Have you really been excommunicated?  How exciting!  Did a sinister priest turn up and personally serve you with a black-edged Notice?  I actually always thought you’d managed to chuck them first.  Or is it a deemed-excommunication-situation?

Mind you, now you mention it, the sideburns are a bit satanic.

You might well have guessed that I’d read this article!  And of course I agree with almost every word and have been making the same points recently to anyone I could get to listen.  Basically, I think that the reality is this.  People born into a strand of Christianity who retain any belief in any of it tend to stay in their own denomination - out of apathy / familiarity if nothing else.  If they’re honest, all would admit to a ‘cafeteria’ approach to supposedly crucial doctrinal issues.  Remember how at university you would point out that practising Catholics all used contraception?  In the same way someone like me hangs around in the Protestant wing of the C of E / Methodism - because of the passion and commitment to social justice and the example of Jesus - and screens out the bollocks.  And of course one person’s bollocks is another person’s crucial article of faith.

BUT what I do find fascinating is people who make a significant denominational move - eg across the Alps / English Channel etc - in any different direction.  Because THEY are saying, publicly, ‘OK I have read and studied everything that this lot say I must believe and YES BY TOTAL COINCIDENCE I HAPPEN TO BELIEVE EXACTLY THE SAME STUFF AND NOTHING ELSE!!!!!!’.  How can that not be bollocks?!  Whatever they may say (and genuinely believe) NO ONE in ANY denomination believes the whole package - not even the Pope or raving loony telly-evangelists.  If they did, it would be a crazily impossible psychological coincidence.  One of the most depressing experiences I have ever had in a Christian setting was discussing some issue (can’t remember what) with a Christian friend.  After a good conversation, he wrecked it all by concluding with the words ‘Interesting.  Now I must ask our minister what we believe about that’.  AAAAAARGH!!!! And he was intelligent enough to know better.

People coming in to the Church from right outside are different - they have no choice but to find whichever denomination seems to them to the least bad in the bollocks-doctrine respect.  And, preferably, one that doesn’t expect them to assent to too much as a condition of membership.  In defence of my own denomination(s) I have to say that the C of E and the Methodists are excellent from that point of view - no belief in anything at all will ever be required of you!  They got Andrew in that way.  Lulled him into a false sense of security.  It’s dead cunning.  And because the C of E is the established church, Canon law can’t stop people coming to church, or using it to get baptised / married / buried etc - whatever they do or don’t believe.  A certain type of public-school vicar will refer to such people as the ‘non playing members of the Church’.  So....it’s not quite fair of you to say that the High Anglicans have officially been believing all the official Anglican bollocks for all these years. Although I suppose there’s no such get-out for the clergy.

I know loads of these High Anglicans who are threatening to leave.  Basically, they are Catholics doctrinally and are happy to tell you so.  Fair enough.  For the reasons set out above, they don’t bother to move to Rome - no need - they have their own power base in the C of E (London, Chichester) - they get paid more in the C of E - they can be married or have a ‘Father’s Friend’ living in the vicarage. They also have a lot more freedom that they’d have under Rome.  BUT they are jolly pissed off about women priests and bishops and reckon that they can bully Rowan by threatening further schism (the fundies are already splitting off in the other direction - can the centre hold? - etc).  In fairness to them, this is a REALLY crucial thing for them (whilst worse than bollocks for me) and they are extremely sincere and mean well by the C of E (but then my mother always said that the worst thing you could say of anyone was that they ‘meant well’).  The thought process is ‘So far I’ve been able to be a Catholic within the Church of England, but now I won’t be able to’.  Many don’t want to go to Rome but feel they really may end up doing so as the lesser of two evils.  Be fun to watch them raising three kids on £8,000 per year.

Or.... are they really just social conservatives with a ‘deep rooted commitment against women’s equality’? Well, it’s very tempting for someone like me - who longs to kick them up the bum on every possible occasion - to say so.  But in all honesty I don’t think it’s that simple.  Yes certainly, in some cases.  But, to be fair, not in all.  Just to take the women who oppose women’s ordination or bishopping - I’ve known very dynamic and feminist deaconesses who are against women’s ordination for various reasons - eg not biblical, shouldn’t do it till the whole of Christendom agrees, must avoid further schism at all costs. Same re women bishops.  You could indeed argue that they are being extra-Christan and forgiving in their approach (or, of course, that they are showing self-loathing remarkable even by Christian standards).  But the point is, they are a very mixed bag - and in many cases, very uneasy bedfellows.  Same with the male priests - some loathsome bigots (even by Christian standards), some very genuine, thoughtful, otherwise-feminist men.  I won’t bore you with their arguements, but in some cases they really are genuine and have caused them huge problems in their families and marriages (Serve them right I hear you say). 

ANYWAY - With any luck if they do go (and I don’t mind much either way, personally) at least it will provoke a change in the Catholic priesthood - surely they won’t be able to sustain the celibacy requirement for much longer. So that might mean a better calibre of Catholic priest (I sound like my Dad now - Top Chaps needed!) with a more balanced world view.  WE can only hope.

Let me know when you feel the twitch upon the thread!

R x

The philosophy of all these players is based on absurdity; and in an effort to appear rational, absurdity is piled upon absurdity in order to build a structure of vacuity on a foundation of the same politically sturdy material.

Trying to find anything other than absurdity in their position is a futile task in the way that debating with them is, to echo Democrat Congressman Barney Frank, like debating “with a dining room table” - there is no point in doing it.

Lots of Anglicans are closer to what the Pope says than what the liberal fringe espouses, and bowing the knee to Rome is not that arduous these days - there’s no Inquisition anymore.