Adolescent Progressivism

We all love the cut and thrust of the Sixth Form common room and the way that young boys will splay themselves around and expostulate al fresco on the latest revolutionary theories emanating from Moscow and Paris, but there are some ecclesiastical seniors in the odd common room in the odd posh school who seem to have continued all such delayed childhood development into their careers, by insisting as they do, that conservative vicars are not really acceptable in the promotion positions of the future; as if religion in our society was not inherently conservative for prudence and wisdom sake; a healthy brake to revolutionary change for change sake? Some leading lights of the various benches seem to forget that we are here to curb the enthusiasms of young boys like William Roper in the Robert Bolt play A Man for all Seasons - such would chop down every tree in the island just to get at some devilish opposite number, and then what when the devil concerned turns on the young man; behind which tree will he hide when he feels the full power of the great forces of Hades?? Such are the adolescence fixated young bishops of the red canon pot of promotees and they are tedious to listen to.  Change maybe, but religion is a brake of prudence - it is good to be conservative.

Aha - Stephen

Christmastide and the festival of the Theotokos reminds us all in the dear Old Church of England that Stephen is our proto-martyr and deacon, if he is one of the hoi eptoi of Acts 6 which few deny nowadays in up to date scholarship. More importantly Stephen Hawking is discovering what martyrdom is presently, now that he has denied that absolute event horizons really do exist around black holes as was thought to be the case in some of the more fanta-scienza moments of modern astronomy, with all the geeks and nerds cheering it all on back at base at Nasa. Something like our own church too where black holes have existed from time to time, like expensive back room clergy, swallowing up huge reserves, or like the building maintenance funds of various dioceses, where really the state should be funding all the repairs to these national monuments such as cathedrals if not parish churches. After all if it is a state church and they wish to keep it that way, the state should cough up the funding. Why should vicars spend their days and nights worrying about funds? A german tax relief system might be a good way forward in Britain - 10% of one's 20% of income tax to go to a charity of one's choice and so on. That way everybody is happy - After all in a new age now that the War on Terror is over and the Cold War gone, the peace dividend should mean no more higher tax rates. V - coe.

Letters

Dear Reverend Pastor -

I have thought long and hard since I attended the great Canon Hawking's sessions on clergy procedures, and have oft since opined that a new category of penalty of "bringing the churches into disrepute through excessive controversy" - this could be devised to stop any of the literalist evangelical clergy preaching downright outrageous gibberish not only about the Book of Genesis which is excruciating to watch and read, but helas also chiefly about their own interpretations of the Book of Revelation and then from a position of total humiliating un-reason, throwing up all over the Auntie Overseas in Rome - she is not by the way the whore of babylon that these pastors keep indicating, in their appalling inability to read the book in the original Greek, but rather, she is an imperial administration of the Eternal Christian Empire whose rep of the king of kings keeps all local and national monarchies of a smaller hue in good shape. Besides she only intervenes in smaller empires and monarchies as she says ratio peccati when some local monarch's family have caused so much scandal as to be a desecration of the original anointing of the coronation. We no longer need gibberish from evangelicals who have neither the Greek or even the German to read modern biblical exegesis. The whole situation is so embarrassing for its high decibels of utter and total ignorance as to make of my task as a high-church ecumenical officer an insurmountable mountain. Fountains away.

Wells next the sea

It sometimes comes to pass that learned canons and doctors of the law in the Grand old Church of England get into a tizzy or a lather about some matter or other which is alleged to be this or that contravention of the anglican communion's codex of canon law. What! everyone screeches? What codex of canon law? If one were to pop into any church of note on the anglican circuit one would find a copy of the canons of the Church of England, B1, B4, B12 and so on which amount to an extension into practice of the Articles of Religion. There all is revealed. Controversy then is sometimes calmed by such canons which soon settle disputes about say what is or is not a contravention. Sometimes this is about the grounds of transfer of a vicar, say for christological doctrine violations or aberrations in ritual or even for lithe and lissom irregularity in conduct unbecoming, and sometimes this is about the law on blasphemy, as per Bath and Wells diocese, though in the latter case the state might conceivably get involved, as my learned colleague Lord Somerset has it on his site, The Rights of the State, at www.blogger.com. Generally though we in the Real Church of England do like to do our laundry in secret, to iron out our squabbles in camera, in private, according to our own juristical rules and regulas. It beats going to the PM's office or his policy unit. God forbid that the Queen, the supreme governor, should get involved too! Constitutionally speaking the country is a christian democratic state, so the blasphemy laws and statutes do obtain for serious infractions of respect to the divine names. But we shall leave that to the Queen to resolve - she has some gravitas in an age lacking thereof.

