Aha sweet Lord we pray

Oh lord won't you buy me a mercedes benz, and this is one reason why poor boys and poor jacks are elevated to the purple in history, just to give them a better standing among their peers, and to show that the episcopal appointments committee is not wholly given over to the aristocracy and the governing classes, as they used to be called, once upon a time. But there are lots of vicars who are heading for retirement in the glorious old C of E and these are being tempted to retire first from us and then swim over the Tiber to join all the catholics, 1billion of them, in glory on the banks of vatican stadion, notwithstanding heaps of Ussr propaganda these last 3 decades about the private lives of an apparently celibate lifestyle. Still this does not deter since most vicars are intelligent enough about old style Eighties propaganda designed to destabilise western economies and churches and confidence building institutes at the centre of those systems, and they know in their hearts of hearts that the catholics do have a good system that allows for confession and weekly conversion and that nobody is cast out from the pale of the sweet Christ bar maybe those who pleasure for pleasure's sake. But the problem is that once retired and more and more are doing so, will they receive a kindly welcome over on the other side of the banks of the Tiber? Yes in Rome certainly, and in America, where the catholics are intelligent and not so servile to Boymac's propaganda in favour of women priests, but there is also the slowness of the catholic Ussr style bishops of the Kremlins of Dublin and London to respond to these sincere conscience seekers. The new working-class bishops are still finding their feet, though scarlette here would say that aristocrats make better bishops, and these new bishops, cast onto such forbidding British shores, are slowly coming to realise that they are nobodies on a forgotten soil, far from the papal states and their zones of interest, Australia and South Africa and South America. But anglicanorum coetibus has happened, so there is time for all vicars who wish to move over to consider the Cantuar retirement option - thoug this may close in 5 years time. So tis time to move over soon. Only we regret all this here on holy anglicana and the via media, since we started ordaining women to keep the queen happy. Maybe we should have. But we are losing most vicars. They do have some theology and some scripture. And some even have a bit of church history. A woman with just an O level and an A level in religious studies does not inspire confidence in motioning forward such old gnostic debates. Still we plod on. Our friend chestleton has slowed up the process over on the Tiber by imposing a temporary if not permanent block to this innovation, so he may win this debate long term. In the early churches there were many ministries that were open to women - prostasis, mathetes, didaskolon, diakonissa, katechista, presbytides, glossolator, interpres - though chestleton says these above were just ministries as per I corinthians, and not the 6 major orders of governance, diakonos, presbyteros, episkopos, metropolitanos, huper-diakonon ie cardinales, and princeps or papa-imperator.

And so many thanks

Aussies. Hmmm. Well I am sitting at my desk at the church chantry building, nr Crick, toasting both the willowy Rev Simon Godfrey and the svelte Rev Joseph Loveday, two wonderful old vicar friends of mine who are hoping to swim the Tiber in Tibet poor things, and sipping my mug of colombian coffee at the moment and praising God that the Farc rebels will no longer interrupt my international flows of precious colombian chocolate style coffee, and here on my desk is a letter from a chief wallah in Whitehall filled with fulminating rage about aussies pressing their suits on our monarch so to speak. I shall represent it in full at some point, but basically it says, why do we tolerate men in grey suits in aussie-land who have no respect for an honourable woman like young Miss Katie? Between us, between you and me, in the old days, the first person to rise to the white rage of the pulpit on the privacy rights of our monarchy families would have been the archbishop of Canterbury as the young princess's Merlin, but I see that central GHQ-anglicana has been listening to too many faceless soviet style eurocrats in other vaticanese churches for just too long. Te Russian Tsar Validimir cannot stand them all, all these old grey dinosaur type hangers-on from Tashkent, but they still mope around Brussels and Rome helas. Roll on Justin - come to our aid who have recourse to thee.

