Wednesday 2 July 2014

Save a frog and send a bishop

What's it to be? Frog or Bishop, frog or Bishop,
frog or....oh, definitely the Bishop!
The Daily Telegraph of 1st July reports on a tiny species of frog that is being used in space research.

Apparently, this frog, small and insignificant and humble as it might be, has the capacity to shut down its functions and slow its body rate to such a degree that it barely appears alive.

The breathing rate slows to a virtual halt and all sensory processes are shut down.

And yet the frog, Cyclorana alboguttata, suffers not from muscle wastage, it remains as fit as a fiddle despite spending a large proportion of its life motionless, inert and inactive.

The perceived benefits of such research focus largely on aiding astronauts engaged in long haul space programme trips in remaining fit and well throughout their journey and without any loss of muscle usage due to their lack of activity.

The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (most of ‘em) have long held this secret of combining a total lack of muscle activity with no loss of actual muscle function.

They, just like Cycloranan albaguttata, are able to remain totally immobile, lifting not one finger and yet still survive without any apparent loss of body ability.

It would seem to be only fair, therefore,  if we sent a few of them up into Outer Space and saved poor old froggy, Cyclorana albaguttata, from a boring and sterile existence floating around in some space craft or other.

All nominations gratefully accepted.

9 comments:

  1. We could combine both ideas by sending a French bishop: Albert Rouet or Jean-Charles Descubes maybe

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  2. Brilliant Richard! I'm sure that not all our Bishops would qualify for this, and indeed you do not necessarily have to make a lot of noise to be a good shepherd, but you do have to be seen, heard, and recognised as a spiritual leader, loyal to Christ and His Church.

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  3. I'd go one step further than this. Where is our Cardinal in all of this? He's cropped up recently once in a 1970's 'esque' justice and peace initiative that got some air time.

    Beyond this he is the 'Invisible Man' or should I say the Invisible cardinal. He's been less visible than CMOC (and that's saying something).

    I remember Cardinal Hume always cropping up on news bulletins, but since then nothing.

    Mike

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  4. I wonder how big wee froggie's brain is and if that has any co-relation to his remarkable unaided crypto-cryogenic capacities? A couple of Christmases ago I was at a big Cathedral mass and the Bishop did preach that if 'ya don't use it ya lose it' - he was talking about 'tradition' which doesn't seem to have the special capacities of Cyclorana albaguttata.

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  5. All the Argentine Conferencia Episcopal is in outter space already, motionless in a froggy rainbow.
    Arch. Aurelio "Starman" Poli from Buenos Aires is in command of the Space Oddity, and Msgr. José María "Major Tom" Arancedo floats in the most peculiar way.
    We are back in the 70s, ya´know

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  6. I would nominate my own Timothy Cardinal Dolan from New York but he wouldn't fit into a spaceship.

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  7. I nominate the presider of the all-inclusive new-church, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Dublin. One of his latest acts has been to officially turn Catholic Colleges of Education into secular, anti-Catholic Institute of Education. We are now, officially, to have training for teachers to provide a Catholic Education, and any sign that one wants to provide a Catholic education as a Catholic teacher will probably mean penalisation, if admitted. A Natural Law philosophy of Education will be anathema (as it has been in practice for decades) and only those student teachers that espouse good old materialist philosophy will be given the good grades, references, etc. No more training of Catholic teachers. Catholic teachers are to be made extinct (as are Catholic schools). If one doesn't have Catholic teachers, one doesn't have Carholic schools.

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  8. I declare a winner. https://twitter.com/CatholicLisa/status/486260909007179777

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  9. Hmmmm...this little froggie sounds like a sophomore.

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