The original author of the first six paragraphs of this satire is unknown. If the author happens upon this page, please contact me from the email icon at the bottom of this page and I will proclaim your authorship to the rooftops. The original has been widely quoted; however, in light of recent developments in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, I felt that an update was sorely needed.

The liberal theologians would point out that such a passage did not of course mean that the cat literally sat on the mat. Also, 'cat' and 'mat' had different meanings in those days from today, and anyway, the text should be interpreted according to the customs and practices of the period.

This would lead to an immediate backlash from the Evangelicals. They would make it an essential condition of faith that a real, physical, living cat, being a domestic cat of the felix domesticus species, and having a whiskered head and furry body, four legs and a tail, did physically place its whole body on a floor covering, designed for that purpose, and which is on the floor but not of the floor. The expression "on the floor but not of the floor" would be explained in a leaflet.

Meanwhile, the Catholics would have developed the Feast of the Sedentation of the Blessed Cat. This would teach that the cat was white and majestically reclined on a mat of gold thread before its assumption to the Great Cat basket of Heaven. This is commemorated by the singing of the Magnificent Cat, lighting three candles, and ringing a bell five times.

This would cause a schism with the Orthodox Church which believes that tradition requires Holy Cats Day (as it is colloquially known) to be marked by the lighting of six candles and ringing the bell four times. This would partly be resolved by the Cuckoo Land Declaration recognizing the validity of each.

Eventually the Anglican House of Bishops would issue a statement on the Doctrine of Feline Sedentation. It would explain that, traditionally, the text describes a domestic feline quadruped superadjacent to an unattached covering of a fundamental surface. For determining salvific and eschatological significations, they follow the heuristic analytical principles adopted in dealing with the Canine Fenestration Question ("How much is that doggie in the window?") and the Affirmative Musaceous Paradox ("Yes, we have no bananas") And so on, for another 210 pages.

The General Synod of the Church of England would then commend this report, without officially endorsing it, as a helpful resource for clergy as they explain to the person in the pew the difficult doctrine of the cat sitting on a mat.

The Primate of All Nigeria would issue a statement denouncing the cat for having sat on a mat in such a way that it might be inferred from its behaviour that it was not a heterosexual cat. He would call on his brother bishops and Primates to unstintingly uphold the doctrine that the Church had held since time immemorial, that Feline Sedentation could only be celebrated by heterosexual cats; homosexual cats were not welcome except to be called to solitary Sedentation, without any partner to complicate things.

The Primates of the Global South called Felines Sedentary who were not of the heterosexual persuasion to consider whether they should not submit themselves to the ex-feline-gay ministries of Felix Courageous, Inc. These ministries try, through prayer, fasting (no fish on Fridays), and other privations such as withholding the ball of yarn, refraining from scratching the necks of those F.S.es when they approach people of the same sex, and making sure that their litter boxes are segregated, to change the attitudes of these F.S.es so that they will sit in such a way as to project heterosexuality rather than homosexuality. In extreme cases they may be neutered.

David Virtue's column carried a story: "Sedentary Felines are Undermining Biblical Inerrancy" in which unnamed sources told Virtue that the future of the feline race would be threatened if the Feast of the Sedentation of the Blessed Cat were not cleaned up so that those who did not observe it could find it in their consciences to stay in the Communion.

Archbishop Rowan Williams mused on the question of whether Christ would have petted a Feline Sedentary or whether He was, perhaps, allergic to the creatures. If he were allergic, what would that mean to the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ, especially in regards to the possibility of God being allergic to part of His creation? He went on to write a 500-page tome on the matter "The Historical Sneezes", which promptly went on the Church Times Best-Sellers List for 25 weeks straight. No one who bought the book understood it, but it was good to hold down coffee tables. When asked, Archbishop Williams denied ever meeting the Primate of All Nigeria and stated that he might at some point in the future, consider whether anyone cared about the unity of the Anglican Communion, and if so, he'd write a book about it.

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