Oxana

Like they say at Oxford these days - in between their elegant graces - there is of course that other place, referring to the other place of Cambridge. And so too if things should ever fail in that other place for us as ecclesiastics, namely Rome at the heart of the papal alliances and papal states, then we do have something resembling ancient christianity here in the twin islands, the church anglicana et hybernica of the old celtic world, or as Dio Cassius puts it, in the Celtic Elvish Islands - in insulinis fatulis. In those days there were many more islands around these shores. Something like the organisations that are constellating around the old English Roman Missal among the ernest Romans, though it wasn't very Roman at all in its poor theology, yet ACTA and ADVENT show us that mildness can be a rebuke to human intensity and excessive dogma in ritual matters of religion. No dogmas of the First 8 oecumenical Councils were involved surely in personal defection and abandonment of the flocks of once upon a time? Why not re-ordain men who have fled their flocks for some pretty housewife or re-ordain women into the ministry they once partly enjoyed in early churches like Alexandria, if this will calm such organisations among Romans down? Surely they cannot all be heretics on matters of mere discipline? Am I wrong? Answers on a postcard to Lord Cecil at Sarum College, nr Winchester.