Friday 2 July 2010

Women bishops: Q and A

Hello thickos of the fundamentalist PCC. Your vicar has written this paper so that you can all agree with him. Notice that I am a him.

This month the General Synod of the Church in England will be asked to vote on women becoming bishops. Surely opponents to this are plain daft, stupid, ludicrous, nauseating?

After all, we had a fantastic woman Prime Minister and she had balls, we have a woman sovereign, and women get some pretty good vacuum cleaners these days my wife says, who I leave at home in the vicarage because she agrees with me. Surely the Church is all about justice and fairness and not about chauvinist pigs jumping off the cliff full of demons. Are we in this respect not in danger of aligning ourselves with those Bible reading chauvinists who, in the past, have denied women access to university education, membership of sporting and other clubs, equal pay and even the vote? At what point did we limit what the Bible says to what the Church and what its family members do?

I want to say now, positively, a bishop should be a man. What must be the basis for our discussion?

The Beano. Look in The Beano and the cartoons show clearly a male order over the female. It is Dennis the Menace not Denise the Meany. This clearly follows on from the Thirty-nine Articles and the Canon Law of the Church, which all tell us how we can be good Protestants before the Civil War happened when a woman was in control.

The trouble is, many who want women bishops don't read The Beano, but naughty publications like Cosmopolitan and they readily toss away anything they don't want to read or hear, like the child with fingers in his ear going "la la la la" when you talk to him.

Let's look at the way God ordered things. We see that first of all God said "It's One o'clock, time to get up, dum de dum de dum," and he made Phil Collins - and only then did he make Julie Walters out of Phil's rib, as seen on TV. Clearly Phil Collins is a different type of human from anyone else and Julie Walters was a bit boney M. She is Buster's helper. God presented her to him and he said, "Ugh. Woooo-man." God also said, "Stop playing with that dinosaur," to Julie. It is a picture of delight and openness.

Phil Collins goes into the garden and is then told what to do by God, whereas Julie Walters does what Phil says. Mike Rutherford understands this when he plays the music for using the lawnmower: "Me, I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell me by the way that I walk," says Julie, confronting Buster in the garden.

She is a helper, just like God! She is therefore equal, just like God. And all this happened before Peter Gabriel fell off the hanging basket and Phil had to start singing.

When Julie caused mayhem at that concert, God still laid responsibility at Phil's door. Still, woman has to take her part of the punishment: "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." No more swinging (on the hanging baskets). Those women who disobey the rules inevitably end up on The Jeremy Kyle Show where he describes them as "trash" and "good entertainment". Such is sin for all to see.

Equality of the sexes? That's sin: toxic competition. But then along came John Lennon and his marriage manual, and he carefully explained how once again Peter Gabriel might be the singer again when all is restored, and thus Phil still tells Julie to mow the lawn. Just in case people weren't taking notes, or the manual got lost, John passed it on to Paul via an intermediary (they never met) and Paul said women ought to keep their mouths shut, especially given the noise that Yoko makes.

Paul told Linda to submit, once they had the wedding at Cana. The husband is the head of the wife: she is called to submit to him, but he is commanded to love her. Paul tried this a second time, but it didn't work. Just as the photographer tells the model what to do, so John took a view about his Church, although he had no view about the Church and left that to Paul as well. Much of it does seem to come from Paul, with Ringo drumming and George recruiting Bungle and Zippy.

The Church is thus a happy family, which is why it keeps squabbling. It cannot even agree about headship, but look back at The Beano again and clearly a bishop is like Dennis the Menace.

Those who think that not allowing women to be bishops denigrates women lacks subtlety of thought. After all, does anyone really want to be a bishop?

Gosh this is painful. Why does fundamentalism look so ridiculous? Because of sin. Feelings run deep. And sin means women seek power, which is simply against their fluffy nature, to welcome the man home after work, give him a cup of tea before his food and, already perfumed, be ready at a moment's notice to be available in the marriage bed for another attempt at procreation. Pity he should say, "Sorry love I've had a hard day at work," and she slinks away disappointed to just give him his food and watch the telly according to what he wants on.

Thus the answer is not to abolish the male-female distinction but to return to one rightly ordered, where a woman does not go on top but understands her missionary position. He should lead by serving her, by which he serves himself, and keeps hold of the zapper and zipper for that matter.

These are universal points. Imagine. It is 7th August and you are on Skegness beach, and it is fucking cold again. Your pimples are up, and that is a universal response to a specific situation that it is cold at Skegness even when everywhere else is good and warm. Do you understand my little illustration, you thickos of the PCC?

Paul said women should have their heads covered, but he might have meant have mop tops and not to shave their heads like Sinead O'Conner defying the created order. Still, even if the sun has got its hat on, this is just a piece of symbolism that emphasises that women should keep quiet and stop that shrieking and crying like she does in that video.

She should stop pretending to be a man, and Jews are not Gentiles. And she would never be a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church due to all the abuse she gives it. It is not a career, her sort of singing, and The Beano is utterly reliable. Indeed, so is a translation like The Dandy. You can be a Beano person or a Dandy person: it pretty much amounts to the same thing.

All this matters, because The Beano and The Dandy can be used to carry fish and chips, and salt needs to go on to them with the old vinegar on a stick. We are called to be a condiment, of the white substance, shaking that ass on which Lennon said, "Give Peace a Chance." We need to express the beautiful pattern in which all males are like Phil Collins.

We cannot weaken what we say, even if the story of Progressive Rock is as pure myth as Punk or the New Romantics. Remember that it does not matter what nonsense I write: if it is in The Beano then it carries the Maker's instructions on a balance of stories.

So what do we want and when do we want it? When do we want it? Now! We want reality to be like a big fiction along the lines of Boney M, when they sang 'By the Rivers of Babylon', as that is one hell of a myth making location. As our music evolves, we realise that so much we used to think is drivel, and yet some go on as if nothing has changed, because so much maintained drivel is actually about existing power structures of little men lording it over congregations. Now if we can't have The Beano placed carefully through the letter box, we might just have one that flies towards the letter box from the lazy newspaper boy who can't slow down. We'd better pray for that delivery, at least, thickos, or perhaps for something the Archbishop baffled us with and that makes me look a bit thick.

Alastair Pain in the Arse, Vicar, Lennon Church, Skegness.

2 comments:

Hugh said...

Another brilliant one Adrian . :)


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Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

Quick as I could.