So, our corporate masters over at the Bohemian State Closed-Circuit Television Network (which recently acquired an overspent HWTN for three Maria Theresa thalers--still accepted in Ethiopia!--and some of Pius VIII's pocket lint) recently demanded some info on our new TV lineup (either that, or our summary arrest by the Holy Vehm). After a rather jittery committee meeting of about twenty minutes, ten of which were spent arguing about the role of the assistant priest at a Lyonnaise pontifical mass, and a further five about ways we could trick Sarah Chalke into making a pilot show for us without her realizing it, we managed to get together these ideas, which we then presented to our sponsors on a crumped sheet of lined notepaper. (In my defense, it was college-ruled). Our suggestions, and corporate representative Frau Mesmer's reactions:

Godly Chaste Poverty - Like Dirty Sexy Money, but with Franciscans. But no dirt, sex, or money.

Frau Mesmer: What's left?*

30 Petrus - Emily Lemon (Tina Fey), head writer of the renamed Joordan Traacy Show, featuring the deranged Dutch Dominican of the same name, struggles to make sure her top star doesn't inadvertently commit heresy, schism, or a latae sentae excommunicable offense while being interviewed by Mother Angelica. Using tranquilizer darts if necessary. Blerg.

Frau Mesmer: But how is she going to act and manage Alaska at the same time?

(NB: We're still trying to explain to the Frau that Saturday Night Live isn't real. And also, we're not sure how we're going to get Tina to star after Dan lost the miraculous pocket lint of Pius VIII in the studio washing-machine, which sort of destroys 95% of this quarter's budget. My suggestion of luring her in via a deluxe Star Wars DVD box set placed underneath a large box propped up with a stick was not well-received. Neither were subsequent variations involving jelly-beans, doughnuts, oreos, and a very large butterfly net.)

Fringe - Papal operative Sister Olivia Dunham and her associate, the brilliant but slightly addled SSPX Bishop Walter Bishop join forces to stop the nefarious and twisting conspiracy known only as The Pattern--a labyrinthine effort by the Freemasons to steal the world's supply of maniple fringe to subvert the Motu Proprio.

Think of it as a cross between The X-Files and the Wippel's catalog.

Frau Mesmer: Wippel's is too Anglican, make it Barbiconi. But the plot is otherwise quite believable.

(NB: This is why I worry about my job sometimes.)

House, O.P. - This week, Dominican Fr. Gregory House diagnoses a case of ruptured hermeneutic in the visiting Cardinal Kasper, even though everyone thinks it's just a mild, harmless case of ecumenical rash. Guest appearance by Edward Schillebeeckx as the text of an eye-chart, and a lot of weird, atmospheric tubular music.

Frau Mesmer: But Hugh Laurie is too skinny to be a Dominican!

(Respondeo dicendum: Why do you think he's so bitter?)

Informercial: Wayne Newton sings Songs of the Carlists 30-CD Set, yours for only twenty installments of 30 scudi each--

We only got that far before Frau Mesmer exploded into a 30-minute diatribe about the wrongful outcome of the War of the Spanish Succession, and who cares about different Bourbon Spaniards, give it back to the friggin' Hapsburgs.

(CORPORATE LAWYER NOTE: THE HWTN DOES NOT ENDORSE ANY OF THE 1,735 SEPARATE CARLIST PRETENDERS, THOUGH WE WOULD LIKE TO REITERATE THE FACT IN UNRELATED MATTERS I PERSONALLY THINK KING LOUIS PHILIPPE OF FRANCE WAS A TWIT.)

*I haven't actually seen the show I'm parodying here, but ignorance has never stopped me before.

The policy wonks at Holy Whapping Television Network (HWTN) are putting pressure on us to inject some fresh blood into the fall schedule, especially since we were inadvertently acquired by the TV Program and Microwave Instruction Manuals Division of the Bohemian State Closed-Circuit Television Network (Böhmisches Geschlossen-Stromkreis-Unterstrassenbaum Staats-Televonken, the good old BGSUST), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Prisoner of Zenda.

It was a very complicated deal that ended up with the lead guitarist of the Sanctus Belles--HWTN Records' in-house all-girl Tridentine punk rock band--being traded to the New York Mets for about ten minutes until someone caught the mistake, when she was promptly sent to married off to the Margrave of Ansbach-Bayreuth, who nearly ended up espousing Carlos Beltrán by proxy.

(Philomena was a little hurt, actually, when the coach sent her back, as she was hoping to try out her remarkable flyball for once in her life. That being said, she's glad to be smashing her electric theorbo on stage as usual.)

So, here are some of our brainstorms for this coming September. We're running them past Fraulein Mesmer, the CEO of BGSUST, who has no discernible sense of humor.

