In a development that has left spooks and seminarians alike reaching for the smelling salts, Britain’s MI5 has reportedly placed the nation’s cathedrals on a watchlist usually reserved for disgruntled chemists and gentlemen with unexplainable amounts of fertiliser. The cause? A looming Catholic schism over the appointment of bishops so controversial they make the Oxford comma look like a pillar of unity.
The Pope, a man whose day job involves talking to an invisible sky-daddy and managing the world’s most dysfunctional family firm, has issued a warning that the Church is teetering on the edge of a holy civil war. The flashpoint: a cadre of bishops whose views on modernity are about as flexible as a medieval chastity belt. These men have apparently decided that the 21st century is a test from Satan, and they intend to fail it with flying colours.
MI5, never ones to miss a chance to dress up a committee meeting as a national emergency, have begun tracking the ‘extremist threat’ posed by these turboconservative prelates. One imagines the surveillance logs: “10:00 – Bishop X blesses a badger. 11:00 – Bishop Y refuses to use a self-checkout. 12:00 – All bishops lunch on plain bread and righteous anger.” Their most dangerous weapon? A homily that lasts longer than a Ryanair delay.
Meanwhile, the faithful are left to navigate a theological minefield. In one parish, you have a priest insisting that the Holy Spirit speaks only in Latin and that guitars are instruments of Beelzebub. In another, a bishop has declared that climate change is a myth peddled by secularists who want to ban incense. The cognitive dissonance is so thick you could spread it on a Communion wafer.
But let’s be honest: this schism has been brewing since someone first suggested that pews be replaced with beanbags. The Church has spent centuries perfecting the art of arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, while the world burns around it. Now it’s arguing about whether the pin exists at all.
And what of MI5? Their track record with spiritual matters is patchy at best. They once spent six months monitoring a Yoga retreat in Glastonbury, convinced it was a front for Tibetan separatists. The only thing they uncovered was a worrying trend in kombucha sales. Now they’re applying the same zeal to bishops who probably think James Bond is a gateway drug to secular humanism.
The irony is that the real threat to British security isn’t a few clerics with a penchant for pre-Vatican II rituals. It’s the fact that we’ve reached a point where the security services have nothing better to do than spy on men in dresses arguing about transubstantiation. Meanwhile, Russian hackers are probably laughing into their borscht as they read the briefing notes.
So, what’s the solution? Perhaps a compromise: the conservative bishops can keep their rules and vestments, but they agree to hold their synods in a Wetherspoons car park. MI5 can tail them from the bar, where they’ll be drinking something much stronger than altar wine. And the Pope can go back to worrying about the sex abuse scandal that’s been a real skeleton in the clerical cupboard. Until then, the only schism that matters is the one between your liver and the next gin and tonic. Cheers.
