Ah the scent

Ah the sweet scent of success. A royal regatta. A princess in scarlet. The bishops of the old soviet union active again. Anything to keep a revolution of rioters simmering for another pot-boil this summer. Of course if I were a mate with a few navy men or air force men, I might be tempted to visit a few episcopal palaces just to acquaint the camp incumbents with the seriousness of their remarks and their ululating phone calls to news editors, as more royal gossip is shelled out to the sewage farms of the modern internet based media. The royals did well, and the queen and the prince-consort and commander-in-chief stood for most of their voyage down the old river Father Thames. A nice extravaganza with lots of new flags to consider, but understated too with lots of ordinary folk and boatmen and boatgirls participating. Yes very nice indeed. But who pays the ferryman to shell out his Ussr sewage around Britain? We do need to consider cleaning up these foreigner soviet episkopoi. And a rich princess can always sue them. Not for their diocesan monies but for their private income. Via moscow.  

Oh eheu

Well actually, despite what people say up at chancery in the learned Dr Feever's office at the episcopal palace at Peterborough, your correspondent at Oakham and Melton is not just a simple anglo-catholic getting ahead of the pack. I do have a role and a mission here. Even if it is just to remind people of the good old days of Christ within Christianity, when he had not deserted the communists of 1992, when the faith was alive in Britain, and people liked a bit of the old customs, before Communist chinese style ideology came rooting in and upturning everything in the 1920s and then again in the 1990s. Yes the old faith, which the ordinary British punter liked, and did not repudiate despite the vituperations of well-meaning but largely unwelcomed low church types of the old Geneva kind - les protestants et hugenots du roi Edward VI. Not really welcome. Les anglais like their churches untouched, their altar rails, their statues and their saints dedicated on the church frontals. They even like antependia on the front of their altars. Not for them the luddite feeling for stripping altars and their dullard lollard passion for naked starkness or Edwardian communion tables and the ubiquitous flaggons of disrespect. No we in England like our holy customs. We like our Christ boy ni his Christianity.

And so

And so, on to tea on the vicarage lawns. There is nothing more enjoyable than the sight of cucumber sandwiches on the memorable lawn and the goodly lady wifey pouring tea for the guests of the vicar. Such timeless bliss.

Brutus orator

Friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears ... What joy what joy now that April is here and the Spring upon us and the sun is shining upon all our green of greenest lawns in all the vicarages of the country, as we vicars learn to listen to our Scarlatti Stabat maters or our Schubert masses. Joy what joy. The sheer timelessness of this primaveral Eden. So the old arch is going from among us and leaving us for poverty and penury in scholastic Cambridge. A shame. He could have saved a few vicarages. Those dioceses of course that still have vicarages .... and which have not flogged such sceptered silver off to the highest bidders. But can one really flog public ecclesiastical property and holy vicarages into the hands of the privateers of the captains of industry, the pirates of the Aegean?

Joy what joy

To cease upon the midnight with no payne. Joy what joy. There is nothing more pleasante in this little world of ours than spending a Sunday evening with a local vicar, dining out, nibbling on a slice of Madeira cake, and drinking a fine glass of the best Fonseca port. Joy, what joy. Yes the Rev was in good form last night. Lots to download. Lots to discuss. Lots of coq au vin, roast potatoes, roast parsnips a favourite, and carrots and broccoli. Then the finest slightly over-cooked bread I have tasted for years from his goodly wifey. We discussed the passing of a great figure, the outgoing Archbishop of Cantuar - red as the ace of diamonds, but lovely chappie, sorely missed already. Very nice evening indeed. The Rev was in fine fettle.

Well actually tis mete

Well actually Lord Somerset did have a role in the original shaping of episcopal debate and the production of the BCP, and the role was simple, to steer the bishops away from the minefields of endless conquistador debate about definitions and dogmas and synods, and into the calmer clearer waters of the ordinary man in the street sort of theologising. The protestant reform was necessary, or rather the henrician and boleyn reform of the years 1525-1536 was in fact necessary, simply because the population as a whole were being misled by endless speculation of religious men on privacy matters, such as the king's annulment. Somerset had to threaten all the bishops in synod in 1548 because they had a tendency, even Cranmer, to drift back into the old forms that precipitated debate in the first place under the unhealthy obsessions of Fisher for a species of Campeggio and Conquistador canon law that was exaggerated above and beyond the 4 gospels. Theology had become a problem of public disorder, and so as per today in the council of the catholics at vatican two, the state always reserves the right to intervene when overly religious men upset society and cause public disorder. Hard cheese all round on the trop de qua catholic bishops of 1548 but it was simply that or general disorder of a protestant geneva kind. And both extremes Somerset and the young boy king Edward VI wished to avoid. A protestant reform was necessary because sound men wished a return to all the lovely simplicities of the New Testament era.

When all is said and done

Well out to the country to visit some old vicar friends of the old era of entente cordiale, and discovered that a great secret lies hidden, namely that the faithful who do like a bit of the old faith, the old catholic faith, are still out there in large numbers, according to the Revs of the countryside. This is what they stumble upon when they are beautifying their churches, or restoring the christmas crib, or generally rekindling old customs and devotions like the St Michael's Goose on the feast of the archangels and the holywells of St Rumbold and so on, that there is a surprising warmth toward the old faith. Funny really, given that we had persecuted all those young Spanish jesuit boys for so long. The ordinary rank and file people may not be too happy about modern magisterium from Auntie Overseas on the subject of the usual privacy issues, touching on a woman's right to choose say a caeserean, but they do like the old faith as they see it returned, with a little compassion from the gentle saviour. So the countryside vicars all seem very happy this winter.