Working Title: The Outlaw Josemaría Wales. "We got somethin' in this country called the Catalonian boatride..." In the violent heart of the Spanish Civil War, young Opus Dei member Josemaría Wales (Clint Eastwood) returns to the local branch of the prelature to discover all his compatriots have been slayed by anarchist guerrillas. His one objective: hunt down his friends' heathen killers...and convince them to become supernumeraries. (Well, their souls are at stake.) With Chief Dan George as his comically mismatched liberal Basque sidekick, Padre Esteban Waddie and his squishy Eucharistic opinion that the Host is "for eatin', not for looking at..."

Fraulein Mesmer's initial reaction: Needs more albinos.

Working Title: The Six Million Lira Man: Deep in the sub-crypt of St. Peter's Basilica, 18th century Italy's top natural philosophers attempt to reconstruct the shattered body of Joseph of Cupertino, horrifically injured after a three-way mid-air collision with St. Alphonsus Liguori and the Montgolfier brothers. "We can make him faster, stronger, more pious!" Then, unfortunately, the project head, alchemist Prince Sansevero, does a bit of cocktail napkin math and discovers that the budget of six million lira is about five bucks.

We're thinking of having Tom Servo play the completed Joseph of Cupertino.

Fraulein Mesmer's initial reaction: Needs more Hapsburgs.

Working Title: Smile! You're on Apostolic Camera!. After the success of our Pat Sajak-hosted couples gameshow, Holy Roman Rota, with its top prize of a bonafide annulment (as well as the allure of Vanna White showing three inches of shin below her plaid jumper), we've decided to dust off this venerable classic, formerly hosted by Cardinal Masella in the good old days before the Council. The winner will take home the revenues of a fully-endowed French monastery and the title of Abbé in commendam, whether or not he is a boy, girl or small yappy wiener-dog.

Fraulein Mesmer's initial reaction: Needs more Hapsburgs.

Working Title: Desperate Hapsburgs: The College Years. It is 1917, at the depths of the Great War. Newly-ascended Emperor Charles (played by musical guest Franz-Ferdinand) is at his wit's end as he struggles to bring peace to a troubled Europe, while, on the Serbian front, General Potiorek (Dustin Diamond) ineptly attempts to engage--

Fraulein Mesmer's initial reaction: Needs more Franz-Josef.

Drew informed me yesterday that the boys in advertising (ie., the Pious Sodality of SS. Bernardine of Siena and the Holy Signboard of the Passion) have dreamed up a doozie of a scheme to boost HWTN's name recognition, as well as aiding ecumenical relations. In exchange for their re-entering into communion with Rome, we have entered into a business agreement with the Little Fathers of St. Donatus the Really Holy Guy Who Didn't Give In to The Pagan Authorities When the Excrement Hit the Fan, So There (LFSRHGWDGIPAWEHTFST). They're a holdout from the Council of Arles who've been hiding in the basement of a falafel shack in Algiers since the Vandal invasions. The Instrument of Reunion includes our condition they change their name to something less heretical and shorter, and their condition they take over HWTN's floundering chain of breakfast pastry shops, Dumb Ox Coffee. (Like Caribou Coffee, but more bovine.)

You see, living in close proximity to all those Middle Eastern baked goods for generations apparently had some sort of weird effect on them that made them whizzes around grease and sugar, if not much else. (You should see their illuminated manuscripts. My kid could paint that. If I had one, I mean.)

Behold, then...

THE DONUTIST

A New Chain of Luxury Baked Goods Boutiques

"Where Our Pastries Are As Good as the Men Who Make Them. Unless They're Repulsive, Horrible, Icky Sinners, in Which Case, You're On Your Own."

New items we're test-marketing include Marcionite Breakfast Bagels ("now without lox!"), Arius-endorsed dieting products ("similar in substance to chocolate, but not the same") and, just to show we're not totally selling out to the heretics, a range of hand-crafted ice-coffee drinks produced by a venerable order of friars deep in the Appenines, the Frappucine Fathers. And for the kiddies, a "Holy Meal," this week with different action figures of the Whapsters ("Dan--now with special red sweater-vest!" "Choirgirl Emily!" "Original Emily!" "Senior-Year Emily!") For more info on this exciting new addition to the Holy Whapping Family, see our infomercial with special guest Pope Miltiades and Felix of Aptunga, just to prove our new employees have really gone over to Rome, heart and soul. Since we still have those thumbscrews down in the basement...

Excerpted from transcript of Holy Whapping Television Network (HWTN) program The Daily Show with Henry Cardinal Stuart, Friday, July 25, 2008.

"...in recent Vatican news, Pope Benedict XVI ended speculation about Cardinal Arinze's replacement, announcing the new head of the Congregation for Divine Worship was an invincible Dalek warrior from the planet Skaro. Benedict explained this move would mark the beginning of a new era of decisiveness. When asked his opinion on the future of ICEL, the extraterrestrial prelate responded, 'Exterminate! Exterminate!' Commentators cautioned at reading too much into this statement, considering that is about the only thing Daleks say, until, when questioned about the USCCB, the new prefect responded 'Ineffable! Infeffable!'

