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. 

Golly

Golly surprise surprise, no riots this summer in old London town. Am shcoked and bemused - there must be a decline in the usual kind of old red canon in the city. Popped into a vicar in the countryside the other day and he was explaining that he gives the local children All Things Bright and Beautiful and reminds them that all is as it should be - a nice quietening influence is his lordship the country bumkin vicar - and the kids seem to enjoy it all. No dawkins lovers among the kids that is for sure - except for the oddity at the back of the class - I imagine Dawkins used to spend his days at school hiding in the stock cupboard trying to prove he was normal and not a carry-in and carry-out sort of ineffectual teacher's pet. Yes London town is very quiet - none of the usual dark black moods hanging over the city nor the expected rivers of blood that we usually have this time of year during the long hot summer of a 79 as Tom Robinson used to put it so quaintly in the heydays of revolutionary fervour among our dear west indian friends. Yes, very quiet. Mmm I must pop over to Woolwich and visit one of the local barracks there as London is supposed to be a garrison town.

Rev Simon IV

Historically our role in the Church of England was always one of conservation and preservatism - we pulled the huge old bird away from the private interpretation lunacies of the low church, non-church, non-hieratic protestant hasidics of Bucer and Calvin and the insane Zwingli - not even Luther in all his disrespect for the imperial power of the papal states denied certain catholic dogmas as dogmas. Still who knows maybe dear old Justin has a point in pushing the bounds of revisionism at the moment. It seems that a new framework and a new imposition is necessary for christening robes and the like, a new design maybe, as most moderns have no concept of what all the old biblical commentary means, except maybe Ratzinger, and even he and his german friends can look ridiculous as they pump out endless shavings and split hairs on Genesis 2 that most modern cosmic britons do not accept as anything but absurdly subjective psychological poetry. And nobody in modern Britain accepts the old stuff about either Adam or the old serpent and the old Nick because they have not had anything like a nice modern cosmic format for all that evil within the home planet. Too many old evangelicals and catholics pursuing old hat about a subject that needs a general over-arching rewrite. Is there a doctor in the house?

Rev Simon III

Rev Simon the other night - "Ah - the old Church of England used to believe in these things; the devil, the soul, original sin of Adam and Eve, and especially the vestments of office; but christenings are being reviewed and revised out of religion into PC secular protestant low church what-knot ville a la Geneva circa 1610. Nowadays it is all aboard the Trans-siberian express to the good ship HMS Nemesis waiting for all the poor working class christians at Vladivostock harbour, to be escorted to a glorious future of marzipan and dry white wine by the old cruisers, the HMS Aurora and the HMS Potemkin, not that Dr C was not recruited by elements of the old KGB at university and then turned into a "turner" once he had penetrated into the heart of the red canon system of the old Church of England. So once all these happy little christian working classes are busily piped on board and given peanuts and sparkling rose to quaff on board, then their ship will set off for a promised land, much promised to the "ignorant" little tikes that still believe in the virtue of religion, and thence. Oh stop there. This is not right. This is not in the script. The ships are not sailing for a promised land of happiness and peace and freedom from intrusion, invasion, and ridicule; but for China. To communist China full of total revisionism and endless communism, and they won't be feasting with joy on marzipan; no these poor little tikes will be put in concentration prisons for anti-communists. No what a shame; oh well, it is no change at Party Headquarters." Such would be the general write-up in the ordinary somewhat churlish and antique old fashioned secular GB papers at the mo - as per Judy and the non-churched girls in The Mail. But is the learned Dr Welby planning a more exciting future for us all - assisted by her britannic majesty and her new young crowd of fans?

Rev Simon II

Rev Syme - "Still in the OLD CHURCH OF ENGLAND, such votes would not be considered without consulting around the cities of both Oxford and Cambridge and then round Londinium. With copious studies of the Cambridge Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Also we would spend inordinate amounts of time preparing position papers and reports from history of the central issue - whether female ordination was always and everywhere a sign of heresy among gnostics, and whether the ban of women about gnostic church order of the Collyridians in the mainstream churches by St Epiphanius had indeed been lifted at the time of La reforma. We used to do things biblically by exhausting the references in the New Testament about such ministries - esp the bits about diakonia - and then canonically by perusing the FIRST EIGHT ECUMENICAL COUNCILS - AND THE HISTORY THEREOF. So one remains a tad churlish today about all this simple vote winning and vote rigging among the houses of laity and clergy. But then, the female feminists who had taken over such houses were nothing if political but maybe they had to be - and are these far removed from the people in the pews who just want to see the old faith flourish whatever low church monarchs try to impose on their sweet little souls? Am not sure. Such women as Canon Sandy and Canon Gill do try to understand that it was the people of England who had not spoken yet that we follow, since it was these ordinary clotted cream wielding lovelies who had preserved the church of anglican catholicism in Britain and Ireland from the worst excesses of underhand lutherans and calvinists and bucerian lunatics bent on the luddite solution to all technology and sacred art. You see, at the end of the day THE OLD CHURCH OF ENGLAND, THE REAL CHURCH OF ENGLAND, this was not just another political body of silly old gaffers unable to see through innovations or behind such political activity; it was a real faith where things had to be passed by the Bible first AND TRADITION. Even moderniste catholicques nowadays - those that have not yet been thrown out of koinonia - even these understand that all arguments for change over the other side in Auntie Overseas in the really scientific form of the christian catholic faith do needs must have to pass the tests OF SCRIPTURE, TRADITION, and organic MAGISTERIUM since these are the vehicls of normative revelation, BEFORE being passed or even being seriously mooted. So the catholiques do their homework on all heresies associated with excessive change. Are the catholics a bit slow? Unwieldy toward women?" Maybe but a religion is a force for conservatism is the position of the Rev Simon. Nobody phones the cardinals at London or even the lovely nuncio down south. Did anybody ask Dr Muller at the Holy Office for a report?? Such is the alarmed Rev Syms.

