The Church Goes Motor City

Big story: Vatican Tightens Nocturnal Emissions Standards.

No, it's not from tomorrow's NYTimes, but today's edition of The Onion. This is priceless -- the piece's main protagonist, Cardinal Bertoli, is actually Ruini (in lace).

Check these nuggets:

"In the past 10 years, unholy emissions from young men have risen by 150 million cubic centimeters, releasing erotic-dream byproducts into the bedsheet environment," Bertoli said. "The accumulation of pollutants from millions of individual violators around the world is having a devastating effect on the moral atmosphere."

Vatican scientists believe the increase in emissions contributes to the Hothouse Effect, a steady rise in the overall temperature of the average Catholic male's genitals.

Oh, there's more:

"In this day and age, shame alone is no longer adequate to deter emitters," Boston's Father Antonio Luigi said. "Year after year, the worst polluters consistently go unpunished, leaving others to clean up the mess. Unless we start to actively regulate abuses, boys will have no incentive to curb their outputs."

Bertoli said a newly created Vatican Bedroom Purity Board will be responsible for enforcing the tougher standards. Made up of experts in an array of fields including physiology, psychology, and canon law, the ecumenical council will also conduct research into the causes of self-pollution.

The Vatican plans to establish VBPB agencies in all major cities to monitor ejaculators, and has decreed that Catholic males between the ages of 12 and 19 will undergo regular nocturnal-emissions tests in the form of laundry monitoring.

According to Bertoli, violators who soil their linens more than once per month will be subject to strict punishments, including mandatory confessionals, and fines of up to 20,000 Hail Marys per year.

Polluters who attempt to cover up evidence of their nocturnal crimes by hiding their sheets in the back of the closet will be sentenced to up to 30 minutes of the silent treatment from their mothers.

As the "hothouse effect" has ravaged our seminaries, I have the perfect nominee in mind to spearhead this effort: that uber-macho man James Mason -- not the great actor, but an aspiring dramatist in the Diocese of Sioux Falls, the author of this little ditty.

It'll give him something constructive to do as opposed to ripping up sems' Mamma Mia tickets.

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