Wednesday, November 30, 2005

God "knocked for six" by Vatican decision to shut down Limbo - Heaven braces for huge soul influx

God is said to have been completely "bowled over" by the Vatican's announcement yesterday that it is to shut down Limbo. Sources close to the supreme being say that he had no foreknowledge of the decision which is believed to have sent shockwaves through the Heavens.

The Vatican has not offered any explanation as to why it has decided to close Limbo after 700 years. Opened in the early 1300s as an eternal holding place for unbaptized babies, it is thought to currently hold more than 1300 trillion gazillion willion souls and the Vatican has offered no clues as to where it plans to relocate them.
Rumours have circulated in recent year about Heaven becoming increasingly cramped, although these have been hard to substantiate due to the notorious difficuties involved in obtaining unbiased reports from the heavenly realms - the only people considered to be capable of achieving reports of a non-partisan nature, so-called "media", are not deemed to be creditable news sources.
If the rumours are indeed true, the fate of the Limbo souls would appear to hang in the balance. Asking to remain anonymous, an angel told us, "we really don't know where they're going to go. Clearly they can't be placed in temporary accommodation outside the "gates" because then they might as well just stay where they are. But Heaven already has an influx of hundreds of thousands of souls every day and we really don't know how we can just suddenly take in such a large number of souls."
There has been speculation that the Vatican's latest announcements on homosexuality are part of a concerted effort to reduce the numbers of souls entering Heaven. With so called LGBTs having to endure less oppression and rejection in many of today's modern societies, the number of homosexual souls entering Heaven in the last 20 or so years has shot up. Previously, such people, tormented by guilt and self-loathing, tended not to lead productive or happy lives and so ended up burning in Hell.

With the change in attitude towards them that has swept through much of western society, homosexuals have begun to live increasingly happy and fulfilling lives and so on dying they have been entering into Heaven in increasingly large numbers. Being a homosexual is not apparently a bar from entering Heaven or joining the US military, although the Vatican has just announced that gays will not be allowed to enter Catholic semenaries. It is not known if there is any relation betweeen the dwindling number of catholic seminarians and the increasingly large number of visible, happy and well-adjusted gays in secular life. There have been rumours of a gay "sub-culture" in Catholic seminaries but there could be no listing found for such in the popular gay venue guide Spartacus, usually a reliable source on such things. God is not believed to be worried about a gay subculture in Heaven.

It is thought the Vatican hopes that by discriminating against and oppressing homosexuals
more actively, it will cause them to return to their formerly unhappy ways of life and thus disbar themselves from entry into Heaven.

Outrage has been expressed at the Vatican's alleged plans to examine the Limbo souls for pre-natal homosexual tendencies. It is thought that any souls identified with such inclinations will be sent to burn in Hell in order to reduce the final number of souls that will be relocated to the next life and thus ease the strain at the "pearly gates". Arguments that such pre-natal tendencies, or post- for that matter, could only be considered to have been fleeting, given the short earthly life of the souls in question, appear not to have been taken into account by the Vatican council dealing with the issue. Their cyclical on homosexuality, however, does draw a distinction between "transitory" inclinations and what it calls "deep-seated" ones.


Another outcome of the Vatican decision thought to be exercising God's mind is the question of what to do with the thousands of angels who have been staffing Limbo since it opened over 7 centuries ago. One such angel reacted less than serenely to the news, saying: "it's alright for them. They're not in the least affected by the decisions they make but what the f#*! am I gonna do now? It's been hundreds of years since I was up there. It's gonna take me ages to readjust!"

There is little hope that the Vatican will backtrack on its decision, such a move normally taking centuries and usually being preceded by a long drawn out process in which the decision eventually becomes dogma and a tenet of the Catholic faith before it can be summarily discarded by a sitting pope.

God is not thought be considering sending a representative to earth to negotiate with the Vatican. The Lord is known only to have once sent a representative to earth, his white son, Jesus, just over 2 millenia ago. That visit ironically resulted in the founding of the Roman Catholic church and the Vatican. It is thought that God now believes that he was rash in sending his son and didn't think through the consequences of his action enough.

With these latest events, God has opened himself up to the charge of "taking his eye off the ball". There has been some criticism of him for spending too much time talking on the phone to US president George W. Bush. The 43rd president of the United States is on record as saying that God calls him for personal chats.