Re the church

Anyway, the real church of england continues plodding along. But is there anybody there in the pews who really appreciates us for what we do to stabilise the nation? Nobody understands that the archbishop of old Cantuar is second in the nation behind the queen and it is his job or her job in the future to articulate the ordinary feelings of the monarch and defend the status quo in a way that is reasonable and positive and secure. The church of england does exist and is still here - for anyone who wants to go to their own churches. These churches have been standing around now for thousands of years and it is only right that the state and the electorate looks after them with some Public Buildings legislation and works programme, as per Italy. States that do us in for not conducting weddings as seen fit by parliament should foot the bill if they want us to do the state's bidding. And why not? We are not vindictive people - we are open minded. Show forth your proofs. Convince us.  

Vicars beware

And now we have in the red corner the big heavyweights and Jim McManuses of Auntie Overseas Brigade (Canterbury), and in the blue corner the Giant Haystacks of the Home Counties Division (State dot inc). Either side knows what not to do. The devotion to the Blessed Virgin as the Mother Most Prudent arose in these scandinavian islands for a serious, solid, and sufficient reason - Ave prudentissima. And now both clergies will have to be locked up in prison for contempt of court if they refuse to conduct gay weddings in their churches. If we are the organ of the state, then we must analyse all this in terms of the state's good offices, surely? Where are all the anglican constitutional lawyers when they are needed? And between us, all because another article and farcicle upstairs in the Kesselring Headquarters near Frascati decided that she was fed up of her Gender Wars of the Nineteen Nineties, and now wants to start a new division of the western economies and churches, with her latest Marxist experiment on the west, the Orientation Wars. After this it will be the Unconditional Love wars, involving weddings to animals. Thank you so very much Brian of the doylies and Beda-driven venerabiles - But don't call us, we'll call you - in another thousand years when your big buddy below is finished being unleashed again on the poor benighted christians - oh yeah sure - thanks Brian. Thanks again Brian. Thanks a helluva lot. Besides the early christians and the young christ were kind to all the gay boys and girls and their weddings in the eastern empire between 30 AD and 490 AD. Why this sudden eruption of the chestleton-maniac politikon version of the churches? Another Lord Asriel that doesn't read his bible.

Spare a thought

Spare a thought Frs and Sisters for those few brave souls that battle on against all odds, trying to bring a little hint of high church ritual into small rural parishes where most of the PCCs prefer something american and charismatic and simply charming. These brave men and women bat on against impossible odds and cold parishes getting colder until finally they give up and collapse in a heap of public derision. We must pray for our high church brothers and sisters, and sincerely hope that they will find their true niche in the catholic churches on the other side of the Tiber. York and yorkshire are full of churches where young couples approve of a firebrand sort of charismatic preacher and why not? It is not always rational or mature or very deep but something of the fire in the belly of Jc shines forth.

Oh and congrats in order

Oh and it is congrats to ma'am and the pm for making another bit of antarctica into something recognisable and British, and why not, in a glorious reign that is now resembling that of her glorious predecessor Elizabetha la Prima. Speaking of the past, at last we now have an Italian jesuit who has examined all the recently discovered papers surrounding the provisional statement of the then holy father Pope Leo XIII on English holy orders in the ecclesia anglica from the time of Edward VI, and Fr Rambaldi has now revealed that the decision was made to null and void them only pro tem until new historical evidence emerged. The british catholic conference of bishops, sore pressed into service and hard work after being apostolic vicars, had put lots of pressure on the then secretary of state im vatikan Mgr Merry del Val, a local boy from Windsor, and a great friend of Queen Victoria, and he had been forced to ask the pope to pronounce a conservative decision though not a final one, so it was decided pro tem - until. New evidence now emergent shows that the convocation of bishops that produced the Book of Common Prayer had no intention to delete the catholic references to sacrifice and sacerdotium and only did so in text when forced to by the cajoling and threatening Lord Somerset, a bit of a Geneva-tootling bovver boy by all accounts. He was no morris minor was Lord Somerset. And the boy king was obdurate. So the intent to annull the past, or deny the catholicity of old doctrine, or to annull the Old Testament legacy of temple priestly sacrifice was not present in the minds of the authorising bishops of 1548. Hence anglican orders are probably all pretty solid - at least as intended by the prelates themselves ever since. And Princess Margaret for such reasons always genuflected when going into canglican churches - presumption was solid. Any doubt has now been erased by Common Worship which slides all the repositioning of Newman on the Big 39 Articles back into official prayers. Well done Fr Rambaldi and well done Queen Elizabeth. A good decade of research in Rome. DG.

