Bless us and splash us!

One of my kids' favourite jokes (OK, one of my favourite jokes, to which the kids have been conditioned to respond appreciatively) is this:

Ben: Knock, knock
Unsuspecting Child: Who's there?
B.: John
U.C.: John who?
B: (splashes U.C. with water from concealed source) John the Baptist!
U.C.: (Appreciative laughter)

Or something like that.

But the Thirsty Gargoyle pointed out another, rather sadder, joke involving St John the Baptist, on Twitter last night.  More of an irony really.

Pope Paul VI's note, authorising the new Lectionary, which systematically cuts nearly everything about St John the Baptist from the cycle of Sunday Gospel readings, was dated, by the Pope Paul 'The feast of St John the Baptist, June 24, 1969' 

And he would not himself have been aware of that irony, as he himself admitted: 'I have not been able to get a complete and detailed grasp of this new and extensive Ordo lectionum Missae.'