Pope Muzak [FICTOID]

“I’m only required to be celibate,” said Pope Muzak.  “Nothing in the rules says I can’t get married.”

The archbishops squirmed uncomfortably.  “We acknowledge that, your holiness.  We simply question the wisdom of this particular union.”

“What’s to question?  I’m in love.”

“With a lily,” said the archbishops.

“With the lily,” said Pope Muzak, his eyes going all anime big and dreamy at the thought.  “The most perfect lily of all time.”

“That is true, your holiness, but still…a lily?”

“Gays and lesbians marry each other all the time.”

“Not within the Roman Catholic Church,” said the archbishops.  “And besides, that’s one human marrying another human.  This…lily…isn’t human.”

“We let nuns marry Jesus all the time,” said Pope Muzak.  “He’s not human.”

The archbishops squirmed uncomfortably again.  “We’ve been over this before,” they said.  “Jesus is both God and man incarnate -- “

“He bopped off into heaven,” said Pope Muzak.  “He ain’t here no mo’.  Our nuns are marrying at best a rhetorical construct, not a living human being.  If they can do that, I can marry my lily -- at least it has physical form.”

“Is the lily male or female?” the eldest archbishop asked.

“I think lilies are hermaphroditic,” said the youngest archbishop, “though that wasn’t my particular field of study in seminary.  I was much more into transubstantiation theory.”

“Yes, yes, we know, we know,” sighed the archbishop in the middle, hurrying to head off the youngest archbishop before he could launch yet again into a spirited defense of his PhD dissertation.  “This lily has both male and female sex organs.”

“The lily has a wee-wee and a yoo-hoo?” asked the eldest archbishop.

“They’re called stamen and pistils,” said the archbishop in the middle, not for the first time that morning regretting not joining his brother in the pub-keeping business. 

“Wee-wees and yoo-hoos,” said the eldest archbishop.

“All that is immaterial,” said the youngest archbishop. 

“No, my lily is material,” said Pope Muzak.  “That’s why I can marry her.”

“I meant imm aterial in the rhetorical debate sense,” said the youngest archbishop.  “And should you be using ‘her’ as a pronoun?  Shouldn’t you use a more gender neutral one such as ‘ze’ or ‘they’?”

“’They’ is improper,” said the archbishop in the  middle.

“You needn’t be judgmental,” said the youngest archbishop.  “That’s an accepted singular non-gender specific pronoun now.”

“’That’ is?” the archbishop in the middle asked, puzzled.

“No, not ‘that’ but ‘they’,” the youngest archbishop offered helpfully.  “’They’ is an accepted singular non-gender specific pronoun in English  now.”

“We’re not speaking English,” said the archbishop in the middle.  “This is the Vatican, we speak Latin.”

“Yeah, but we’re being written in English.”

“We know.  It’s a miracle,” said the archbishop in the middle, crossing himself twice in a display of extra piety.

“There you go,” said Pope Muzak.  “God clearly blesses this union.  No more arguments.

“Now, I want a big wedding, one that fills the basilica.  Who do we know who handles catering?”

© Buzz Dixon