Yeah but yeah but yeah but

One must begin from the Little England Series, and recall that in these days of changing ways and changing discourses, many of the Church of England icons of the older kind would often wax lyrically about those poor old RCs over yonder who had a problem with boy abuse in a gay clerical subculture, gayness assumed, much like the two boyos who fathered children in America just for abuse purposes, sentenced then to 100 years of prison time, but the Lord Nolans and Baronesses Camberlege and Baronesses Scotland though these were nice, used to preside in splendour over the tommy rot and tommy riddle of many RC monastery public schools where allegedly parties were endemic and monks were accused of approaching rich boys by rich boys keen to make up their measeley subs and allowances from Daddio with a quick compo case. These cases involved buying ice creams for the boys. But here we must digress and make a distinction between boy abuse routinely alleged for political purposes, like the much bemoaned Anne Boleyn circulating such rumours about abbots and priors because they clung onto papal loyalism in an Age of the absolute monarch, and then the real thing of frolicking in the quads with young men and their boys. Because so many executions took place against papal loyalism the charge of boy abuse was routinely levelled against gay abbots and their priors and monks on their way up to the gallows hastily erected and no due process just snobby reformation judges giving sermons to the accused, though in facto many of the monks were innocent, it was simply a political ploy designed to make those guilty of papal loyalism pay for their attachment to the Old Faith of Jesus and the apostles, a cynical way also to turn the average housewife and her Joe Public against the monastery quads too. So there is a tradition of this charge being artificially attached to a sort of papal loyalism to the Old Faith - all such cases were called "montaturae negativae" of the worst kind. Naughty. Usurping young concubine queen Anne Boleyn was jealous herself of the way that so many clerics and monks and their canon lawyers simply came to the defence of Catherine in those fated times when Henry wished his wedding annulled by the church judges in faraway Rome. Spiritual jealousy of the Acts 2 kind is a terrible thing especially when it occurs between two women fighting for the king's hand. Like Diana and the old dear now very quaint and antique Camilla. Similarly the Lords and Ladies dancing of the Old Church of England maybe often allowed that old tradition to bite against the RC monasteries, without looking into the real cases against monks and real charges. They presided presidingly over the RC monks in that presidential way that was so superior than they, holier than thou, keener than the king for justice for the rich young boys a few who themselves practised disloyalty for a fast buck for their cynical Daddios - these latter then had the money to pay the fees, in a series of very cynical compo scams. They presided over the RCs in such abandon and in such superiority, looking down long noses, that when eventually the story about worse even worse abuse than buying ice creams for boys, indeed of the most painful penetrative kind, came out around the learned grey bishops of Canterbury, everybody who was anybody was naturally shocked and appalled - it was all a load of hypocritical cant - the reformation judges of the Old Church of England turned out to be worse than the RC monks on this old charge which had now become an old canard. And worse. Found among the very judges appointed by the crown, itself under pressure for minor abuse in the case of one or two of the princes courtesy of a friend in the stock markets called Geoff. Worse than worse. Stitch ups. The learned bishops of the RCs accepted it all so meekly and without rancour that at times for moderne humans rights lawyers, it all looked like collusion of the old kind in Ulster. But it is otherwise now in the Real Church of England where all is innocence and light.   

Em

Gosh, am really gobsmacked at the appearance not a few days ago of Emma W on one episode of the Vicar of Dibley TV Series with Dawn French as the vicar and Emma now as a trendy young vicar too all decked out in a nice Kensington grey and purple uniform, espousing nice trendy views and calling for the candidacy of much more interesting bishops of the protest song and protest poem, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen style bishops of the streets who at least would be more interesting and more exciting than the present stock of the usual fly by nights, of the usual conservative stuffy kind. It was such a glorious hoot to see her in action as a young trendy vicaress, and so cool and so sexy too, fabulous idea. Dawn French excelled too in this episode when she articulated the feelings of ordinary people, especially now that the usual suspects have been outed among the prelates as per once upon a time in ages past. Can the Old Church of England recover from a glorious Emma W attack of gargantuan proportions, she is such an intellectual giant without even trying to be, so nice. Such a tonic to see a young girl in action as a trendy trainee vicaress. Makes it all worth all the hassle of these last few years since 1992. The olde worlde of anglican prelates of the old kind cannot continue especially of the kind that now afflicts the leaders what with bishops caught with their pants down. The Real Church of England would salute this kind of girl, this kind of nice and trendy young lady vicaress. Met with one myself in a nice Spanish hotel not long ago. No hassle, no problem.  Even stuffy and snobby old Constantinople might actually concur if there were more girls like Emma Watson in the ranks of the glorious lady vicaress kind. The people concur.  