The new "no-nonsense" head of the Congregation for Divine Worship
"...a new musical, Footloose: 1814, opened on off-off-take-a-left-turn-and-go-down-the-dark-alley-off-Broadway Friday. This new all-singing all-dancing spectacular, set at the Congress of Vienna, tells the tale of Chancellor Metternich's attempt to bring back that edgy new dance, the waltz, after dour old Emperor Franz bans it on the grounds it's distracting the delegates too much...

"Last Tuesday, when confronted with allegations that a recent photo of himself strongly resembled the character Animal from The Muppet Show, Archbishop Rowan Williams responded with an answer so mind-bogglingly even-handed it caused instantaneous narcolepsy in HWTN's correspondent on the spot. When asked in an interview this week, Animal, however, responded 'WO-MAN! WO-MAN!' It is unclear if this refers to the Muppet drummer's stance on female ordination. The other members of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem could not be reached for comment.

"Florian Stembacher, the self-proclaimed Pope Innocent XIV of the Really Super True Catholic Church, recently held a rival World Youth Day celebration at his trailer in Butte, Montana, which consisted of him mostly listening to old Tommy Dorsey records and asking attendees to speak louder. An assortment of young people ranging in age from 14 to 63 came along, mostly to fulfil community-service requirements...

A group photo of the partipants in this year's Sedevacantist World Youth Day. All of them.
"...in other news, a mysterious priest calling himself only 'Father Qui' and wearing a cassock and converse sneakers has been sighted in the Rome area. It is thought his appearance has something to do with reports of a flying blue confessional box seen in the vicinity of St. Peter's. The new head of the CDW has not been available for comment on this matter..."

8:00 AM. *M*A*S*S*. (Rerun). Field Acolyte Hawkeye decides to switch the Acqua and Vino cruets in Fr. Mulcahey’s liturgical cruet set because that’s the kind of thing he does, and also because (insert gripping social commentary here).

8:30 AM. Family Feudalism. This week: the Plantagenets versus Hohenstaufens. (Live show later cut off after a knife-fight breaks out between Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.)

9:00 AM. Hochschule Musikale. In old Heidelberg, scrawny nerd Willy Hohenzollern and his withered arm are ostracized by the Wittelsbach in-crowd led by drama queen Sissi and head jock Otto von Bismarck, until Willy and sweetheart Princess Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein join forces to inexplicably burst into song. Show-stopping numbers include “Staldhelm Spirit,” the Admiral Tirpitz tap number “Get Your Head in the Naval Buildup,” “The Ems Telegram Song,” “Stick to the Mutual Pan-European Re-Insurace Treaty System,” and the grand finale “We’re All in This Together (Except Poland).”

11:00 AM. I Love Christina. (Rerun). Queen Christina of Sweden (Lucille Ball) sneaks out of her guest digs in the Vatican to visit Castel Sant’ Angelo and engage in some target practice, since Pope Alexander VII (Desi Arnaz) has refused to let her have her own personal artillery regiment. Waaaaah!

11:30 AM. This Old Saint. Bob Villa hosts HWTN’s perennial favorite game-show, combining Do-It-Yourself repair skills and hagiographic trivia. Skilled anatomists and diminutive Italian nuns race against the clock to reassemble St. Catherine, whose head is in Siena, foot in Venice, and body in Rome.

12:00 PM. Not Another 1950s Priest Movie. (Original Title: I Confess I’m Going My Way to the Bells of Boys Town to Unlock the Keys of the Kingdom). Starring Irma Bergman (Ingrid’s kid sister, the one with that disconcertingly big mole), Mother Dolores Hart, Princess Grace, Bing Crosby, and that Incomprehensible Old Irish Guy as Fr. Ethnic Stereotype.

HWTN Tough Guys (and Gals) Marathon

2:00 PM. The Man with the Golden Nose. Metal-nosed astronomical swashbuckler Tycho Brahe teams up with renegade Frenchman Cyrano de Bergerac to free Galileo from the clutches of the Inquisition.

3:30 PM. Pius X. The year is 1969 and the Rev. Pius Little struggles to re-impose Tra le Sollicitudine on his kumbaya-loving whitebread congregation. By. Any. Means. Necessary.

5:00 PM. Old Habits Die Hard. Bruce Willis struggles to blend in as he goes in deep undercover (and deep beard) among the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal to foil a plot to kidnap the Pope during his upcoming appearance at the UN.

7:00 PM. Paten. George C. Scott plays a tank-commanding Pope Julius II facing off against the panzer divisions of the Geneva Wehrmacht in this classic war movie set in an alternate universe where Leonardo’s fantastic weapons became reality. Don’t miss the profanity-laden prologue speech set against a gigantic backdrop of the Vatican flag.

10:00 PM. Twelve Angry Saints. The conclave to elect Matthias as Judas’s replacement inadvertently goes sour when Peter accidentally breaks the handle off the cenacle’s front door, trapping them within and survive off really thin matzoh slipped in under the crack. Sequel to The Dirty Dozen.

