Some of you managed to squeeze out polite interest in perhaps seeing more entries from the private diary of His Excellency Most Reverend F. Atticus (“Fatty”) McButterpants. You are kind.
Keep in mind that I have no idea when they might show up. When they do there is the challenge of transcribing his crabbed and rather puerile handwriting. Pages are photographed by the mole. Sometimes there are gaps in the dates. You get the idea.
Anyway, here is one that came in a while back. It’s a little dated but nevertheless instructive.
It helps to know that “Fr. Tommy” is Fatty’s long-suffering, trad-ish-leaning priest secretary, driver, factotum who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
June 3rd 2022
Dear Diary,
To relieve the stress of all this Vos Estees thing dumped on me by my predecessor, good ol’ “Feel The Byrne”, I ordained two guys as transitional deacons. Luis and Butch are great guys. They could be good priests if Luis can ever learn enough English, and Butch lasts at least five years before he dies. He’s old enough to be my dad, damn it.
Fr. Tommy’s sweet grandma, who keeps sewing those weird vestments for him (black ones?), came up to me after the ordination and whispered to me something like, “you need some wimpies.” I had no idea what she was talking about. Maybe hamburgers? Fr. Tommy said she said “vim pay”. He showed me a picture of a “vim pay” on his phone and tried to explain what they were for but I wasn’t really listening. They look like some kind of thing people can throw what they pay into these instead of into those collection baskets. “vim pay” like pay pal?
Follow up….
July 17th 2022
Tommy’s gran sent me two wimpies. They are like long towels. My coat of arms are on them. Why? I don’t know. Nice of her to do all that work. I hope to god she doesn’t do it again. We have plenty of collection baskets. I unfolded them and left them hanging across my desk for a few minutes while I went to find Sr. Randi, and dang it if Chester didn’t drag them off and tear them to shreds in record time. He peed on them too, of course. So much for that.
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“When they do there is the challenge of transcribing his crabbed and rather puerile handwriting.”
Alas! For a second Horace to arise and transcribe such treasured nugatoria into metrical latin.
That way, assuredly, your divulgences would never be discovered.
You’ve lost me on this one. What is this wimpie thing supposed to be? I would have thought wimple, but the shape sounds wrong and this guy’s supposed to be a bishop.
You could even turn it into a Peter Simple type world, populated with a variety of diocesan characters: the aging hippie pastor, the poor novice traditionalist curate, the ultra-modern music director, the nutty parish council Karen, the scheming, ambitious chancellor, and so on.
[But… but… Peter Simple was fiction!]
@michele421 “You’ve lost me on this one. What is this wimpie thing supposed to be? I would have thought wimple, but the shape sounds wrong and this guy’s supposed to be a bishop.”
Read Vimpa as in the phonetical spelling in the diary. Of course Bishop Fatty wouldn’t know the correct spelling or pronunciation.
Ah, the vimpa, plural vimpae! A sort of humeral veil for altar servers who hold the Bishop’s crozier and mitre (when His Excellency isn’t using them himself) so that the servers’ hands don’t come into direct contact with these items. “Vimpae” when pronounced classically would give you the “w” sound, I suppose, which must have been what our good Bp. McButterpants must have heard…
@michele421 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimpa
I wonder if the Bishop of Black Duck is a better speller. Did Bishop McButterpants go to Catholic schools?
I look forward to reading more. I am praying for the mole.
I know of a bishop who seems much like McButterpants, but I’m sure it’s not him—there are unfortunately so many of them—even with the coincidental similarities to their names.
@ajf1984
““Vimpae” when pronounced classically would give you the “w” sound, I suppose,”
I like the idea that Fr. Tommy’s grandmother is both a liturgical antiquarian of great taste, and also an adherent to the “classical pronunciation” of Latin. Perhaps a convert, the last of the Oxford movement Anglicans.
Actually made one of those wimpie thingys. I am smiling.