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.

Synod

God be with the days, as my old friends Brian Brindley and Brian Hanson used to say, when at General Synod, the House of Laity and the House of Clergy were not so divided on this question of the Anglican Communion canonising it's own saints, and not just the usual favourites of red canon left leaning PC politics such as Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or Oscar Romero or John F Kennedy  because they were democrats who hated police officers, but rather some more solid figures such as Catherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey, Charles I, Henry VI founder of Eton, as the Rev Simon used to say. Anyway, House of Clergy is neocon, while House of Laity is low-church n anti-canonisation, despite the groundswell of feeling among the flocks. Clergy say that the House of Laity is too upper class and too remote from the vast majority of Anglicans who never did stomach the Lutheran and low church bilge for very long, esp under the ethnic cleanser republicans of Cromwell. No the English, Welsh, and Scottish people like their saints and refused to accept the German bilge about them.

Edmund

Golly gosh, I might have been a barrow boy from Smithfields when I was younger, but even I can be convinced of the pleasanter things in life with an invitation to some huge posh pile of limestone in the country to play croquet on a lovely lawn. Very nice indeed. Which is where we are this weekend. And while I am horsing around with the Duchess, lo and behold, I bump into a young ordinand to be, like a scene from Mansfield Park. He hopes to be ordained soon. I presume to give advice. He hopes to be ordained into a larger more catholic Anglicanism. I concur. I tell him that just as the little barque of Anglicanism floats in a grander n larger sea of international Catholicism with all of it's many rites and spiritualities, so too a larger more "catholic" Anglicanism is on the cards nowadays. It will be important to be both evangelical and institutional, just like the new world catholic clergy - and to be all things to all men, so as to win many to Christ. 

Rip

So the infamous first preacher of hate in the west goes up to the pearly gates this week to meet his just judge .... And also he wil meet shock surprise ... all the rats n vermin he hoped would not be there ... Maybe he will be ensconced within a high walled enclosure so as not to see all the working classes. Still, friends, Romans, countrymen, we come not to praise Caesar but to bury him. In the end he had a near death experience and realised that the real Jesus was quite nice n that life is about acceptance of others ... Even zealots like nathaniel. 

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.