Rev Simon I

Well it is St Swithun's Day MMXIV and the custom as yours and ours does say that if it rains on this day, it shall rain for 40 days and nights thereafter. Custom. Custom as yours I can have any day, and it is no, nay, never; no nay never again, shall we play the wild rover, no never again. Such could have been the tune that everybody used to sing before the vote at general synod today for women bishops. The case against women deacons was strong, against women presbyters was stronger, against women bishops stronger still; but the women carried the day and the debates are pretty much over. The women won the floor of this debate. The quality of argumentation was a little better than at the rubbishy and gibberish laden debates of the 1992 synod. Women were more vocal - they had some arguments this time - they at least pretended to do some theology. Bottles being swept up tonight in Old London Town. Apparently it is an issue of equality. The feminist dons were much in evidence. The smoother lines very apparent. Fair enough. After all if one is going to create a nice diplomatic political church out of the disease of Henry VIII and the old rubble of the dreadful swiss-backed and bavarian guided anarchy of the reformation and one that is keen on preserving the people in the pews from the worst excesses and dreary illuminati gospels of the low church end of things from Geneva all with a political reading of Revelations 4, then it was high time to let the ladies in. Congratulations lassies; though this may be a superficial victory.

Still we must also heed a still small voice of warning from the back of the aula tonight. Young boy Daniel is calling out above the din about old Church susannah. If this is just a ruling for olde worlde feminism and the feminisation of all society, then we are back to the old gender amazonian wars of the 1970s faculties here in London. In these halls of academe, feminist exegesis predominated over weak men but all built on the old canard that men = vice; women = virtue, in the same way that children were abused on many housing estates of the early Dawkins and HG Wells kind that did believe in going to church in the sunday schools of the 1980s. Al-jazeerah and Dawkins I ask you. The debate polarised the churches in those years - kids were divided and ruled in polite anglican schools - and all this rested on an old division and opposition that is not verified in nature. I do hope that today we did not fall prey to an old oppositional that is often a sign of some political ideology penetrating the faiths around the world - rubbishing tradition and dividing and ruling first islam, then anglicanism, then hinduism, then burmese buddhism - and all through politics over theology. Very BC but also very much a Macdonaldisation heresy of the churches - that old bird Dalai Lama would say such hedonist men are not to be trusted when dividing and ruling western institutes such as governments, judiciaries, colleges, and even God forbid, religions too - such men like yon Cassius are lean and dangerous - they are merely men of passion trying to overtake the kingdom of many spiritual beings and even more spiritual children of Abraham. Still, ladies, let us not be churlish, for Men have been running the church of england now for 500 years since old Harry the Eighth built it on the rocks of his profligate hedonism, and all they have done is fold its old respect for custom and grace before every ethical and ritual agenda presented to them by the world, the flesh, and the old nick - divorce, abortion, contraception, gay love, euthanasia, paedophilia, animal love and so on - each and all was succumbed using hard cases as bad law; so is it indeed time to hand over to the ladies and see if they can something with it all? Thank you so very much Mrs T - but ladies have been running the NEW CHURCH OF ENGLAND now for 60 years since 1953 - and not very well. Gay churches are not good at confronting the spirit of the world, and their love of retail therapy weakens the soul, and honours consumerism and superficiality. The Dalai is throwing up.

St Stephen's Divinity School - IV

The truth we have all come to realise in the Real i.e. Old Church of England is that God has no favourites, but that the British are more equal than others. We have a mighty Almightiness at the head of the International Communion called Archbishop Welby and he would not be so slow to affirm such a principle despite his Clegg like socialist sympathies with the old left and the old Bill of Rights brigade from 1688 - just as the old left inhabited and penetrated first hinduism and then islam and then protestantism in germany and then moderate anglicanism in the 2010s, so too the Empire was great because it strove for 5 centuries to do what the old christian empire and roman empire before it could not do - it bestrode the globe and imposed order on top of so much chaos - something like what the Israeli empire is doing today despite 500 rockets being fired by those poor benighted primitive children of a primitive socialist misreading of the koran called Hamas.

Oh yes the new archbishop at Cantuar is no stranger to controversy and has his work cut out for him now that Dr Carey the old evangelical simplicius has dissociated himself from official obsessions of the catholic left and anglican far-right in challenging governments on dignitas in dying tickets. Yet, it would be foolish of Dr Welby to refuse a nice dialogue with Dr Carey on Dignitas since that evangelical prelate is known for his simple evangelical purity. Dr Welby might learn something from him - he cannot be all wrong on the notion of consent - as so many older people are tired of living in monastic style houses called nursing homes. Luther would be laughing in his puritan grave - having turned all the monks and nuns out of the monasteries and convents and marrying one and then turning the whole municipium city-state into a monastery through black-and-white puritan MaccieD republicanism. These poor old tired seniors were not made for indignities and manhandling - why not simply ask the old boys and girls what they wish for out of life? Yes Dr Welby is a good egg when he listens and he can build the case for dialogue with the caring Dr Carey. Catholic leftwingers who are always kicking in MPs on gynaecology, absurd contraception arguments, euthanasia, adoption, definitions of marriage and so on; these are just political movements doing politics - few even understand the nuances of official teaching in the final redaction of the 1992 catechism - the latin text of the textus finalis of the CCC. And few of them care - since the object of their exercise is kicking in governments of the neocon right and not the advancement of religious faith - and so they end up largely ignoring the cleverness of the final text of such gospel magna cartas. They simply use the simple flocks to further their own political agendas. One hopes that Dr Welby will avoid the pitfalls to right and left of this debate.