The next pope

L'Osservatore Romano

At a news conference today, Pope Fiammeggiante announced a long-awaited  change in Vatican policy regarding clerical celibacy. Under the new policy, priests would be allowed to marry...other men. As the Holy Father explained, this was a development of doctrine. In Catholic chess, queens and bishops are interchangeable. Furthermore, the vestments of popes, cardinals, and bishops would make Liberace green with envy. 

However, the traditional ban on priests having wives would remain in place. Asked if that wasn't unfair to heterosexual priests, the Holy Father said the mental image of priests married to women was "icky"–stifling an involuntary shudder. Besides, as Fiammeggiante went on to say, the question of straight men in the priesthood was purely academic. The last straight priest was Padre Alberto Cutié, who left the priesthood for a woman. 

In related news, the Holy Father told reporters that the Church was going to auction off the Madonnas of Botticelli, Raphael, and Velázquez, because they were "yucky". The Vatican would be commissioning a new line of Madonnas for our time. Asked what he thought the Madonna ought to look like, he said Caitlyn Jenner was pretty ideal. 

At Catholic Answers, Trent Horn said that while the new policy was going to take a little getting used to, this wasn't the first time or the last time that the development of doctrine had the trajectory of a pretzel.