From mit-eddie!ns.gte.com!gte.com!jmc0 Fri Oct 27 00:54:27 1995 Return-Path: Subject: God Sues Catholic Church for Undercount of Angels From: David Sewell Path: in1.uu.net!looking!funny-request Date: Tue, 24 Oct 95 12:20:07 EDT [This is original --DS] VATICAN CITY, October 18 (API) -- Vatican officials confirmed today that the Roman Catholic Church is the defendant in a civil suit filed by Almighty God, who claims that a Biblical undercount of the angels glorifying Him reflects the Church's institutional antisemitism. "No question, this is a copycat lawsuit derived from recent events in the United States," said a Vatican spokesman. "Apparently God has been listening to the Minister Farrakhan and getting ideas of his own." The suit alleges a miscount in Revelations 5:11, where St. John relates his vision of the Throne of God: "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne . . . and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands." "It's an insulting figure, barely over 100 million," explained an attorney from the Roman firm of Squalo and Parassita, who are representing God. God contends that the angels St. John saw covered the entire heavens between the seventh sphere and the empyrean, and totalled some 1.2 billion. "We have photographs showing ten angels dancing on the head of a pin," said God, "and St. John is claiming there was space between them? Preposterous." The lawsuit alleges that St. John deliberately undercounted the angels out of "gross antisemitism" to belittle the success and influence of God, who is Jewish, and that the Catholic Church compounded the misdeed later when it canonized the Book of Revelations. (In a related development, the Vatican had no comment on unconfirmed reports that the Pope is planning his own lawsuit against the New York City Parks Department for underestimating attendance at his recent Central Park open-air mass as a result of "pervasive anti-Polish prejudice throughout New York City government.") -- Selected by Jim Griffith. MAIL your joke to funny@clari.net. Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. If you don't need an auto-reply, submit to rhf@clari.net instead.