THE VATICAN, Rome — The Pontifical Academy sent out news this week that the Vatican was beginning to search far and wide for new communicants. This seemingly sudden rush to sign up new members follows quickly on the rather poor response to Pope B-Dict’s pass at the dissatisfied clergy of the Anglican and Episcopal churches of England and the USA respectively.
This search will be most unusual as it will plumb the depth of outer space itself to find and lead willing aliens to the Church. The decision to “go public” for the Pope, was decided at a recent Vatican conference on the chances of alien life in the universe, hosted at the Vatican by The Pontifical Academy.
The press were allowed to view the Q&A session relating to this news.
A question was posted to the Vatican’s new Alien Blog, appropriately called “OutOfSpace” at www.OutOfSpace.net. This question was flashed immediately to a large flat screen in the conference hall.
Question: “Doesn’t this concept of aliens conflict with church teaching in the Catholic Faith?”
Father José Aramon, a Spanish Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, answered by typing back simply: “This does not conflict with our faith. Who is qualified to place limits on the creative freedom of God?”
“Are you afraid that you will sit next to extremely alien-looking aliens at your next mass?” He continued his typing, warming to the subject. “They too are God’s creatures are they not?”
Yet another posted question was flashed on the screen: “What about the idea that God made man in his own image? Is this now a new and different God? Or a different face of our old God?”
“We are not living in the Seventeenth Century anymore now,” began Fr. Aramon, typing with measured assurance. “Surely we all know that a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth. All created by God. Just as we know that He already is responsible for the rest of our solar system.”
Then the Father smiled warmly and typed, “So now we say that there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. You must now accept this as Divine Truth, according to Pope Bene, eh, B-Dict.”
The next question was posted: “This is Helen Thomas with Hearst. I wan to know will this threaten our own world’s Christian way of life? And a followup…If this is to be the second coming of Christ heralded throughout the Bible, will the new Christ be a tentacled multi-headed Christ or just another Jesus?”
Father José thought for quite a long moment and then, smiling warmly again, he typed “Helen, my dear, so nice to see you are still asking the jaw-dropping jewels you are famous for asking.
“There will be no threat to our Christian world. These aliens may never, once they are baptised, see the need to enter into our planetary position. It is thought that they will want to remain in their own millieu, as our beloved French choose to do on Earth.” He coughed a bit, and continued his typing, “I think that you are rushing things a bit here with your followup question, my dear. There is no hint of an indication that we are arriving at the Second Coming during our lifetime.
“Besides,” he smiled as though drawing in his mind the ‘…tentacled multi-headed Christ’, “no one has actually been out there yet to document any alien visages. Even Steven Spielberg backed off when we asked him to loan us some of his renderings of aliens from his highly specialized personal library of alien images.”
The Jesuit Father leaned back smiling quietly, mopping his forehead with a napkin. It seemed as if by Papal Decree, the screen and computers went blank, stopping the conference in its tracks.
After a few moments, Fr. Aramon smiled again at the press and said “It seems that we need a few more hours or days of technical mastery to keep the blog up and running. Accept our apology for this unintentional interruption.
“The conference is ended. Go in Peace.”