The Bishop Has a Nightmare

Madeline the Prophetess's nemesis, the Monseigneur, was eventually appointed Bishop.  Now he found her heterodoxy to be troublesome.  But he was also displeased by Crazy Chester playing the trombone during the hymns and Suzette reading the Epistle!  As a matter of fact, he found the whole situation at St. Cletus's Church to be out of hand.  In his simple, male-oriented viewpoint, St. Paul had it right: women should not speak in church except to say "Amen!" 

Anyway, now that he was entitled Your Excellency, he was going to clean house.  To start with, there was that crypto-heretic Father Devereaux, who once was said to offer prayers for an L.S.U. victory over God's team, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame!  

Father Devereaux was banished to the sticks.  And he wrote letters officially silencing under penalty of excommunicating Madeline, Crazy Chester, Suzanne, the Existential Stripper, and other of that merry crew.  Having done so, he felt rather good about it all.  Back to old fashioned church discipline, with them silenced and their lax pastor farmed out in disgrace.  Having raised the hammer, he felt entitled to a third drink of Irish Whiskey; but alas, there was only Old Bushmill's from Belfast!  Still, bad Irish whiskey is better than no Irish whiskey at all.

Well, His Excellency drifted off into Dreamland*; but, being a bishop, he had a religious-themed dream.

He dreamed that a Pope in the future beatified two New Orleanians; and the dream rapidly spun into a nightmare when Pope John XXV proclaimed Blessed Madeline and Blessed Devereaux.  The smart money in the Vatican was that she would be proclaimed St. Madeline within five years; and named the patron saint of bookies!

The Bishop knew how hagiography tended to be written, and he did not want to be the villain of the piece.

He retracted the letters silencing the group from St. Cletus, and recalled Father Devereaux back to New Orleans.  Like an occasional hobbyist gambler, he wanted to hedge his bets.

*NOT that legendary and sublime barbecue joint in Tuscaloosa.