IT HAS BEEN an eventful few days. I can empathise with those of you who cannot keep up with the rapid pace of change. So with that in mind I have decided to give you my own informed and objective news digest.

The week started badly for Fianna Fáil. A vote was taken on Brian Cowen’s leadership. What was initially supposed to steady matters turned into a farce. Fianna Fáil’s critics claimed that it was just desserts for an organisation blackened by staidness, secrecy, conservatism, the corrupting influence of power, and lack of moral accountability. It was all very odd and bizarre looking on from the comfy moral high ground we occupy in the Catholic Church.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, we had an only brilliant week.

For starters three Anglican bishops transferred over and were welcomed with open arms. There were slight grumbles when they brought their wives with them, but a compromise was reached re. transfer fees, and sponsorship. Would that Mr Robbie Keane had been so accommodating in his own recent business dealings.

All in all it was a marvellous ecumenical moment, on a par with the bridging of a vast ideological chasm not seen since the day when Mr 2Pac Shakur and Mr Biggie Smalls once shared an all too brief phone conversation about knitting patterns. (There is no truth in the scurrilous press rumour that one of the ex Anglican bishops stood up on the altar and shouted “West Coast, yo!” while giving the officiating priest a fist bump.)

Joy was unconfined when we also learned that Pope John Paul II was to be beatified later this year. For full sainthood it is now required that a second miracle is attributed to him. Curing a nun of cancer after his own death is admittedly a brilliant achievement, but the second miracle always “seals the deal”.

Father Lawlor humbly offered to go to Rome to offer evidence that his late Holiness had cured him of a serious illness. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that what he’d had was a dislocated shoulder, and that his late Holiness had fixed it by slamming Father Lawlor’s shoulder repeatedly into a wall after watching Mel Gibson do something similar in Lethal Weapon. Anyone can fix a dislocated shoulder, even Mel Gibson. To cure someone of something from beyond the grave (even a cold counts) is something else entirely.

As we all know, Pope John Paul II destroyed communism by simply turning up in Poland for a weekend. Perhaps with a subtle bending of the rules of canonisation, this in itself might be enough to “see him over the line”.

We were also pleasantly surprised to discover that Tony Blair’s decision making regarding the second Iraq war was influenced by his reading of the Bible. Some of the more atheistic among you scoffed about this. Those of us with a more open mind ran straight to our Bibles and discovered, in the very story referenced by Mr Alistair Campbell, the words “Bomb Iraq. No, seriously, dude. Bomb it now.”

Joy was also unconfined when Glee’s Chris Colfer, won his Golden Globe award. When I say “joy was unconfined” I mean Father Buckley jumped up during young Mr Colfer’s acceptance speech, ran around the common room with his jumper over his head, and slammed into a wall.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas, a young minister was censured for reading a quote during a Bible class. Parents were horrified when Reverend Frank Milton read the story of the Last Supper and the line, “This is my body which will be given up for you” was greeted by one of the Apostles with the response, “This is the best thing since sliced bread. Om nom nom.”

It was later discovered that Reverend Milton had mislaid his own Bible, and in a panic had transcribed the relevant section from Wikipedia. The reverend’s foolishness beggars belief. Why anyone would put any store in a resource which is open to subjectivity, ideological bias, and textual corruption by thousands of co-authors, each with their own axe to grind, is beyond me.

Here endeth the news.