Oh for the good old days

Oh yes, the good old days, when bishops of major sees were appointed not by some panel of laity plus canon plus MP plus police superintendent, but by a team of bishops in holy vigil and prayer, and then surrendered to the PM and the cabinet and then the Royal Assent. Those were the days, when bishops arrived at the highest of spiritual offices and dynamic missions full of the grace of ordination and consecration, but especially hallowed and sanctified by the good opinion and esteem of the icons of common sense of the nation, and fingered by the call of destiny. What today? More neo-jewish Political Correctness ideology from old mother russia, an atheist creed familiar only to the likes of old guard bolshevik spies like the Britisher agent James Joyce, and one posing as respectable pluralism, when it is in fact just another expression of the political beast that invades families which we used to call nationalist socialism. Hitler was jewish too on his mother's side. So no prizes for contradiction in the world of politics. East-coast Usa neo-jewish liberalism is not very liberal though - victims of these thought-process panels are always sent to some gulag at some Stalag 14 for clinical re-education - yissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss it still goes on, and so these modern panels of church appointments are just excuses for more moralising of a superficial kind from the old school tie mandarins of Moscow, and full of stuffed shirts pretending to be christian prelates, when they are just invading red canons. More red dawns. More silly appointments. More silly sermons. No koine greek. No theology. Just red dawn politics in all houses, bishops, clergy and laity. Come back Carey, all is forgiven. 

Aha sweet Lord we pray

Oh lord won't you buy me a mercedes benz, and this is one reason why poor boys and poor jacks are elevated to the purple in history, just to give them a better standing among their peers, and to show that the episcopal appointments committee is not wholly given over to the aristocracy and the governing classes, as they used to be called, once upon a time. But there are lots of vicars who are heading for retirement in the glorious old C of E and these are being tempted to retire first from us and then swim over the Tiber to join all the catholics, 1billion of them, in glory on the banks of vatican stadion, notwithstanding heaps of Ussr propaganda these last 3 decades about the private lives of an apparently celibate lifestyle. Still this does not deter since most vicars are intelligent enough about old style Eighties propaganda designed to destabilise western economies and churches and confidence building institutes at the centre of those systems, and they know in their hearts of hearts that the catholics do have a good system that allows for confession and weekly conversion and that nobody is cast out from the pale of the sweet Christ bar maybe those who pleasure for pleasure's sake. But the problem is that once retired and more and more are doing so, will they receive a kindly welcome over on the other side of the banks of the Tiber? Yes in Rome certainly, and in America, where the catholics are intelligent and not so servile to Boymac's propaganda in favour of women priests, but there is also the slowness of the catholic Ussr style bishops of the Kremlins of Dublin and London to respond to these sincere conscience seekers. The new working-class bishops are still finding their feet, though scarlette here would say that aristocrats make better bishops, and these new bishops, cast onto such forbidding British shores, are slowly coming to realise that they are nobodies on a forgotten soil, far from the papal states and their zones of interest, Australia and South Africa and South America. But anglicanorum coetibus has happened, so there is time for all vicars who wish to move over to consider the Cantuar retirement option - thoug this may close in 5 years time. So tis time to move over soon. Only we regret all this here on holy anglicana and the via media, since we started ordaining women to keep the queen happy. Maybe we should have. But we are losing most vicars. They do have some theology and some scripture. And some even have a bit of church history. A woman with just an O level and an A level in religious studies does not inspire confidence in motioning forward such old gnostic debates. Still we plod on. Our friend chestleton has slowed up the process over on the Tiber by imposing a temporary if not permanent block to this innovation, so he may win this debate long term. In the early churches there were many ministries that were open to women - prostasis, mathetes, didaskolon, diakonissa, katechista, presbytides, glossolator, interpres - though chestleton says these above were just ministries as per I corinthians, and not the 6 major orders of governance, diakonos, presbyteros, episkopos, metropolitanos, huper-diakonon ie cardinales, and princeps or papa-imperator.

And so many thanks

Aussies. Hmmm. Well I am sitting at my desk at the church chantry building, nr Crick, toasting both the willowy Rev Simon Godfrey and the svelte Rev Joseph Loveday, two wonderful old vicar friends of mine who are hoping to swim the Tiber in Tibet poor things, and sipping my mug of colombian coffee at the moment and praising God that the Farc rebels will no longer interrupt my international flows of precious colombian chocolate style coffee, and here on my desk is a letter from a chief wallah in Whitehall filled with fulminating rage about aussies pressing their suits on our monarch so to speak. I shall represent it in full at some point, but basically it says, why do we tolerate men in grey suits in aussie-land who have no respect for an honourable woman like young Miss Katie? Between us, between you and me, in the old days, the first person to rise to the white rage of the pulpit on the privacy rights of our monarchy families would have been the archbishop of Canterbury as the young princess's Merlin, but I see that central GHQ-anglicana has been listening to too many faceless soviet style eurocrats in other vaticanese churches for just too long. Te Russian Tsar Validimir cannot stand them all, all these old grey dinosaur type hangers-on from Tashkent, but they still mope around Brussels and Rome helas. Roll on Justin - come to our aid who have recourse to thee.