Nicole Winfield, writing for the Associated Press, reported that The Vatican told Bishops—just yesterday—“that it is important to cooperate with the police in reporting priests who rape and molest children.” That startling news was followed by a pronouncement that gave the Bishops only until next May to develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse. Only one year! Along those lines, Smokey Diamond suggests you might want to keep your children out of church until next May. The Bishops will still be the final authority on the credibility of abuse charges, said the Vatican, “Because this has worked so well in the past.” Amazingly, victim’s groups were outraged.
The Vatican has been under increasing pressure to halt child abuse by priests, particularly since the publication this week by the magazine “The Two-Thousand Year Old Bad Idea,” of a study suggesting that an unsupervised camping trip by half a dozen eighth graders in the most desolate part of Central Park was 45% less likely to produce a life-long trauma that a similar camping trip supervised by a priest. H.Y. See called the intrepid Smokey Diamond into his office to dispute this finding. The H. See told Smokey, “Our own studies have shown that the number is closer to 42% and “is even a bit dependent on the location of the park.” ”It’s misrepresentations like this,” he went on to say, “that give the church a bad name.”
Smokey’s been singing a Tom Lehrer song since he got home…
Another big news story of year concerned the ecumenical council in Rome, known as Vatican II. Among the things they did in an attempt to make the church more commercial was to introduce the vernacular into portions of the mass, to replace Latin, and to widen somewhat the range of music permissible in the liturgy, but I feel that if they really want to sell the product, in this secular age, what they ought to do is to redo some of the liturgical music in popular song forms. I have a modest example here. It’s called The Vatican Rag.
First you get down on your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Do whatever steps you want, if
You have cleared them with the Pontiff.
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison,
Doin’ the Vatican Rag.
Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional,
There, the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.
If it is, try playin’ it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!
So get down upon your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Make a cross on your abdomen,
When in Rome do like a Roman,
Ave Maria,
Gee it’s good to see ya,
Gettin’ ecstatic an’
Sorta dramatic an’
Doin’ the Vatican Rag!