In recent years, English Catholicism has been on the rise - partially likely to do with European immigration. Even Tony Blair got in the act post-Prime Ministerial duties, with a swift conversion.

It should be said that it's not that the average interpretation of the Catholic doctrine has got any more sensible or relevant to every-day life. Although the Poorhouse is sure that there is a compassionate minority, the high-and-mighty within the organisation still tend to have wacky and dangerous views on hot topics such as abortion, medical science, gays, contraception, backed up by a guy who by definition is always right, even should he come out with anti-scientific hate-speech.

Unfortunately, a recent exercise in untraditional Vatican transparency has only revealed more dangerous ludicrosity, if one believes the reports.

The doors into the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Penitentiary was slightly opened in recent times. This is a tribunal that for over 800 years has been ruling on matters relating to the forgiveness of massive sins. And they mean massive.

Until recently, us, the general population did not know exactly what sins this would include, although we could have made (probably inaccurate) guesses of course. Luckily, a two-day conference in Rome has revealed exactly that information.

Guesses? Rape? Murder? Genocide? No, don't be silly, these aren't that bad.

While priests and bishops can deal with confessions of sins as grave as murder or even genocide, the tribunal is reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious.

More serious than genocide? Bring it on! Here's a list of the sort of cases that Catholics apparently deem rather more serious than the attempted extermination of a race of humans.

• Attempted assassination of the pope: OK, we'll grant them that one. The Pope is of course the head of all good things, and descended from a saint, so it would be pretty annoying to destroy the one connection to God. Clearly this man's life is worth at least as much as the 6 or 7 billion others on the planet.
• Gossiping about what some mere mortal told them in the confession box. In a way, that's good to know for the confessors the Poorhouse guesses. No danger of being held legally accountable for your sins in this life, at least. And presumably not the next, should you be forgiven.
• As a priest, having sex with someone and then forgiving them for your act. But it has come up before that sex crimes, even against animals and children, are supposed to remain secret within the organisation. And if you just give them a good seeing to, and don't bother trying to forgive them afterwards, then the Poorhouse guesses the issue can remain within the standard confessional box.
• Participating in an abortion and then wanting to become a priest. And participating includes given the poor lady a bit of cash in order to get it done properly. The pope has to get a bit involved here because you get excommunicated right away for this sort of behaviour, and it's hard to be an official in a religion you have been thrown out of
• Defiling the Eucharist. This translates basically to doing anything with the blessed communion wafer other than consuming it right away. So for example, when a student tried to take one home to explain about it to a friend ignorant in the ways of Catholicism. "Millions" of catholics worldwide became intensely angry at this situation, and a few even managed to post off death threats to the guy. To be fair to the angry, one should note however that this is thought to be the body of Christ - with one priest explaining the situation to the press via a kidnap non-metaphor.

This - although it might not seem like it - is not supposed to be a rant against the insanity of Catholics generally. The Poorhouse isn't one, but hey, believe what you want - as long as it does not hurt other people. It's not like other religions, including the other religion de la jour, Islam, don't have their own share of people purporting to follow them to a degree that could be described as highly harmful. And there are plenty of people who practice their own form of evil without trying to shift the blame onto a God. There are surely also some lovely people following every religion, and also nice people that don't believe in a God.

It could even be some misreporting. It might make more sense if "religious-only" sins had their own minor department in the Vatican to be dealt with because the majority of blaspheming et al. which is indeed offensive to the population of that organisation but (rightly) probably won't attract much police attention unless it gets way out of hand.

But if it is true that a key ruling tenet of Catholicism really insists that slipping someone a fiver to assist their efforts to remove an unwanted egg-sperm fusion, or borrowing what to many people is simply a symbolic foodstuff, is so much more "serious" a crime than genocide then they are either risking yet more credibility loss, or, if not, then one has to be a little concerned that it's apparently a growing force here in today's world.