12:00 AM. Bellarmine Begins. Robert Bellarmine takes on the forces of darkness in a weirdly Gothic Counter-Reformation Rome after a long and more-or-less inexplicable drawn out training sequence involving Matteo Ricci and a bunch of Shaolin monks.

1:30 AM. Dante Goes to Hell. The sequel to Dante Goes to School, the sequel to Dante Goes to the Beach, and that in turn the sequel to Dante Goes to Splash Mountain. From the creative (?) minds that brought you Weekend at Boccaccio’s II.

2:30 AM. The Hunt for Blue October. Sir Francis Drake (Alec Baldwin) hunts down a dangerous prototype Spanish “stealth galleon,” The Glorious Month of the Most Holy Rosary of Our Blessed Lady Crushing the British Scum, led by the Duke of Alba (Sean Connery) and his inexplicable Scottish accent.

4:30 AM. The Diocletian Chainsaw Massacre. (Original Title: The Most Holy Life, Passion and Dolorous Death, along with the Miraculous Translation of her Body, of the Virgin and Martyr St. Katherine of Alexandria, with Lots of Rotating Knives to Make Things Interesting.)

Monday

9:00 AM. Traddietubbies. Finally, some quality children's programming. Four freakish creatures apparently made of felt watch archival footage of Pius XII's coronation on TV monitors inset into their bellies and coo in delight. Then fifteen minutes of saying goodbye, consisting of intoning "Benedicamus Domino" intermixed with a good deal of baby gibberish. By the way, that's a maniple, buster, not a purse, so get it right.

***

8:00 PM. Five Simple Rules of Engagement for Dating the Church's Eldest Daughter. Fr. Z has a whole lot of trouble on his hands when he's appointed the spiritual director for an orphanage of giggly French traditionalist girls with a predilection for sneaking off on dates after curfew and gloating about the superiority of the Extraordinary Form to their heathen boyfriends.

8:30 PM. Bridezillas. Tonight's special episode deals with the care and feeding of your wedding planner and is guest-hosted by the Rev. George William Rutler with the assistance of a bullhorn, a Kevlar vest, and a very large net.

Tuesday

8:00 PM. Seinfeld. Kramer and Newman's private association of the faithful threatens to report Fr. Curtis to Ecclesia Dei for substituting "Yadda, yadda, yadda" for "in saecula, saeculorum, amen" allegedly to save time.

8:30 PM. Saved by the Simantron. Abba Zachary and Abba Slater try to sneak bootleg copies of the Motu Proprio onto Athos without triggering the suspicions of Hieromonk Belding, who is convinced the whole thing is a trick of Rome. Screech discovers someone has run his riassa up the flagpole. Again.

Wednesday

8:00 PM. The Huysmans Show. J.K. Huysmans sits through a puzzling dinner with a fan before discovering he has once again been mistaken for children's book maven J.K. Rowling, and decides that his Decadent hairstyle must really be too effeminate.

8:30 PM. The P.O.D. Couple. Fra Oscar accidentally uses Friar Felix's precious new maniple to clean his golf-clubs, and frantically races around Rome at the last minute trying to find someone who knows what the heck this weird necktie thing really is and where on Via del Seminario can he get another one.

Thursday

8:00 PM. Fr. Ted: A Latin-y Ted. With nothing left to complain about after the Motu Proprio, the protesters from that weird Martin Sheen movie Catholics have decamped to Craggy Island and appealed to the parochial house for their own Latin Mass. Horror abounds it comes out the only person who remembers how it goes is housekeeper Mrs. Doyle...Fr. Jack being, er, indisposed after the Toilet Duck incident. Can Ted manage with Latin cue cards? Will Jack try to eat his biretta? Will Dougal wonder if Altarey Day is Agnes's brother?

Friday

8:00 PM. The Colbert Report. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, contrôleur général of the Kingdoms of France and Navarre and first minister to the Sun-King, brings his distinctive blend of wikiality and mercantilism to the wacky zoo-like forum of American cable news. Today's segment le møt discusses the truthiness of the Edict of Nantes. Weather and traffic by Bishop Bossuet.

8:30 PM. Life on the Rock. While blatantly ripping off EWTN's favorite Franciscan show, HWTN's adaptation of this Catholic favorite features a blend of open-air talk-show hosting and Survivor-like risks as St. Kevin of Glendalough forcibly repels frantic groupies by tossing them into the sea below his isolated islet.

Saturday

8:00 PM. Stuart the Little. This spinoff of HWTN's award-winning Claymore Girls (following Alexis Bledel's hilarious, caffeine-fueled performance in the show's two-part finale "The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots") details the adventures of the singularly unpleasant young toddler James Stuart as he fends off his Calvinist guardians and plots to take over Great Britain with the asistance of his teddy-bear Lord Darnley.

