Aha - Stephen

Christmastide and the festival of the Theotokos reminds us all in the dear Old Church of England that Stephen is our proto-martyr and deacon, if he is one of the hoi eptoi of Acts 6 which few deny nowadays in up to date scholarship. More importantly Stephen Hawking is discovering what martyrdom is presently, now that he has denied that absolute event horizons really do exist around black holes as was thought to be the case in some of the more fanta-scienza moments of modern astronomy, with all the geeks and nerds cheering it all on back at base at Nasa. Something like our own church too where black holes have existed from time to time, like expensive back room clergy, swallowing up huge reserves, or like the building maintenance funds of various dioceses, where really the state should be funding all the repairs to these national monuments such as cathedrals if not parish churches. After all if it is a state church and they wish to keep it that way, the state should cough up the funding. Why should vicars spend their days and nights worrying about funds? A german tax relief system might be a good way forward in Britain - 10% of one's 20% of income tax to go to a charity of one's choice and so on. That way everybody is happy - After all in a new age now that the War on Terror is over and the Cold War gone, the peace dividend should mean no more higher tax rates. V - coe.

Letters

Dear Reverend Pastor -

I have thought long and hard since I attended the great Canon Hawking's sessions on clergy procedures, and have oft since opined that a new category of penalty of "bringing the churches into disrepute through excessive controversy" - this could be devised to stop any of the literalist evangelical clergy preaching downright outrageous gibberish not only about the Book of Genesis which is excruciating to watch and read, but helas also chiefly about their own interpretations of the Book of Revelation and then from a position of total humiliating un-reason, throwing up all over the Auntie Overseas in Rome - she is not by the way the whore of babylon that these pastors keep indicating, in their appalling inability to read the book in the original Greek, but rather, she is an imperial administration of the Eternal Christian Empire whose rep of the king of kings keeps all local and national monarchies of a smaller hue in good shape. Besides she only intervenes in smaller empires and monarchies as she says ratio peccati when some local monarch's family have caused so much scandal as to be a desecration of the original anointing of the coronation. We no longer need gibberish from evangelicals who have neither the Greek or even the German to read modern biblical exegesis. The whole situation is so embarrassing for its high decibels of utter and total ignorance as to make of my task as a high-church ecumenical officer an insurmountable mountain. Fountains away.

Wells next the sea

It sometimes comes to pass that learned canons and doctors of the law in the Grand old Church of England get into a tizzy or a lather about some matter or other which is alleged to be this or that contravention of the anglican communion's codex of canon law. What! everyone screeches? What codex of canon law? If one were to pop into any church of note on the anglican circuit one would find a copy of the canons of the Church of England, B1, B4, B12 and so on which amount to an extension into practice of the Articles of Religion. There all is revealed. Controversy then is sometimes calmed by such canons which soon settle disputes about say what is or is not a contravention. Sometimes this is about the grounds of transfer of a vicar, say for christological doctrine violations or aberrations in ritual or even for lithe and lissom irregularity in conduct unbecoming, and sometimes this is about the law on blasphemy, as per Bath and Wells diocese, though in the latter case the state might conceivably get involved, as my learned colleague Lord Somerset has it on his site, The Rights of the State, at www.blogger.com. Generally though we in the Real Church of England do like to do our laundry in secret, to iron out our squabbles in camera, in private, according to our own juristical rules and regulas. It beats going to the PM's office or his policy unit. God forbid that the Queen, the supreme governor, should get involved too! Constitutionally speaking the country is a christian democratic state, so the blasphemy laws and statutes do obtain for serious infractions of respect to the divine names. But we shall leave that to the Queen to resolve - she has some gravitas in an age lacking thereof.

How blessed

How blessed is he who leads a country life, devoid of a trouble, devoid of a strife. With such words from the metaphysical poets, recalling the glorious days of victorian Celibate Dons of Oxford, we can look down the valley here near Crick and summon up the life of a country clergyman, a life of hunting, shooting, fishing, and know that all such past-times nowadays are protected from too much adroit police interference by some fancy footwork among our lawyers on the right to privacy and the right not to be molested on one's own land. Christians arise - you have a right to bear arms in Magna Carta too you know - what is it with all this Dawkins police academy industry of persecution? And if such boys in blue rejoinder that there's is the crown prerogative, we can always ask them and their lady queen to pay the rents and mortgages if they are going to "get medieval on our ass", as the saying goes one believes around Hollywood this weather. Anyway, before a policeman issues a ticket to us, on our horses while foxhunting or in our landrovers while coursing, it is high time we made the point that all such ticketing is an invasion of privacy. After all, in our beloved renaissance Italy where we used to get all our inspirations for our mock campanile churches such as at Gliffaes in Crickhowell or Hoarwithy near Ross in the steamingly gorgeous georgian and victorian era, a policeman who sits in a motorist's car and without his hat on can be ticketed himself for breach of privacy. So there are a few little exceptive laws that can be applied with some fancy footwork from our no-win-no-fee lawyers - if only we had lawyers who could match the Italians. Auntie overseas told me that one. Rev Simon Godfrey over and out. Malta behind. Rutland and Oakham ahead.