Happy Old Year!

The Liturgical New Year actually begins at Advent, so that's the day when things were supposed to start fresh for us Catholics, and not January 1. So here's what I'm thinking. Want to see some changes, but want to sneak them in without attracting much attention? The non-liturgical new year is the perfect time to switch things up, and you'll have plausible liturgical deniability. Here are a few ideas to grease the wheels of the bark of Peter and make it straighten up and fly right:

The CHLORIBULE. Oh yes, chloroform in the thurible. Seriously. What priest, parent of berserking toddlers, or crotchety old usher wouldn't like to see everyone just . . . settle down a little bit? I wouldn't recommend using this every week, but there appears to be a six-week cycle where people get all riled up every so often. The Chloribule would put a lid on things. Waft, waft!

HORSES! Again, not every Sunday. Just every so often. There is some historical precedent for this. In the Middle Ages, the Midnight Mass opened with a solemn procession of animals meant to signify something liturgical about creation, I forget. It wasn't circus-y or anything, but reverent, and it happened in this one especially Medieval region of Spain.  I am 99% sure this is true, despite what Google, a well-known communist sympathizer, is telling me. 

A little ECUMENTICAL PROPHYLACTIC ANTI-LYCANTHROPIC PAPAL ADOPTION wouldn't hurt, is what I always say. Everyone's doing it. The president of Argentina recently took a nice Jewish boy into the family, ostensibly to give him some kind of scholarship, ostensibly originally to counteract the myth that the seventh son would become a werewolf. But on the other hand, when's the last time you met a werewolf in Argentina? You see? You don't mess with success. And I feel like, between FEMEN, climate change, and that ill-considered paintball showdown between Rocco Palmo and Bishop Coyne in the Sala Clementina, the last thing the Vatican needs to do is take any chances with any werewolves. You know there's room in the papal apartments. They could put newspapers down on the floor if they're worried about the marble. (I suggest L'Osservatore Romano, because please.)

A NEW HERESY. It's been a while. Everyone thinks they're soooo smart and have come up with something soooo new and original, but really it's the same dumb ideas circulating around over and over again. As soon as there was a Church, people starting coming up with lies about it, and they've just been bobbing up to the surface again and again, like so many mildewed rubber duckies in the steaming tub of orthodoxy. Wouldn't it be nice to have a brand new horrible idea to argue against? And no, the OMG advice column at Crux doesn't count, because I refuse to acknowledge that there is such a thing. 

A FIVE YEAR MORATORIUM on the following words: ultramontanism, homophile, transhumanism, rectal feeding, and Peter Jackson.

That should be enough to get us started. Happy old year!