8:30 PM. Albs. Sacred Heart Seminary is thrown into comic chaos when it comes out that Janitor used up all the Tridentine mass-cards to build a gigantic paper hang-glider during his Batman phase, and Fr. Cox assigns Alcuin Reid's visiting kid sister, Elliot, to fix the problem, or be forced to play the organ at one of Msgr. Kelso's interminable and frequently botched high masses on Sunday. Turk and the Rev. Mr. Dorian pretend to be the World's Tallest Seminarian. Ted spends a whole day stuck under a collapsed pile of disused copies of the 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code.

Sunday

8:00 PM. House, O.P. Sister Allison begins acting very strange around her colleagues from the Dominican House of Studies, trading in her starched habit for a polyester pantsuit and banging a tambourine instead of following her Breviary. Fr. House thinks the unthinkable and wonders if it may be part of a rising outbreak of Motu Incompatibility Syndrome, though Mother Cuddy refuses to believe him. As usual.

New York City (HWTN News)--A mass demonstration in front of the townhouse headquarters of the Dutch Permanent Representative to the UN quickly turned into a media circus after six flag-waving supporters of the International Utrecht Independence Movement were joined by movie superstars Richard Gere and Angelina Jolie.

Monsignor Sasbout Vosmeer, a member of the Society of St. Pius the Fifth, Part One and Vicar-General of the Provisional Goverment of the Prince-Archbishopric of Utrecht in Exile (based in Cleveland, Ohio, out of St. Gertrude the Seriously Inflamed Really, Really, Super-Traditional But Very Suspicious of Rome Roman Catholic Chapel in the Mount Vernon Stripmall off State Road 36), granted an exclusive interview to HWTN, explaining, "The ancient Prince-Archbishopric has been occupied by nefarious Dutch interlopers since 1559, oppressing its quaint culture and mystical traditions of healing. Mr. Gere approached us after getting bored with the Free Tibet Movement, in an effort to find another defunct theocracy to insert into his Academy Award acceptance nominations."

A spokesman for Ms. Jolie said she had been lured to the Dutch embassy with the promise of adopting that kid with the finger in the dike. Ms. Jolie then broke in and asked if Utrecht had some sort of national food similar to like Pad Thai, as she was getting hungry. Mr. Gere quickly got the microphone away from her and proceeded to explain his attraction to the oppressed Utrechters. "They speak this really strange sacred language, really ancient and mystical, sounds kind of like Spanish or Italian, and there's lots of incense and I'm told they believe in reincarnation."

"I said the Incarnation," corrected Monsignor Vosmeer. When later confronted with the fact there is a sitting Catholic archbishop of Utrecht, and there had been one since 1858, Vosmeer said, "Some of my colleagues have started getting some deep suspicions about Pius IX. You know, his cousin's sister's barber was named Albert Lacey, which sounds a a bit like Alfred Loisy, and you know where that road leads."

"Bricklayers?" asked Gere.

"They're called Freemasons," said the Monsignor, patience starting to wear thin.

Gere continued, "And they even have yoga, too; I'm going to start on a class on the Spiritual Exercises."

"It's a retreat, Mr. Gere," said the Monsignor.

"In fact, I've been wanting to study their secret Tantric rites for months now." (The Monsignor simply turned an odd shade of purple at that point.) When asked to confirm that the Prince-Archbishopric of Utrecht had any sort of equivalent to such practices, Gere was handed a copy of The Theology of the Body, but was very disappointed it appeared to contain no helpful diagrams.

30 Petrus: The sponsor of HWTN's The Mulier Fortis Show, the Sheinhardt Zuchetto Company, has just been bought out by Oregon Cathar Press, and wants to make some changes! Head writer Emily Lemon (Tina Fey) now has to grapple with her new supervisor, the green-clerical-shirt-wearing Fr. Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), OCP's President of East Coast Television and Liturgical Dance Choreography, who wants to hire addled Dutch Dominican Joordan Traacy--last seen running through traffic in Amsterdam screaming "The laity can confect the Eucharist" and dressed in a purple chasu-alb--as the show's new star. Blerg.

The Two Babylon 5s: This week, Charles Taze Russell (actually a Vorlon agent) explains to Jeffrey Sinclair that Valen and Nimrod are the same person. Londo begins to wonder if Pope Alexander VI was really a Centauri alien. Pink Drazi and Purple Drazi argue over liturgical colors.

Infomercial for Crazy Achmed's Ottoman Empire: This week, grand closeout sale, as Crazy Achmed just got bought out by competitor Ataturk's Hassocks, famed for their exclusive Bauhaus Constantinople line. With St. Marco d'Aviano.

The Big Bang Theory: Nerdy priest-scientist Fr. Lemaitre and liturgy geek Adrian Fortescue, after getting thrown together in the clerical grad student dorm at Louvain, try to cope with the real world after discovering nobody else shares their niggling enthusiasm for high-energy physics and liturgical minutiae.

Persepolis: The Animated Series: [We better cancel this as, while we initially thought it was a cartoon about Iranian nuns, it turns out they all dress that way. Run My Uncle Napoleon instead, though let's not forget the subtitles this time.]

