My husband Posco works with someone who apparently thinks quite highly of his own intellect -- one of those people who think they're geniuses because they got 1300 + on the SATs and went to a "good" college. Let's call him Hooper. Anyway, Posco and Hooper got into a rather wide-ranging conversation, and Hooper (who professes atheism) started expounding on the curious undergarments worn by the Latter-Day Saints and how they were designed so that the wearer can change them without ever being completely nude (how Hooper knows this he did not tell.)
Anyway, Hooper has read that stupid DaVinci Code book and, in addition to falling for it hook, line, and sinker, apparently started gnawing on the tackle box as well; he seems to have come away from the book with the impression that all Catholics practice "the discipline" (corporal mortification.) (It came out in the context of a conversation of special underwear -- apparently Catholics have special underwear too.)
Peony: "Let me get this straight: Hooper thinks you personally go home and flagellate yourself in the evening? and you have special underwear for it?"
Posco: "Apparently so...."
I am ashamed (well, only a little) to admit that my first thought was not, "what would a skilled apologist say?" but instead...
"What would Cordelia Flyte say?"
I'll go first: Stain removers such as OxyClean, Clorox 2, and so forth were not really developed by the soap companies but by Jesuit scientists working in Vatican labs, based on formulas handed down through the ages by a secret congregation devoted to alchemy (the Hypochlorite Fathers.) These bleaches, etc, were developed so that Catholics could practice their penances without being detected. The man-in-the-moon symbol formerly used by Procter and Gamble was actually a portrait of the founder of the Hypochlorites.
If you go to Catholic book and supply stores, you have to know the secret password to be shown the hair shirt section. And no, I'm not going to reveal the password on the blog -- I would be excommunicated! And as we all know, Catholic bishops excommunicate people right and left for publicly defying the teachings of the Church.
UPDATE: Dear Mr Luse asks, "Who's Cordelia Flyte?" If you need to ask who Cordelia is, please permit me to suggest that you quit reading TSM and go read Brideshead Revisited instead. For purposes of this post, Cordelia is a young teenager whose older sister, Julia, is engaged to Rex Mottram. Rex is completely unconcerned with matters eternal, but is nevertheless preparing for reception into the Church so that he can marry Julia. Lady Marchmain is Cordelia's and Julia's mother.
...So Rex was sent to Farm Street to Father Mowbray, a priest renowned for his triumphs with obdurate catechumens. After the third interview, he came to tea with Lady Marchmain. "Well, how do you find my future son-in-law?" ..."Lady Marchmain, he doesn't correspond to any degree of paganism known to the missionaries." ...
Next week the Jesuit came to tea again. It was the Easter holidays and Cordelia was there, too.
"Lady Marchmain," he said. "You should have chosen one of the younger fathers for this task. I shall be dead long before Rex is a Catholic."
"Oh dear, I thought it was going so well."
"It was, in a sense. He was exceptionally docile, and he accepted everything I told him, remembered bits of it, asked no questions. I wasn't happy about him. He seemed to have no sense of reality, but I knew he was coming under a steady Catholic influence, so I was willing to receive him. One has to take a chance, sometimes - with semi-imbeciles, for instance. You never know quite how much they have understood. As long as you know there's someone to keep an eye on him, you do take the chance."
"How I wish Rex could hear this!" said Cordelia.
"But yesterday I got a regular eye-opener. The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed. Take yesterday. He seemed to be doing very well. He'd learned large bits of the catechism by heart, and the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary. Then I asked him as usual if there was anything troubling him, and he looked at me in a crafty way and said, 'Look, Father, I don't think you're being straight with me. I want to join your Church and I'm going to join your Church, but you're holding too much back.' I asked what he meant, and he said: 'I've had a long talk with a Catholic - a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope that made one of his horses a cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put in a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this,' he said, 'but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself.'"
"What can the poor man have meant?" said Lady Marchmain.
"You see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.
"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what's the matter?"
"What a chump! Oh, Mummy, what a glorious chump!"
"Cordelia, it was you."
"Oh, Mummy, who could have dreamed he'd swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican - all kinds of thing."
"Well, you've very considerably increased my work," said Father Mowbray.
"Poor Rex," said Lady Marchmain. "You know, I think it makes him rather lovable. You must treat him like an idiot child, Father Mowbray."
So the instruction was continued, and Father Mowbray at length consented to receive Rex a week before his wedding.
"You'd think they'd be all over themselves to have me in," Rex complained. "I can be a lot of help to them one way and another; instead they're like the chaps you issue cards for a casino. What's more," he added, "Cordelia's got me so muddled I don't know what's in the catechism and what she's invented."
