The Next Best Thing

Since God apparently has better things to do these days than impose vocations on would-be eunuchs, the Church of Rome is considering a slight relaxation of Pope Gregory's rule of celibacy among the clergy. Alas, there is no likelihood that priests will be spared the temptation to fondle their flocks by being permitted to run after one another's wives: the possibility that enforced celibacy may have contributed to the Church's various sex scandals is of course entirely unworthy of consideration, and the rule-change is being contemplated not from a wish to do better, but from the urge to do more of the same. Accordingly, the most the Vatican will countenance is allowing a few old married men to toddle up the Amazon in order to help complete, as far as possible, the pious genocide begun some five centuries ago by the forebears of Pope Bergoglio.