Rip

So the infamous first preacher of hate in the west goes up to the pearly gates this week to meet his just judge .... And also he wil meet shock surprise ... all the rats n vermin he hoped would not be there ... Maybe he will be ensconced within a high walled enclosure so as not to see all the working classes. Still, friends, Romans, countrymen, we come not to praise Caesar but to bury him. In the end he had a near death experience and realised that the real Jesus was quite nice n that life is about acceptance of others ... Even zealots like nathaniel. 

Swimming the Tiber - 2015 style

Dull thuds and groans and the odd screech from the dungeons of HMS Catholica methinks. The catholic bishops of the Real Church of England are getting tired of the lifestyle issues increasingly raised by the Ordinariate types and are beginning to crank up their siege engines on our ordinands all going over to them. One of their number explained it to me very simply and extremely tidily - like he was fresh from afternoon tea in a certain convent with a certain notorious German Sturmhaubitzer 42 Kardinale Kesselring - "You see Reverend, it is all very simple; Holy Mother Church has been reflecting of late since lots of young boys and girls before they swim the Tiber - mother river of Ancient Rome - and come over are allowed to date young men and women and generally have a social and romantic life with impunity while within the good old charming easygoing Anglican Church of England. Lots of parties, lots of dates, lots of romantic dinners for two in the dim lights of Oxford dining rooms - all very nice. But some of those that plan to come over opine with their few remaining gay friends that have already come over that the catholic codes of canon law do not apply to gays because the 6th commandment about adultery obviously only has men in mind who are attracted to women and to married women at that." I raised an eyebrow in the Pearse Brosnan mode. "But," he explained, "mindful of the directions of the Holy Father, we are now of a mind and it is our desire now, after the dust has settled with these high profile and exciting conversions, to remind such young men and women that a promise of celibacy befits the holy estate of ministers of God's sanctuary and that the codes apply to gays and straits alike. No strait will be punished without some gay also being punished for harming the holy rule of holy celibacy." The British catholic Church of England bishops are wise in this matter in elaborating first of all in 1994 the doctrine of the distinction between orders and ministries; then in 1998 the doctrine of feminine and male ministries; and now in 2015 soon to be the doctrine of the equivalence of straitness and gayness and subjecting both sides to the constraints and blessings of the holy rule of celibacy. So some attention now to embarking on the desert road to desert fathers and desert caves s'il vous plait. All change at the next platform.