A reader

…sends me the following with the caveat, “This is my brain on port”:

PARIS – (PEANUT) France’s First Lady said that the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings had left her feeling “profoundly seculare,” departing from her post’s traditional religious neutrality to accuse the Pope of “damaging” countries in Africa with his stance on birth control.

The daring Italian-born former supermodel and B-list popster risked enraging France’s fifteen believers and other Catholic hordes by declaring that the Pontiff’s proclamations showed that the Church needed to “le evolve”.

In March, the Pope sparked controversy while on an Africa tour by nonsensically saying that the AIDs pandemic which has crippled the continent and killed millions “can’t be resolved with the distribution of condoms; on the contrary, there is the risk of increasing the problem”.

Mrs. Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy said: “I was born le Catholique, I was baptis-ehd, and in America I could have said I was ze altar girl, but een my life I feel profoundemot seculare.”

“I find that ze controversy coming from ze Pope’s message – albeit distorted by le media – ees very damagique.”

“In Afrique it’s often Church people who look after seeck people. It’s astonishing to see la differance between ze theory and ze realite, for le Church ees not realite, only people who luuuuuvvvv-ah, ees realite.”

“I think eet’s time le Church started evolvique on thees issue. As one holding a License in Sacred Theology and a Ph.D. een immunologique, and as one who has modeled for Givenchy, Dior, and Versace, I can speak authoritativle on thees.

Zee Church presents le condome as le contraceptif which, incidentally, ze Church forbeeds, although it is zee only existing protection against la mort,” she told Les Femmes de la Redditione de la France, the women’s magazine.

The comments will cause Mr Sarkozy embarrassment in a country where, despite a concept of secularism that makes America’s “separation of church and state” look like the camp meeting in Inherit the Wind, a majority of the population was born Catholic, baptised, and if they had been raised in America could say they had been altar girls or boys.

Sauce Veloute, a constitutional historian said: “It’s unprecedented for a first lady to criticise the Pope. Charles de Gaulle’s wife was very Catholic and would never had taken up position, remaining very discreet. But then, she did not model for Guess? and de Gualle was a French man, perhaps the last one, and so the problem did not arise. The same was true of Bernadette Chirac, who, although married to a socialist, also did not model for Karl Lagerfeld.

“In my view, there is a certain obligation to keep counsel when one is the trophy wife of a head of state, such comments are not opportune. Given her public position the effects of her comments risk carrying more weight than just the personal views of Carla Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy. Besides, the move is passe — it is damaging to her image as a singer that she condemns the Pope, years after all the A-List stars have done so. Why, even Sinnead O’Connor has condemned the Pope, and she only sings in a Galway pub after closing time. Carla’s late outspoken-ness does not exactly make her the guitar-playing barmaid in Casablanca.”

Mr. Sarkozy wrote in a 2005 book The Republic, Religions and Surrender: “I acknowledge myself as a member of the Catholic Church,” even if his religious practice was, he said, “periodic, especially near election time, like America’s Catholic politicians.”

When Mr. Sarkozy visited the Pope in Rome shortly after his election in 2007, he left his then girlfriend Miss Bruni-Enthoven – a single, unmarried mother, just like the Virgin Mary – in Paris to avoid “le embarrassment.” Sources close to the Sarkozys say the decision was sparked by fears that the Pope in Rome would have ordered the child to be kidnapped and baptized. The Pope in Rome’s predecessor, Pius IX, provoked world outrage when he kidnapped Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child, from his family for the same reason.

After becoming one of Mr. Sarkozy’s wives last year Mrs Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy has campaigned against the spread of Aids in Africa, unlike the Pope, who many believe wish to see the disease continue to spread. The Pope’s stance against the use of contraceptives in Africa was roundly criticised in France – including by many Catholics, who were baptized, and might have said they were altar boys or girls if they had been raised in America. Some 43 per cent of them wanted the Pontiff to step down, according to one poll.