HTWN Movie-of-the-Week: Curse of the Rose Panther: Monsignor Clousseau must discover who stole his pink chasuble without driving his Citroen into a swimming pool, or cause Bishop Dreyfuss to question the benevolence of God or be inadvertently killed by his Chinese sacristan Cato.

The Imam of Dibley: The fellahin of Dibley in the emirate of Al-Angrezi (formerly Great Britain) have a dreadful shock when they discover their new village mufti wears a burqa!

Few of you know this yet, but HWTN recently purchased the multiplex next door to our headquarters, adding it to our growing commercial empire, which currently consists of the Donutist chain of fast-food breakfast cafes (which has recently been closed down by a joint order of the CDF and the local health inspectors) and the Chaldean-themed Mar Emmanuel Deli in Mosul, which unfortunately is currently surrounded by a minefield. So we're hoping this one turns out better. We'd like to note it is the only multiplex IMAX theatre done in the Naryshkin Baroque style in the entire upper midwest.

Today's showings include:

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Pars II: A road-trip of vocation-discerning traddy girls (all of whom look about 25 despite being 14) checking out convents discovers an order with what might be the Worst...Habit...Ever. 2:30 running time. Showings: Matins. Sext. Compline.

The Day the Sun Stood Still: The only way we can explain the reason Keanu Reeves got picked to play Joshua in this lumbering sci-fi take on the battle of the Hebrews versus the Amalekites is that HWTN studios casting director was recently burnt at the stake for Artotyritic Montanism and Milosh the janitor is currently filling in for him. 1:45. Showings: Matins.

The Dark Night: Who would have thought the Hombre Murciélago defending Renaissance-era Toledo from countless heretical enemies would actually be a five-foot-tall Carmelite mystic named John? With Maggie Gyllenhaal as Teresa of Avila. 3:00 running time. Showings: Lauds. Vespers. First and Second Nocturnes.

Brideshead Regurgitated: If you synchronize the new Brideshead movie with the tracks from Dark Side of the Moon, it's much more edifying. 1:20 running time. Showings: Third Nocturne, Nones.

Harald Hardrada and Kumar Go to the White Castle: In Norman England's first stoner comedy, invading Viking Harald and his Moorish slave Kumar get the munchies and have to find their way, via oxcart, to the keep at Windsor Castle without Harold Godwinson or William the Conqueror attacking them en route. 1:45 running time. Showings: Terce, Vespers.

But it certainly would fit on our lineup. Shrine friend the Sober Sophomore presents The Divine Office, a comedy of pontifical proportions. (See also Episode 2, which features, perhaps via some inadvertent existential cross-wiring, a commercial message that appears to have escaped from the Flanneryverse). If it weren't for wonderful things like Notre Dame's Eucharistic procession (600 people this year!), I'd wonder if things were starting to get even weirder than usual around there.

Rumor has it there's more in the pipeline. Beware of pickpockets and pious women!

In a Jesuitically cunning move, typical of papistic strategy, the Holy Father distracted President Bush with his shiny pectoral cross as a diversionary tactic while swarms of redcoated Jacobite mercenaries swarmed over the White House.



"And that, Holy Father, is where the Basilica sustained damage by Mothra during last month's attack."

"But I do understand you got many beautiful silk chausuables out of the incident, ja?"

"Using silk for chausubles, how whimsical..."



"Quick! Agent Smith! You must keep the little girl away from the Pontiff! She knows too much about the Matrix!"



"There has got to be a better way to get to the ambo, people."



Sister Assumpta, Sniper First Class of the Special Executive Action Section of the Poor Clares, watches, eagle-eyed, for potential liturgical abuses.



"Hmmm. Und now I am in a giant vhite void. Maybe zere is something to this Matrix thing after all. But vhere are ze awesome racks of machine guns and croziers and such? Someone tell Georg that I am stuck in ein komputer game."



"Haha, yes. Now I smile but zhis is the book Monsignor Marini und I are going to throw at you for zhat merengue-style offertory number."

Reading the nonfiction events-type insert in the local version of The Onion (I skip over the articles that are in...less...bad taste), they mentioned the writers strike in Hollywood* might lead to yet more inane reality programs, such as one already purportedly green-lighted entitled Clash of the Choirs. Now, I ask you, does this not sound suspiciously like Holy Whapping's own award-winning program American Chorister? NBC--Bishop Bruskewitz, an interdict, and the HWTN legal team are headed your way.

*I expect Life on the Rock will be in reruns any day now.