Wit

The outgoing prime minister was often pulling his hair out when decision time came up say around the ratification of treaties a la Chagos and the like or the Falklands, and his two Fathers in God, York and Cantuar, had to be consulted about such things as voices of the public christian conscience, but think what poor old new prime minister has to say to young Prince W of Cantab about consulting his new Fathers in God too - dilemmas, dilemmas, especially when such prelates have been red canons in the distant past, a terrible ordeal. A bit of a bind as Calvin the C often says, and he is compassionate. But such men are of a lean and hungry look yon Cassius, God knows what is going on in those old red minds - help, these might be wreckage artists from within - nobody would re-assign nowadays unless they were mischievous. So it is all too much tonight for the new prime minister who now desperately needs a jolly good skiing holiday, maybe with Bella and her sister Madison over yonder in Kirchberg, who knows. But calm your nerves, for it is all otherwise in the Real Church of England where stringent vetting takes place and lawyers are preferred vicars. 

Pondering

Am pondering the fates at the moment like a pensive Vespasian atop his throne in far away northern sees like York, much like the statue of Constantine the Great up here, and thinking as to how the Old Church of England can survive the latest scandals at Canterbury, what with the Welby story now circulating, since in 1850 there were large scale defections from the Old Church of England in that time frame, as many ordinary rural people walked away from an impossibly posh church that was only interested in the new urbanised populations of the rich and powerful merchant classes and the like and which dominated the churches in that period. Impossibly posh, stilted voices, artificial liturgies, abstruse sermons, pious hyperbole, nothing about the gospels, little about the real Jesus, so it was not going to be easy to recover from another 1850 in this year of 2024, since there is a little bit more to reveal about the Welby scandal maybe helas helas. Bp Welby has much to confide and confess in this story possibly, so we have not heard the final chapter of this whole story as yet, more canings around the evangelical sector maybe to surface, since there was more to it than meets the superficial eye. A catholic scottish Cracker is needed. Am not suggesting that the whole fate of the whole Church hangs by a thread upon the whims and fancies of one individual since the fate of the Church is bigger than just one person, but we shall see what emerges. There is however the Real Church of England that is more than the sum of the parts of the Old Church of England to be sure, and if anything is to be recovered from the Old Church of England it is that maybe there is room for a Celtic style rapprochement of the natural law based candidates of once upon a time. Caning boys as an expression of some strange fantasy is not going to be the foundation or basis for future candidates for clerks in holy orders maybe, methinks. The Celtics can teach us a thing or two about screening out those kinds of vicars and jurists, vicaresses too with their feminista pliars, of an overly strict kind of once upon a time since they too had their moment of infamy as well in medieval times when the invasion force of the Normans under licence from Henry II and also the pope at the time Adrian IV went over there in the 1100s and imposed order on an unruly kingdom of bolshevik and gay clergy and the Norrman king took a nice pretty Celtic girlfriend to be his wife called to signal to the unruly clerics that the age of the rabid anti-natural law cleric was over, anti-naturam clerics were now history. Even the mild mannered English pope at the time was concerned about what had happened there. The council of Trullo in 600 AD in our beloved Constantinople too was concerned about such developments when it imposed marriage on all future clerics. So too Elizabeth the First imposing marriage on the dons of Cambridge and Oxford. So it does happen from time to time. Canings are history for us in the Real Church of England, how those poor boys suffered. It cannot happen again, evangelicals or no evangelicals. Our own reformation judges of the civil kind already had occasion to warn of the extremes and excesses of evangelical schools of the Baptist kind in the 2000s and 2010s when suppressing the right to discipline children by private teachers then, the "spare the rod and spoil the child" school of thought, or rather instinct. Male evangelical teachers running schools .... .... just like a bad episode of Cracker. So the Old Church of England can survive this public very public meltdown but there will be a price to pay. Boys cannot be allowed to suffer so grievously.We in the Real Church of England can take steps.

While

While the kerfuffle and ferment goes on back home in Canterbury I have quietly retired to my country retreat for some tea and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts taken off and quietly resigned myself to books like the Diary of a Country Vicar a la James Herriott. Somewhat more consoling than the usual bill of fayre.

C

C for compassion, p for patience, When God made these he made plenty of them. God is already patient with the human race, we might have to learn the various ways of his compassion. God has to balance the forces of good and the forces of evil at times in order to allow for freedom and yet also variety in his universe, so not easy to know when to intervene, as the noted biblical scholar Dr Bergsma outlines the problem of such cases in his commentary on the figure of the Son of Man or filius hominis in Daniel 7, God as the patient presider over free solar systems. Some bishops genuinely felt that they should not impose the chapter in the old western codes called De sanctionibus, preferring to wait until there was some sign of a conversion, some basis for hope, we cannot blame them for that always when things go wrong, a human sign, as Sir Elton sings it in his song "Sacrifice." It is just that the boys were suffering in the meantime. There is the rub. Caught between the rocks and the open sea, not easy to balance these values. But maybe the said bishop could have gone back to credit control and finance in order to learn the lessons of those workplaces about patience. 

