AFTERTHOUGHT
Feast of fools
JOHN WELLS
Five hundred Capuchin monkeys, some of them virgins and packed fifteen to a crate one foot by two feet by three, have been bought by the Vatican at an estimated cost of one New Penny a head in order to be used in what are described as liturgical ex- periments'. This shock leak from the Papal balcony comes as a fitting climax to the cur- rent Season of New Understanding and Reproachment with Labourers in the Vineyard of Publicity and Journalism an- nounced by the Pope in his Bull De Episcopo Meretribusque of last December, and now in full swing at Cad Toppolino, the Pope's private funfair and amusement park outside Naples.
According to sensationally presented reports in the official Vatican newspaper, Sgandale, the apes were persuaded to leave their homes in the Dublin Zoo with offers of lucrative contracts in hairdressing, tap-danc- ing and nuclear physics, and discovered too late the true fate that awaited them. Father Pandar O'Beare, the chunky evangelist who recruited them, now claims to have made over seventy-five thousand New Irish Pounds on the deal and has retired to the South of France to lie on the beach and smoke large cigars. Meanwhile the unfortunate monkeys, many of them with only a smattering of Church Latin, have been thrown in at the deep end of what Cardinal 'Ethel' Oregon, the popular counter-tenor of Farm Street has described as 'this exhilarating acid-bath of Oecumenism, in which we immerse ourselves with joy to re-emerge transformed.'
The initial series of liturgical experiments, about which both the British RSPCA and the International Amateur Athletics Association have lodged formal protests, are being con- ducted in the newly-installed 'Spiritual Gym- nasium' in the Vatican Bowl, under the supervision of Cardinal Primo Camera, the one-time ballet-dancer and broadcaster. Based loosely on a Peter Brook-style feeling for other peoples' bodies in a metaphysical 'gym', the Spiritual Gymnasium allows the Cardinal a maximum of freedom in re- examining the structure of the Catholic Liturgy.
To the accompaniment of electronic music, explosions and 'natural sounds' the Capuchins are encouraged to climb ropes, swing on trapezes, scamper up and down wall-bars, adopt original and unusual posi- tions either alone or in the company of other monkeys, and generally to improvise a balletic counterpoint to the text of the services, offices and sacraments. At pre-ar- ranged moments hatches are opened, releas- ing intoxicated goats, dogs with firecrackers tied to their tails, white-faced clowns and merry midgets with trumpets and drums, and this, according to the Cardinal, 'introduces an element of the erotic-irrational, ever present at corporate worship, and of necessity meet to be included in the choreographed corpus of the act.' As a result many of the monkeys have gone bald with terror.
But the question that must be raised sooner or later by any keen animal-lover is 'Why the monkeys?' Coming from the theologically underdeveloped environment of the Dublin Zoo, where even the lions are obliged to subsist on a fish diet on Fridays. how can they experience anything but first degree shock on being exposed to such novelties? Why not the Dutch or the French, long accustomed to giddy gyrations and dizzy feats of liturgical expertise? The answer put forward by the Vatican is not reassuring, and must give rise to the very gravest concern on the part of monkeys and their adherents everywhere.
In a nutshell, it is that humans could not stand the strain. Only those gymnastic and religious exercises found after repeated ex- periments with the Capuchins to be non-in- jurious to the brain or the nervous system are passed on to progressive liturgists, and even then the human participants are sub- mitted to rigorous check-ups before, during and after the more violent rites. Meanwhile the woe-faced Slave Apes of the Vatican sit shivering in niches high up on the gym- nasium wall, hang morosely by one hand and a toe from the dangling ropes, or lie ex- hausted on their ba5lcs, squinting with ex- haustion, always in fear of the tinkling of the silver bell that announces a fresh erruption of dwarves, tumblers, dogs and enraged livestock.
The Pope's love of publicity is under- standable: his is an ancient and ram- shackle organisation, and anything that lends momentum to his creaking bandwagon is to be encouraged. Let him sanction sensational 'mind-blowing' high-jinks and psychologically unsettling jiggery-pokery for his long-suffering human flock, but when it comes to decent, God-fearing Irish apes, hands off, Your Holiness, hands off!
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