Coincidance - Principia Discordia

THE MARRIED CATHOLIC
PRIESTS' CONVENTION
Ariccia, Italy, is one of the hottest places on earth in August, but the
convention room in the Hotel Cavalcanti was even hotter than the streets
outside, where the dogs were too prostrated by heat to bark at the cats. The
air-conditioning system sputtered and cackled, and occasionally some foulsmelling
smoke oozed out of it, but the repairmen who returned twice a day
never did succeed in getting any cold air out of the vents; usually, they
produced only a temporary increase in the vile smoke, or smog, or viscous
vapor, or whatever it was that made everybody smell vaguely like a dead
skunk on the highway. It was about as restful as a poke in the eye with a
sharp stick.
The Irish priest, Father Malachi Mulligan of Galway, was sweating like a
boxer who's fought twelve rounds already and knows he lost eleven of
them on points. He still wouldn't sit down. "By Christ," he cried
passionately, "if you're a married man, and everybody calls you Father, it's
only natural to have children, is it not? And, faith, have we forgotten the
Vow of Poverty? Every time my wife starts swelling up again, I can feel
myself getting poorer. Now surely that is living up to the Vow of Poverty
and learning to identify with the poor, is it not?" He had his eye on the
Liberation Theologians, who make a big thing about living like the poor; he
knew how to score debater's points, being a Jesuit.
What the hell am 1 doing in this furnace of a room with these crazy Catholics, I asked
myself for the hundredth time, and can Paul Krassner ever pay enough to compensate
me for four days of this?
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