Artful

It was recently announced in Rome that the Vatican Museum will be opened in the evenings in the summer months to allow local families to enjoy a cultural alternative to the nightly TV programs at home.

A Sistine Sonnet

Friends and Romans leave your telly,
come and gaze at Botticelli.
Know that TV’s Grande Fratello
can’t compare with Donatello.
View the art of Leonardo
and discuss it with bravado.
Let grow the cryptic seeds he sowed
in the famed Da Vinci Code.
(Leonard loved to paint a teaser
as we learn from Mona Lisa.)
Tread the floors of marble pristine
leading to the Chapel Sistine.
For a pleasure beyond measure
see these treasures at your leisure.

Life at St Gret’s

Excerpts from the Minutes of the Pastoral Council meeting of St Gretelburger’s[1] Parish, an outer suburb of an Australian capital city.

Chair of Council: As you know we celebrate our patron’s feast day next month. We will be marking the 1000th anniversary of St Gretelburger’s death so we need to make it a special occasion. Any suggestions?

Youth Rep: As the J.G.F.C. (Junior Gretelburgarians Fun Club) will be going ten pin bowling after the evening Mass can you please invite a preacher who won’t go on for forty minutes as happened last year?

Choir Director: It was my idea to invite Dom Grazianus. His explanation of the relationship of the Ambrosian rite to the Mozarabic was particularly interesting, I thought.

Altar Society Pres: Well, he went on so long several of the candles burnt out and we had to…

Chair: That’s enough about last year.

School Principal: It would be good to involve the children. Perhaps they could prepare a liturgical dance of thanksgiving.

Liturgical Rep: No! I read in an American Catholic Magazine “Fanners of the Flame of Faith” that these dances are pagan in origin and are forbidden by the Pope. Anyway the last time we had such a circus at Mass one of the girls slipped and two boys giggled.

CWL Rep: We’ll provide the supper. Mrs Mukelberry has already promised six dozen lamingtons. The bishop seems to like them.

Chair: I have my eye on the clock. We have already gone overtime.

Social Club Rep: Yes – the telecast of the Ashes will start soon. I propose that the Chairperson selects a committee of three to plan the event.

J.G.F.C. Rep: I second that.

Chair: All those in favour? Carried unanimously. Father, will you please say the closing prayer and will somebody make sure the lights in the toilets are turned off?

The meeting concluded at 10:10 pm.

[1]. St Gretelburger (873-1009) was a nun in a monastery in Franconia. For the last twenty years of her life she carried out very faithfully the duties of cellarer. Her extraordinary hospitality only became widely known after her death. She was spontaneously acclaimed a saint in 1011 AD by the grateful peasants. Her aunt, Sr Gatenfreda was the abbess.

Oz, Be Careful!

Environmentalists fear that some species of animals introduced to Australia will cause the dissapearance of local fauna.

The once quite useful beast, the camel
- a very ugly kind of mammal -
is running rampant in the bush
giving dingo’s kin the push.
It is claimed that soon the bilby
will vanish like the cloche and trilby.
And further south, the fates dishevel
the unattractive Tassie Devil.
It seems some critters do not care,
with all, our boundless plains to share.

Fr Ron Line