Sero te amavi

As our learned doctores in latin might once have said in the response-instruction to the old papal states many moons ago, in the beautiful constitution Saepe saepius, it is now a case of - Real church of england = Beautiful church of england, and our sentiments are those of a Carthaginian Augustine the young debonair poet about town, sero te amavi, o pulchritudine tam antiqua tam nova - too late have I loved thee, oh beauty so ancient and so new. For at last some cognisance has been taken of those poor benighted bishops upstairs in holy mother england who find themselves on the wrong side of a newspaper when the rumour machines start, and so being gay will no longer be a bar to ordination, we are told tonight by a happy house of bishops, and well done you compassionate shepherds of the Jesus flock and bravo reverend gentlemen. DG - after all, in an age of trial by media, when nobody will neither believe anything good about a bishop, nor anything remotely positive about his wife, and nobody will pick up the phone to give such poor misbegotten churchmice pipsqueaks even a right of reply before the violence and viciousness of tabloid publication, surely it is time to acknowledge that in an age of the media witch-hunt and the appalling judicial enquiries and processes that are initiated in Britain on the strength of this or that rumour at the local happy housewives club, then it is only wise to remove the bar and then remove the spreadsheet, and criminalise all looney homophobes accordingly within synod, and thus remove all media persecution of all these poor generous souls who did do something wonderful for God and the poor when they went forward for ordination, unlike the fatcats of media city. Sero te amavi o ecclesia anglicana.