprisingly sometimes even Gene Therapy has been know to move electons across the Tiber. Gene Robinson has in fact caused some electons to make the jump.

Unfortunately there are many effects that can strip an electon from the nucleus such as ecclesial decay within the Church, scandals, and the bad example of Catholics. When an lower orbit electon can discern no discernable effect of Christ on a Catholic it can cause an increase of repulsion from the Church making to harder to obtain a closer orbit. Just as in trigonometry sin can be a problem and even acute if you go off on a tangent from God. Sin is the inverse measure of closeness to God and is reciprocal to holiness. The area of mathematics as related to sin is called Baalean Algebra.

Fortunately there is a mathematical formula to help us all to maintain an orbit as close to Jesus as possible. This formula is known as the Mathnificat.

My Will = Your Will

As simple as this formula appears it must be continually solved each day to keep our orbits close to Christ. Otherwise it can result in the total decay of our orbit resulting in an orbituary.

Note: If you want a more accurate mathematical and theological related posts go here instead.