ROME (HWTN News)--One of the Shrine's moles at the Vatican recently leaked to me a truly extraordinary document from the Congregation for Divine Worship, which indicates that in the lead-up to the unveiling of the Luminous Mysteries towards the end of Pope John Paul II's reign, the CDW's Consumer Rights section beta-tested a number of alternatives to the Pope's proposal. This in itself should be no surprise; the mysteries of the Rosary, along with the stations of the Cross, have historically been rather fluid in content and in number, while the CDW's careful supervision of new Vatican products is well-known after the massive recall of the '04 cherry-flavored "Hieroymus Bosch Blend" incense after the main stock had been secretly adulterated with hallucinogens as a protest by an anarcho-syndicalist guerilla theater group.*

Experts remark that the Luminous Mysteries won out with good reason. But it's still fascinating to see what might have been and why it got rejected. One set, the Parabolic Mysteries, was thought to sound too mathematical, though it dealt with Christ's various parables, some of which themselves proved to be problematic. The Mystery of the Parable of the 99 Sheep and the 1 Lost unfortunately put most test-subjects to sleep given Fr. Cantalamessa's suggestion they pray by counting each one, while the Mystery of the Divine Childhood, based on various apocryphal accounts of Christ's early years featuring Jesus smiting playground bullies and the like, made, in the words of one, "Our Lord seem a bit too much like Damien from The Omen." Researchers soon afterwards discovered the proposed Mystery of the Blue Carbuncle came not from sacred history but the Sherlock Holmes canon, and the whole section on the Father Brown Mysteries seems to have been a long and involved joke on the part of the compiler of the report.

Some mysteries also seemed, like the 99 Sheep, a bit too dull. Take for instance, the proposed Tedious Mysteries: 1: the Child Jesus stars in His School's Hannukah Pageant; 2: The Child Jesus is asked by Mary to take out the Garbage and Doesn't Complain, 3: Joseph hits his thumb with a hammer but does not say his golf words despite a furious desire to do so, 4: Our teenaged Lord suffers silently as Our Lady and St. Joseph show His friends all those embarassing baby pictures and 5: the Child Jesus is teased by playground bullies for being dressed like the Infant of Prague. The problem here is when you are dealing with a family in which the baby is God, the mom is sinless and the dad may well have never committed a sin of his own accord, there isn't too much drama to work with, barring the introduction of a Jewish Eddie Haskell character, and no such archetype appears in the Protoevangelium of James.

Now, if you must excuse me, it's Thursday and we all know that means it's time for a recitation of the Fourth Glutinous Mystery: Our Lord Feeds the 5,000 with Kosher Cinnabons.

*Supposedly Cardinal Arinze knew something was wrong when he attended a solemn high mass where the Gospel, solemnly intoned, began, "In illo tempore, dicite Iesus, Viiiiiiiiiirrrrr..." (Literally: At that time Jesus said: Duuuuuuuuude.")

Merci beaucourp to the one, the only Dawn Eden for the idea behind the post, and for calling me up during a very dull morning to cheer me up with it.

File this under Unintented Consequences of the Spirit of Vatican II:

Did Sister Bertrille lose her ability to fly after they abolished the cornette?

***

One time with my father while picking up some libations for a party, I was scanning the shelves at a local wine store and misread the label on the dubious substance known as Blue Nun as "Flying Nun Wine," which strikes me as the perfect trademark name should the Daughters of Charity go into matters oenophilic.

(I had a strange childhood obsession with the elaborate and colorful wine labels, including my father making a dedicated trip out to the shop with me to allow me to draw the coats of arms depicted on them in a notebook. The proprietor saw me at a distance and assumed a midget had been sent round by the competitors to write down all his prices.)

***

From 30 Rock:

Frank: (sounding mildly addled, as usual) Hey, Pete, d'you wanna see a comic book with pregnant zombie nuns?
Pete: I believe I would.

***

Incidentally, Bl. María de Agreda (who had the dubious honor of having her Mystical City of God placed on the Index, then rehabilitated; a reading of it allegedly later nearly scrambled Giacomo Casanova's brain*) is sometimes also called the Blue Nun or the Blue Lady. While she was not known for flying, she did end up miraculously teleporting to Mexico to convert indigenous tribes there, presumably racking up an enormous number of frequent flyer points with Air Loreto with her nearly 500 visits. Missionaries sent to the area years later found a bunch of practicing Catholics who had been catechized by a mysterious "Lady in Blue," who, after some digging, turned out to be our Mary, who managed this feat without even access to basic materials such as felt banners or religion workbooks with long digressions about Rachel Carson.

(Look, it's no weirder than some of the hallucigenic stuff that goes in in string theory or particle physics.)

*We will be screening They Scrambled Casanova's Brain! on HWTN's Mystical Theology Theater 3000 tomorrow at 3 AM, if you're interested.

Allegedly, the first telenovela, that wellspring of Spanish-language nuttiness now well-known to cablesurfers after quick and frantic pass-throughs of Univision, to be produced, ever, was of all things, 1973's Santa Barbara, Virgen y Martir, with Hialeah doubling (presumably) for Nicomedia. The mind reels.

And no, we're not syndicating it for HWTN. The twenty-five-part Spanish-language production of Goya Foods Presents Francisco Goya's The Horrors of War: The Musical! and The Supreme Protector-President for Life Andrés de Santa Cruz y Calaumana Memorial Variety Hour should suffice for now (you'd be amazed at how many disco combos there are in Bolivia), though Catalan speakers and Clint Eastwood fans will be glad to hear we're currently in principal filming for The Outlaw Josemaría Wales. "We got somethin' in this country..." cliiiick "...called the Aragonese Boatride..."

