A load of Papal Bull

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Desert superstition adherents among our loyal and diverse readership will be delighted to learn that His Holiness the Pope™ (brought to you in association with Whirlpool, emancipators of the distaff side since 1906) has hit the headlines again. Read more...

This time the old boy's put quill to parchment to express his heartfelt apologies for the clumsy way in which the Vatican handled the Bishop Williamson affair.

But here's the kicker, the treacherous stiletto between the Papal shoulder blades. Apparently the Bishops of England and Wales have issued a statement that, according to Damian Thompson (who strikes us a quite a nice bloke on the whole, if a little batty), leaves out the bits of His Holiness' missive that they don't like.

To be honest, we wouldn't know either way, but what staggers us is the sheer effort and intellectual rigour that many of the Holy Smoke bloggers put into their arguments.

Why not Harry Potter. Why not The Clangers?

As a certain Oxford professor (who is surely destined for eternal damnation) once said....

We who doubt that “theology” is a subject at all, or who compare it with the study of leprechauns, are eagerly hoping to be proved wrong. Of course, university departments of theology house many excellent scholars of history, linguistics, literature, ecclesiastical art and music, archaeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, iconology, and other worthwhile and important subjects. These academics would be welcomed into appropriate departments elsewhere in the university. But as for theology itself, defined as “the organised body of knowledge dealing with the nature, attributes, and governance of God”, a positive case now needs to be made that it has any real content at all, and that it has any place in today’s universities.

Or, indeed, anywhere outside the fevered imaginations of 1.1 billion devoted fantasists.