

No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that , said the Pope, condemning the legalisation of marijuana. He might once have been a tool of the brutally oppressive Argentinean junta, but he moved on, and now he’s a kindly old pontiff, with a deep concern for the poor and the drug-addicted.

Now, the good Father Bergoglio, as we all know, is a Jesuit and therefore a man with a strong adherence to logic and consistency. How odd, therefore that Pope Francis would begin his onslaught with an attack on a drug that is legal in many first-world countries, a drug that is not addictive, while at the same time overlooking the presence of a deadly dangerous addictive chemical at the heart of the ritual that forms the basis for his entire church.

I speak, of course, of ethanol, C 2 H 5 OH, commonly referred to as alcohol and perhaps the most destructive drug known to mankind.

Why isn’t the Pope insisting on non-alcoholic wine in the Mass? Wouldn’t it make sense and wouldn’t it be consistent with his stated opposition to the use of drugs?

No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that.

It’s hard to work this out, unless the Pope has decided that the ethyl alcohol is essential to the business of creating Jesus from nothing. Maybe the whole thing is a chemical process, and you can’t have the full Jesus unless you have the full-on liquor first.

For clarification, let me just remind collapsed non-believers what the central belief of Catholicism is: during the sacrament of the Eucharist, the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

That’s the teaching. They don’t symbolise the body and blood of Jesus. They actually are those things. And what’s more, the bread isn’t the body while the wine is the blood. Each of them is the body and blood.

It actually is Jesus right there, that you’re eating, or drinking.

I didn’t make this up. That’s the teaching, and if you don’t believe it, you can’t be a Catholic.

Clearly, therefore, Father Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, believes that when his priests wave their hands at the wine, turning it into the body and blood of Jesus, somehow the C 2 H 5 OH becomes neutralised by the words and the hand-waving, leaving nothing but Jesus in the chalice. If you swallow this stuff, you don’t get drunk, because it’s not alcoholic.

Now, it’s not often you’ll hear me supporting the Catholic church, but I had an idea.

Pope Francis would never say anything unless he had already thought out his position, because after all, Pope Francis is a clever fellow. When he says No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that, he’d be well aware that a commoner such as I might point out the problem with the wine, and therefore the only obvious answer is that he already knows the alcohol is gone once the priest waves his hands at the drink. Nothing left but Jesus.

There are many sceptics in the world. Many disbelievers. It’s a fact of life, sadly. Belief isn’t what it used to be.

And therefore, maybe some enterprising bishop might form an alliance with the local senior police officer to prove that transsubstantiation really does work.

Give ten volunteers a bottle each of consecrated wine to drink and ten more a bottle of normal plonk. Then have the cops breathalyse them. If the consecrated drinkers pass the test that’s your proof right there in front of you.

Of course, obviously, there will be problems. Rogue priests and defrocked clerics will set up a mobile service outside pubs and clubs to bless the liquor as it ferments in your belly, but that’s ok too. It means you’ll be driving home with no alcohol in your system, though you will have an awful lot of Jesus, praise the Lord.

If we extended this nationwide, we could have a consecrating satellite in geo-stationery orbit above the country, turning all the alcohol in the land into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, wiping out the scourge of drunken driving at a single stroke.

All praise to Pope Francis for coming up with the idea, bless him.