And now, excerpted from the HWTN-published Nitwit's Guide to Ecclesiastical Historiography, a selection of handy one-sentence biographies of the great men and women of Catholicism:

St. Lawrence: Turn me over, I'm done on this side.
St. Christina of Bolsena: As with zombies, the only way to definitively stop an undersized, uppity teenage virgin-martyr is to whack off her head.
Abbot Suger: I like shiny things.
Padre Pio: Strange blips reported on the Pieceltrina air traffic control tower.
St. Catherine of Alexandria: The Diocletian Chainsaw Massacre.
Imelda Lambertini: The one story one should never, not under any circumstances, tell a First Communion class.
Eilmer of Malmesbury: Hey, y'all, watch this!
The Prophet Elisha: Never make fun of a bald man or bears will eat you.
Albertus Magnus: Talking robots, alchemy, and weird science.
Alexander VI: One of two popes who ought to have a party school named after him.
St. Francis: James Dean, then Doctor Doolittle, and finally The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Savonarola: God hates shiny things.
Pseudo-Dionysius: God is a shiny thing.
Thomas Aquinas: [The one-sentence summary prepared turned into an elaborately-structured series of dependent clauses that went on for twenty pages.]
St. Catherine of Siena: Fad Miracle Diets of the 14th Century.

Other suggestions?

I have been informed, at long last, that Papal Master of Ceremonies Piero Marini has been assigned to handle some pontifical commission on...um...international Eucharistic Congresses, or something, I wasn't really paying attention, but the main import of all this is that he is being replaced as Master of Ceremonies with another Marini, the Rev. Don Guido Marini of Genoa, who, it seems, S.R.E. Cardinalis Bertone has brought in. (The rumor that the replacement was Guido Sarducci turns out to have been the result of clerical error.)

The upswing of all this will be, it seems, more chant and Mozart and less of the rather minimalist feel that has dominated papal liturgies during his tenure. (I don't think I can blame him for the vestments the Pope wore in Austria, as I don't know who picked them out. Perhaps the captain of the pontifical paintball team.)

In any case, we wish His Excellency Archbishop Marini all the best in his new position as president of...of... the papal commission for...um...(mumbles something), which will no doubt take him far, far away from the Pope's side. Please. We'll even throw in a red Swingline stapler.

Holy Whapping Television Network (HWTN) will shamelessly exploit this change of circumstance with tonight's 8 PM premiere of the madcap, family-friendly sitcom Too Many Marinis!, the cornerstone of this season's new programming block. (This means Basilica Improvement with Tim Allen as Charles Borromeo and Richard Karn as Al Gonzaga will be moved to 9:30 on Tuesdays).

In the mean time, who is Guido Marini? I don't know, but this picture of him with Cardinal Bertone may give us some clues.



'Nuff said.

Okay, this is the best random sentence I have ever read while browsing Wikipedia:

"It is considered the father of Iranian TV comedy."

Just savor it.

(Source).

8 PM. Saturday First Vespers Movie of the Week: The Pio-Benedictine Code. Procrastinating seminarian Tom Hanks rushes against time to finish reading for his Canon Law final, only to discover a nefarious cover-up hidden secretly in the footnotes of his textbook. Will Silas be able to reach him before he blabs the frightening truth that the progress-hating Gregory XVI was actually secretly married to Elizabeth Cady Stanton?

10 PM. Late Night Operetta: Sigmund Romberg's The Burgher King. Twenty years after The Student Prince, Karl Franz, now ruler of Karlsburg, has become thoroughly settled and bourgeois and all appears well until his two sons, Franz and Karl, discover him wandering the streets in a frightening plastic mask and paper birthday crown, peddling disgusting American fast food.

12 Midnight. Infomercial. Ultimate Ginsu Knives with Irene Adler and the Count von Kramm.

I am told, though I believe the tale is apocryphal, that they retitled the film The Madness of King George III simply The Madness of King George because of the fears that the viewers of the lumpenbourgeoisie would assume this was the third in a trilogy. Inspired by this, I offer the following suggestions:

Elizabeth II: She's Mad and She's Got Corgies

Leo the 13th Part VII: Loisy Takes Manhattan (Sequel to Nightmare on Chalons Street)

Julius II: The Wrath of Rovere

Henry IV, Part Two: The Voyage Home

Henry V: The Frenchy Frontier

False Dmitri 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear*

Or just plain Pius X (with Denzel Washington as Giuseppe Sarto)

Alternately, one could replace regnal numbers with unnumbered sequel titles for a bit of fun:

Elizabeth: Reloaded

Henry the Live Free or Die Hard

Meanwhile, I can't wait until HWTN broadcasts Terminator: Soteriology.

*Considering at least one of the False Dmitris of Russia had his bodily remains loaded in a canon and fired back in the direction of Poland, the use of fractions seems fairly legitimate here.