The Vatican is Progressive for Once

But the bad news is that it's about soccer.

To most Canadians, soccer as a sport is lethargic to watch, though we can appreciate the athleticism. They have funny rules seemingly designed to slow the game down and make it more boring: lots of diving, a strange system of penalties for fouls, excessive shootouts, very limited substitution, no time outs, and an odd thing called Silver Goal extra time, where, in a sport where the score is likely 0-0 or 1-1 heading into overtime, the teams play a full extra period regardless of whether a goal is scored.

Well, the Vatican has started up its own fun soccer league and have tweaked the rules a little bit to be more progressive, including adding time outs and a funky fresh blue card penalty which sends a player off for 5 minutes instead of a game. Cool.

Now replace the ball with a puck, play it on ice instead of grass, use sticks instead of feet, allow fighting, and replace all the pansy catholic Italians with tough-as-nails Canadians and then you'd have a real sport :-)