Mm well that's theory n praxis

Well that is the theory behind British monarchy, religion, and consecration and anointing. Though it has to be said that down the centuries, since Boleyn and her boyo, the papal states have always asked for prudence on the part of the ecclesia anglicana and even of respect for them on the part of the ecclesia anglica. So in these debates about ordination of the girlies, the vatikanstadt will sometimes say things like - go easy and be careful how you reason the thing. The state is on your backs, so be prudent, and above theological first, political second, since you are supposed to be a church and not any extension of the NHS. And all because, the German high command knows that - a) the ordinary British punter is not keen on badly communicated vatican edict as per the Warlock bodge-up of the jazz surrounding humanae vitae; b) nor is the GB public that keen on lutheran cromwellian republicanism; c) the anglican hierarchy should always drift back to prudence in tradition; d) the orthodox eastern churches are not all that keen on departures from tradition unless closely reasoned with entirely and only scriptural and theological arguments. The greatest treason being to do the right thing for the wrong reason - T S Eliot. That is how official high command of the papal states overseas sees the matter. So maybe the general synod is right to put on the breaks again for a little while. Besides, all the older boyo vicars have yet to submit their reports on how the girlie vicars are actually faring and surviving in practice. That jury is still out. More anon. 

Mmm a shame

Well it is a shame that the vote for extending the holy orders of bishop to women from deacon to presbyterate to episcopate was rejected last night. C'est la vie. All this will come in time one assumes, once the overall vision is corrected. We are going to look silly in a space age if the ban continues.

DG

Thank God at last, the new bishop-elect arch of Cantuar has signalled that he will resolve all this useless absurdity about ordaining women as bishops, as if we were ordaining heretics or occultists or something!! What is the matter with the Old Church of England at the moment on this issue? They ordained deacons as deaconesses years ago, priests as priestesses decades ago, so why baulk now at bishops as bishopesses? A Logic O level for everyone at Oxford please. For goodness sake, the Queen Elizabeth II herself, when she is not canonising her own illustrious and gorgeous predecessor in Elizabeth I, is more or less ordained as the monarch, supreme font of spiritual and temporal power as well as overarching temporal governor of the Real Church of England, and wears a cope and stole before coronation. Yes babies in the old fashioned and out of date Old Church of England - she wears a cope and a stole before coronation. Wake up please misogynistic time-serving vicars. If you don't like it, then off you go, and retire from public life into the old catholic religion of the simplefolk. Goodbye. You have signed up for a ticket to Moscow, so there is no getting off at Warsaw. So why all this kerfuffle about something that should be entirely natural? This is a disciplinary issue and not a theological or dogmatic one - it can never achieve the status of a definition and its commission can never become a heresy. It is not a heresy to ordain women to a woman's church presided over by a woman and involving mostly women on all given sundays! Are we all mad in the Old Church of England? It is a women's church for Pete's sake. So thanks be to God we have a new bishop called Justin who will move the whole process on further DV. And women make very good vicars by the way - very multi-tasking, very organised, very open.  

Golly gosh

Ahhhhhh some time at last after a busy day at the church offices to sit down at the vicarage on the terrazza and have some hot crumpets soup and tea. Oh golly, am truly evacuated of all meaning after a long day explaining the meaning of life to all and sundry. Anyway, nice to have the new arch of Cantuar on board. Seems nice enough, though one imagines he will carefully wish to steer the barque of Anglicana out to sea again , but this time for some few nautical miles in the direction of Geneva. Well enough, though the rank and file do want their saints canonised and we have a nice crop to choose from here in the Jolly Hockeysticks Version of the Church of England, as in historical figures from the past, decently deceased a good 10 years plus, and featuring such mentors as Queen Elizabeth I, Henry VI, Henry V, Charles I, Queen Victoria, and some notables too from ordinary life such as dear old Dr Ramsey. Yes we can do all this at General Synod on a 4/5ths vote plus the Royal Assent, and I am sure Ma'am will agree since her protestant oath is not a theological one but a political one - just keeping the wolves of Madrid from the door and even the odd fox from the Papal States. Gawd bless her ladyship and her courtiers. 

Aha good news

Bp Welby has been selected by the church appointments commission as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, so it is welcomed as good news all round. Though he looks like another olde worlde clone of the articulate Bp Christopher Hill and the stale grey arabian Bp Kevin Macdonald, he is in fact an old Etonian or rather a fresh younger version, and then a Cambridge undergrad, and then spent a long time in the oil industry. He had been a bishop appointed to Durham for under a year. Fresh blood, fresh impetus, as all now hope, after the stagnation of the Rowan years with its constant appeasement of arab marxist agendas. So well done, Mrs Q and well done appointments commission. Bravo to a new church of england in a new england.  Ah the glorious fresh scents and sense of the playing fields of our alma mater King St Henry VI's Eton College.