Mrs. Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy’s statements have also renewed rumors of an affair with U.S. President Barack Obama. Obama recently invited Catholic students at Notre Dame, America’s premier Catholic university, to “evolve into beings who could walk past an abortion clinic with the same sangfroid they might have walking past McDonald’s.” Sources close to the couple said the timing was pre-arranged. Others note that during a state visit last year, Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy and Obama were reluctant to display their affection in public. “Le bise is simply a custom of greeting,” said one, “but they were awkward, almost as if they felt guilty about something.”

Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy’s statements were met with unanimous agreement by the world’s best and brightest. “I have to agree with Carla,” said American philosopher Ron Howard, whose book, A Mayberry Epistemology: The Evil Queen Bavmoda and her Illuminati and Are Trying to Kill Us All, was hailed as a major breakthrough by medical ethicists. “I’m surprised they didn’t try to kill her. They tried to kill us, you know, when we were filming the documentary Angels and Demons. Would you mind not shaking hands? This is a germ-free zone.”

Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy’s remarks were also met with an invitation by the University of Notre Dame to accept the Laetare Medal at the university’s 2010 commencement ceremonies. Established in 1883, the Laetare Medal was conceived as an American counterpart of the Golden Rose of Trebizond, a Pope-in-Rome honor dating back to the Knights Templar. According to the University, the medal has traditionally been awarded annually to a Catholic “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity.”

Seeking to forestall controvery, the university’s president, Rev. John Jenkins, who was recently maligned by nutcases for allowing President Obama to voice his personal opinion about abortion and most definitely not for giving Obama an honorary degree, said that the University’s decision to honor Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy did not conflcit with the American Catholic Bishops’ 2004 statement, “Crushing American Democracy by our Dark Allegiance to the Pope in Rome.” The statement says, “Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Jenkins said that the award of the Laetare Medal to Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy was based on a re-imagining of the statement “supported by ZOIC studios and canon lawyers we got drunk, who advised us that it pollys only to Calics who . .. . . BWARRFGGHHH . . . explisly renize thority of shursh teaching annact . . . HIC . . . inopen defiance offit. Wheressa John?” Under this interpretation, Jenkins said, “Crushing American Democracy” would not apply to Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy because she feels that she is profoundly secular. Jenkins also said that he has “repeatedly and clearly” whispered down the patristics section of the Hesburgh Library that Notre Dame does not support Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy’s belief that the Church should le evolve.

“For the same reason,” Jenkins said, “we plan to confer an honorary degree in religious studies on Rev. Matthew Fox. We at Notre Dame believe that our reputation is maintained in part by our discernment in bestowing honors, and Rev. Fox’s contributions to religious studies, particularly by advancing the Techno Mass, mixing the old and the new, the pagan, the Christian, the Jewish and more, certainly furthers that goal.” Jenkins added that Fox was forbidden to teach theology by then-cardinal, now Pope in Rome, Joseph Ratzinger in 1988 and that Fox was expelled from the Dominican Order in 1992, and therefore awarding him a degree also does not conflict with the American Bishops’ 2004 statement.

In an apparent reaction to the controversy, but without mentioning Bruni-Enthoven-Sarkozy or Notre Dame, Msgr. Benedetto Caetani, a Vatican spokesman, read the following statement:

For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: “Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms” and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: “The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man.” This authority, however, (though it has been given to man and is exercised by man), is not human but rather divine, granted to Peter by a divine word and reaffirmed to Peter and his successors by the One Whom Peter confessed, the Lord saying to Peter himself, “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in Heaven” etc. Therefore whoever resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordinance of God, unless he invent like Manicheus two beginnings, which is false and judged by us heretical, since according to the testimony of Moses, it is not in the beginnings but in the beginning that God created heaven and earth. Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

It would appear that the whole “France: Eldest Daughter of the Church” thing is so *over*.