Oh not that again

The flogging off of the household silver was a permanent gash in the side of a cabinet once, used to much cabernet, much like the Titanic that became the dying career of Mrs T, but some societies never learn from her demise until their good ship Titanica is way beyond the newfoundland banks, and under them, like the new moderne Church of England, guided by Rowan and the red canons of the old CSSR, turning old churches into the vending machines of bankers. Where's the soviet union now archbishop? Bishops - indeed. As if such apostles of mammon if not maimmonides might know what to do with a sacred space built by humble believers centuries ago, precisely on the understanding that these churches would have presbyters in them that would go on celebrating the christian passover for the souls of the poor in perpetuam and ad infinitum. Who gave these bishops the authority to sell off the patrimony of the poor? Especially to fat-cats rolling in other people's money, creaming off the food of the nation, banking huge bonuses in swiss bank accounts, auto-authorising huge private loans to themselves, and generally honking all the spare cash and quantitative easing in the nation for their own speculations and their 101 jobber boys on the floors of the stock markets of Hong Kong? Duffy's Stripping of the Altars and Voices of Morpeth might be read slowly with profit by all above us in our vicarages. Selling the church plate and building a king's fleet in 1525 might actually turn out to have bin a bit more honourable than flogging the bricks of the poor to the filthy and the rich in their banks. ATMs giving glory to God - show us how, dear old father to the commons? Guy - come back, all is forgiven.

Mmmm

Yass in the good old days of the good old CoE, Canterbury used to run summer schools in church and state, and everybody knew where they stood, what the crown was, and why the crown had had to intervene in church affairs to secure the common good. Ah yes those were the days.

Not again dearest Rowan

So their lordships and ladyships of the General Synod have resolved not to resolve, decided not to decide, defined not to define, and pronounced dogmatically that there is not sufficient grounds for a new dogma of sensible inclusivity, and promptly cancelled the next move into the future of the good old CoE. Oh I wish for the old CoE when men with real theological acumen could just make a decision without sociological politics and survey driven reports entering every theological debate. All this indecision will go up to the House of Commons for the usual parliamentary ratification to make all this stuff amount to GB domestic law, and then on to her majesty at Balmoral for the usual Royal Assent. And what then? And what then indeed my noble lords and ladies of the hesitant left? Doubtless her glorious majesty, long may she reign, will victorious all over the ladyships and lordships of her lower chambers, and remind them that if they can accept governance by the supreme governor who is by the way a glorious female and therefore a multi-tasker and therefore a superior form of life compared to the inglorious and monochromic dullard dull-witted velociraptor male, then why can't they authorise feminine and female bishops, for goodness sake? Besides, as Ian Hislop has said in his wonderful magazine, we have been ordaining them for years, darlings of the Za Za Gabor circuits! But, sincerely, as we like to do things in the good old church of england, what is the problem? The issue was never, women can do what men can do just as well honestly ma'am, but who ordained the male numbskulls in the first place, when there were perfectly superior multi-taskers around for centuries? Besides, if memory serves me correctly, the monarch was precisely brought into church affairs in the time of Queen Ann Boleyn to deal with the maladroit excesses vis-a-vis boys in 1524 of those apparently superior and better educated male dandies of the lower clergy and seculars to solve the problem of male witless celibates and give them wives who could keep them on the straight and narrow, and also to address their cataclysmic inability to resolve simple reformation debates in favour compromise and common sense. So hurry on now general synod, let us not trouble the Queen for too long with yet more indecision. We must resolve to resolve, and devil take the rest - besides all the naughty boys who have consciences of an over-sensitive antique kind can pop over to the dreaded catholic overlords, and take an early retirement package from us surely, n'est-ce-pas? It is all a simple tempete dans une tasse de the, methinks. The Queen is waiting now ..  for a nice cup of strong tea, and not endless simpid coffee from synod.