HOWLELUJAH!

There's been a massive decline in vocations so the Roman Catholic Church have started training dogs to perform mass. Seminaries have become kennels and new dogs are arriving all the time. They keep gobbling up the Eucharistic host but besides that the dogs are very obedient and 'faithful'. They tend not to ask questions and molest puppies so it's working out. It should come as no surprise really, they already wear dog collars and the teaching of The Church is a dogma after all. It's also worth pointing out that the word 'God' is 'dog' spelled backwards. Catholicism has never been a religion to look at things in a forward way.

Soon the parishioners will be dogs too. Numbers have to be kept up in this regard. These days, the only people left in the pews are a dwindling selection of half-mads and nearly-deads so new bodies are badly needed. The liturgy will have to be slightly altered of course, to better suit a canine laity. Quadrupedal congregations will howl the Kyrie Eleison and bark the profession of faith and instead of shaking hands to offer the sign of peace there will be a sniffing of arses ...but not in a salacious way. There will still be parts of the service where those gathered are invited to stand or sit but the kneeling parts will be replaced with rolling over.

There will also have to be some modifications to the testaments but that's happened before, it's nothing new. Instead of his crucifixion on Calvary, Christ will be brought to the vets and put to sleep. Either that or run over by a car, it has yet to be decided. Also, from now on the Devil will be depicted as a cat. There will be a new commandment too, an eleventh. It will be a simple, single word instruction: 'fetch'. Besides these modest reforms, things will remain pretty much as they are.

This development has been the cause of a great new optimism in The Church with the exception of one remaining and significant concern, the takings during the collection. Dogs are not known for their monetary nous and the upkeep of parishes requires donations. How else is 'The Word' (or 'The Bark', as it will now be known) to survive and spread? Why should it be spread at all, for surely the true purpose of 'The Word' is the generation of revenue. It's feared that without financial backing the Catholic Church will, to use an irony laced idiom, 'go to the dogs'.

This has been the word of the lord thy Dog. You may now go and piss (on a lamp post).