Sic holds no official position with regard to the president and Monica Lewinsky, but if another Iraq war breaks out we’re sure glad Linda Tripp is on our side.

It’s not easy being Sic. “Now you’ve gone and done it,” yells Hope Springer at us. “Hope told you that Mother Angelica was a bigger story than infallibility. If you hadn’t messed up our MA Fan Club, we could be making some real money now.” She’s referring to what we more elegantly called the Amazing Big Sic Mother Angelica Fan Club (or something), which, sad to say, never got off the ground.

“Mother has experienced the Mother of All Miracles,” Hope (not even her real name) goes on. A visitor, it seems, came visiting Angelica. Our Lady appeared to the (unnamed) visitor, but not to Angelica. (Doesn’t this, all by itself, raise certain questions?) In the midst of these wonders, someone told Angelica to pitch the crutches.

“Before you can say Cunagunda she’s heeled (sic) and dancing,” writes Hope. (Note: Sic has long scorned the lowly sic with a small s ’cause we expected readers to be on their critical toes at all times. But now even Sic’s sister the nun says she’s stopped reading This Space ’cause it’s too much work. This doesn’t say much for blood being thicker than water, but we get the message and intend to use small sic to nudge readers along.) Back to Mother A and the miracle: Hope adds, “Her sisters are using the discarded braces as holders for roses.” Is this a scoop?

Gail and James Robinson of Chula Vista noticed the sticker on a car occupied by two “very stately looking ladies.” “I love the old Latin Mass,” the sticker said. Only someone had rubbed out the M in Mass.

Paul Jeffrey, esteemed NCR journalist, writes from Honduras that Castro and the pope were walking by the sea in Havana when wind blew JPII’s hat into the ocean. Fidel walked a hundred yards across the water to retrieve the papal chapeau.

Next day’s headline in Cuba: “Fidel walks on water.” In the Osservatore Romano: “Pope makes Fidel walk on water.” In The Miami Herald: “Fidel can’t swim.”

These are described as “Stephen Wright one-liners”:

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

I’m not cheap, but I am on special this week.

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

I intend to live forever -- so far, so good.

Televangelists: the pro wrestlers of religion.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

I poured Spot Remover on my dog. Now he’s gone.

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

And how about this from Kathleen Bridel in Toronto: “Imagine my surprise to see one of my three cats mentioned in your column as a name for a potential new pope.”

She’s referring to the enigmatic Cardinal Nemo who sent Sic our now legendary red hat. Bridel inherited Nemo (the cat) from a friend: “I had no idea why she chose that name until the vet said Nemo was the captain in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” She even sent This Space authentication from the vet that Nemo has been successfully vaccinated against “distemper, rhino, calici, pneumo, leukemia and rabies.” (Where else but in Sic would you get information like this?) Obviously Nemo (the cat) is Sic’s Pet of the Week.

If you think we’re giving Hope Springer the last word on Mother A, you’re dead wrong. PaulineAS, on the Web, said that the following, sung to the tune of Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susanna,” was written by “the talented DCGuerra”:

Oh, she’s beamed from Ala-bam-my
On the boob tube, don’t you see,
But she got in lots of trouble
When she took on Ma-ho-ny.

Refrain:

Oh, Momma Angie, don’t you beat your breast,
’Cause he’s gonna pull the plug on you
And give that mouth a rest.

(Can you stand one more stanza?)

Oh, she’s big on scrupulosity
And holier than thou,
And she won’t give an apology
So she’s in trouble now.

With all this cyberspace, Sic is not safe from anyone, including Jacinta Mann, who begins, “Actually I don’t have time this a.m. to be fooling around with jokes, but this one is too good not to share: Bill Clinton, Bill Gates and Al Gore were in a plane crash ... “

Sic is sure you’ve heard it already. Finally Bill Gates says to God up above, “I believe you’re sitting in my chair.”

Elizabeth Gavula from Flourtown couldn’t resist buying Sic a copy of Grunt: Pigorian Chant, the work of Snouto Domoinko de Silo, complete with CD, with passages like “Macdonaldus Senex fundum habet, E-I-E-I-O. Et in hoc fundo nonnullos porcos habet, E-I-E-I-O.”

It even sounds good, at least to Sic’s tin ear.

This year again, Sic’s popular Swimsuit Issue has been canceled.

National Catholic Reporter, February 27, 1998

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