Hmmmmm

Judgement can follow such scandals around. There are two opposite poles of opinion in these debates, on the one hand the idea that one if liberal should not judge as much as possible, while the other pole apart urging some judgement that is severe, while in the middle somewhere civil judges do intervene and opine that any temporal crime of due gravity without legitimate excuse requires some temporal punishment as a sign to others in society of what not to employ one's time in, so that is the overall schema of these debates, ease of judgement vs severity of judgement. The midway course followed by many CoE judges if not most judges is a difficult path to tread in terms of punishment vs remedial care for the miscreant or mishapped individual caught between a rock and a hard place. Bad example though is often not far from the forefront of their minds, and many judges will seek to deter others from following such fatal courses of action. Learned bishops too must consider these roles of the judge, remedial therapy vs temporal punishment, for social sins and crimes in the public and objective order. So on the one hand a judge will try to tease out if there were any mitigating excuses or keyword factors in the offending deportment and also to determine what level of gravity was involved and whether full consent and full freedom were enjoyed in the act, in this case a negative act of not positively doing x or y or z. A curious case. We must abstain from judging this particular cause and recuse from the case, not just because it is an ecclesiastical one that the King might wish to reserve to himself, but also because ratione suspicionis, we esteem the reus and are friendly with the said bishop in question, or ratione amicitiae. Judges can at times recuse. As Lyndsay Graham has pointed out before at senatorial hearings. 

Christ and the Christians

Easy to judge though. And whether we like it or not, we do tend to judge others on the standards of our own comportment, so we can be a little transparent to an experienced eye. Sad business as the Bishop of Newcastle says it all, nice lady, nice to have her on board, a great icon of the luminous. But we shall press on regardless and learn to learn our lessons from such unfortunate events around a cup of Darjeeling. Snow on the ground so tea on the vicarage lawn not a good idea today, so we shall see what the good lady housekeeper if not the wifey has in mind for the cucumber sandwiches.

Ohhhhhh That One

Well actually, or maybe Love Actually, since that seems to be the case since Eton boys are always sweet and kind and nice, because the sweet but maybe foolish old queen, RIP, who passed away before all of this huge but hidden scandal broke, was very keen and indulgent towards those 1970s prelates of the Primus Primatus kind, and regarded them all, Crowmacs of the left included, as personal sing-along friends to be invited to parties at the Castle of Mey in those early years by the then queen mother when she was alive, not daring to look into the crystal ball of the future with so many old guard leftwing radicals of the new kind in high office, while far below them all they were making life difficult for the frontline and frontier troops of the brave and good vicars of those years of the high point of parties at Mey. Luckily the ladies came along after 1992 with the vote to restore the old female ministries of the early Christians under the Magdalene when she was in charge of the health ministry that made the Christians so popular in the first place, and then the ladies took over more and more of the mess that the gray males left behind, that was the official story anyway, with impossibly brave so brave and chaleureuse Anglican lady bishops like the Bishopess of Newcastle pointing out that the Primus just had to go after not reporting again and again a very awful and dreadful case of boy abuse, Eton or no bloody Eton, and bloodied bottoms there were from such disciplinarian evangelicals, where caning was endemic in those bad old years too, like a troubling and sickening episode of Tom Brown's Schooldays, God forbid, can we all recall? Boys are so nice, so brave, and never said a word, as Heinrich would put it so well. Even the angels of imagining and cura animarum got sick of the procrastinations of old Etonians like the big J, the pope in Rome was aghast among the few admirers of the Primus there in Auntie Overseas of BBC-Europa.

Spare

Spare. Prince Harry's biography. Old Etonian. Biographies there are a few. But spare a thought for the outgoing Primus, since in his heyday in the 1970s and 1980s at the Anglican schools of the country, caning was endemic and young boys had to grin and bear it, as per my Anglican schools. Also in those years church figures of the Old Church of England had to face off with society and show a demonstrably compassionate face of Christ as the mild leader to the world, compassion was enjoined on those Etonian boys that joined the Church of England, the Old Church of England that is, it was de riguer, most prelates and prefects had to show such a face. Only in such a grin and bear it atmosphere some of the more primitive evangelicals did try to get under the radar. Dear Primus thought he was being open and inclusive and kind in allowing a Strictnine type into the system, especially as boys were v v brave in those days in and out of public schools. But the leaders who made it to the top were expected to be very liberal, more liberal than Jesus their Master. That was how it was in boys schools. Translate that 30 years on or 40 years on as per Radio 4, and the Primus gets into hot water for: a) not reporting under the terms of the new SGL laws; b) not standing up and being counted as a CPO; c) not deploying the harsh instruments of church anglican canon law on his former advisors and fellow Old Etonians and the like. In the Real Church of England though, it is otherwise. We deploy the corkscrews.

Aha - Synodalitas

Aha - Synods, there we are, mulling over the data from General Synod, good to be on the system again and downloading the latest goss from the Real Church of England, even if in the Old Church of England we are embattled of late a bit, much, by the much anticipated but still surprising resignation of the hapless Arch, the Primus Primate, for all his pains and agonies of high office, but that is the rough and the smooth though, it comes to us all in the higher echelons even of churches and charities, that we have to take the buck when it is passed to us, whatever about guilt or innocence of a personal kind, but especially if subalterns do act the maggot.