How blessed

How blessed is he who leads a country life, devoid of a trouble, devoid of a strife. With such words from the metaphysical poets, recalling the glorious days of victorian Celibate Dons of Oxford, we can look down the valley here near Crick and summon up the life of a country clergyman, a life of hunting, shooting, fishing, and know that all such past-times nowadays are protected from too much adroit police interference by some fancy footwork among our lawyers on the right to privacy and the right not to be molested on one's own land. Christians arise - you have a right to bear arms in Magna Carta too you know - what is it with all this Dawkins police academy industry of persecution? And if such boys in blue rejoinder that there's is the crown prerogative, we can always ask them and their lady queen to pay the rents and mortgages if they are going to "get medieval on our ass", as the saying goes one believes around Hollywood this weather. Anyway, before a policeman issues a ticket to us, on our horses while foxhunting or in our landrovers while coursing, it is high time we made the point that all such ticketing is an invasion of privacy. After all, in our beloved renaissance Italy where we used to get all our inspirations for our mock campanile churches such as at Gliffaes in Crickhowell or Hoarwithy near Ross in the steamingly gorgeous georgian and victorian era, a policeman who sits in a motorist's car and without his hat on can be ticketed himself for breach of privacy. So there are a few little exceptive laws that can be applied with some fancy footwork from our no-win-no-fee lawyers - if only we had lawyers who could match the Italians. Auntie overseas told me that one. Rev Simon Godfrey over and out. Malta behind. Rutland and Oakham ahead.

And besides

And besides the Queen would not give her royal assent to anything that vexes the spiritual powers, since since the days of Magna Carta the monarch has always had to keep these spiritual powers happy in their copes and croziers - powerful men and women who will not be forced and cajoled into secular attitudes that are not yet scripture based. A debate must first begin at general synod. The early christian church was a great attraction to the rent boys and call girls of the pagan Orphic and Isis temples of the empire, because of the boyish saviour Jesus posing as Apollo and Orpheus in the official images and statuary, but attraction and pastoral love is one thing, official rite and hebrew doctrine quite another, since Levicitus still has to be negotiated with compassion. Neither Aaron nor Moses really wished the hebrew slaves to recidivise back to the gay catamite status they had as sex slaves in Egypt to the slave drivers of the Pharoahs. The song of the hebrew slaves should be revisited. Much debate forecast before some accommodation will be reached. And new rites must appear. It is not that the Church of England wishes to deny these lovely couples their due happiness - merely that the Old Testament must be duly explained away on this sore point before progress can be made. Meantime the state can marry now that it has JPs up to the job and registry offices and hotels all over the kingdom open to it. With solemn formulas.

So

So until the new rites for weddings appear, authorised by general synod and approved by the usual vote in parliament, nothing can be done for gays that present themselves to churches for weddings. It is not as if the words can be changed ad hoc on the day anyway, since the entire introduction and preamble has to be adapted at length too, to reflect any official change in terminology, with a long introduction as to why the prescriptions of the Old Hebrew Bible in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about the old practices of Egypt and its many slaveries must be overturned in this time period and in this epoch. So much work to be done - if synod approves. Long debates. In any case the clergy till then enjoy a discretion at law, so that they can turn people away, and have always had that discretion if they so choose. It is not a state church or state faith as people commonly understand it in the gentlemen's clubs of Pall Mall. It is an endowed faith that expresses the spiritual power in the realm, and, most importantly, York and Canterbury remain the fathers in God of the monarch - as per Henry VIII, 2. Spiritual struggles.