Five Go Down - Chadderbox

Lara Crofter: It is good to meet here in the studio Bishop Stanley Urwin Eggs...

Stanley Urwin: Not Eggs, OGS. Ogslogsiyo.

Lara Crofter: Not eggs then, but you are a flying bishop. And Bishop Barry Broadarse, Archbishop Rowanov Treetri, Archbishop John Sendmehome - what are you doing here?

John Sendmehome: I heard they were coming to Grimtown so I came too. The road and the street both agreed that the green tarmac strip on the edge was crazy - a right cycle path.

Lara Crofter: But you have come on your own and over the Humber Bridge.

John Sendmehome: Hey lot's of people come on their own. You know, there's Father's Day for fathers, Mother's Day for mothers and Palm Sunday for people who come on their own.

Stanley Urwin: Has anyone in this little ol' studiolahole heard of Yankee Doodle Dandy, me duckiefolds of the Anglicola Catholy worldy yo?

Lara Crofter: Hey? What? For a different voice, it says here, we have Bishop Anthony Wedgewood Bigg. And a Roman Catholic, Archbishop Vince Hill.

Vince Hill: Just Catholic will do.

Lara Crofter: Why are you different Bishop Bigg? You look different.

Stanley Urwin: He hasn't got his frockeries on, my lovely leesy cheesy.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: What does it matter if I wear a tie? I believe in the Reformation, in that we are a confessing Church, in the love between the laity and their proper presbyters, and in crushing pliers on to people's fingers who don't agree.

Lara Crofter: Oh. Now then gentlemen, all of you are gentlemen, welcome.

Stanley Urwin: Some more or less than others so be do da, wouldn't you be tumpty told. Good all.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: Do you go to church, Miss Crofter? [speaking very slowly]

Lara Crofter: No, I'm just here doing my job and I want to ask my first question.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: I don't care; there are no such distinctions with God and his desire to love all his children and for them to obey, and I know this. Your mortal soul is in great danger and you threaten the godly Kingdom by your disobedience. I need to report you to the nearest presbyter who's reliable and your attendance is required, but only in a Bible believing church with a presbyter all can love and a curate all can like.

Lara Crofter: Well thanks but no thanks.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: It is not an option and your disobedience is noted by God. He chooses, you don't. He will judge you and he will judge the Church. It is why our Church must be correctly formulated and it is not the Church I joined any more.

Barry Broadarse: That we can agree on. It has become one where you are expected to click heels and march in time to the fu-nding liberal elite.

John Sendmehome: I went to a chiropodist's once. It said outside: 'Time wounds all heels'. Sort of opposite to the Gospel, really.

Barry Broadarse: Your liberal gospel maybe; nasty stuff. I tell it like it is.

Lara Crofter: Well, tell us. A moment has arrived when resignations have been announced. You are going, Bishops Urwin and Broadarse, and three others, and the ordinariate is surely on its way.

Stanley Urwin: No no no, humm; well I shall have to seeko whether I shall escalo upitty into the ecclesastico Catholodysitu; but no, what about the Sainty Wilfrid and the other incandesky still on this banker of the Tiberius shuss? He and four otherry rutheries are going going gone will be but I like it here and in Walsingcookedham but not us preparedio for just the hospice tally ho.

Lara Crofter: Do you always talk like that?

Stanley Urwin: You'd be very beautifully if you were a manhole.

Vince Hill: Our wonderful Holy Father in all his inspiration has indeed set in motion this arrangement with which we will all have to work carefully and with some delicacy as with the roses of picardy regarding existing arrangements and structures, minimising the disturbance and potential for upset, but this is nothing less than his inspired leadership.

Barry Broadarse: Yes, it is like we have left the evil of the SS no less with a home run from Colditz and its synodical governance and, liberated like doves across the sea from all this deviousness and damned criminality, we have joined civilisation: nothing but a true and proper Church, run with real gutsy authority. I am going and so are the bishops Andy Burnham, Isaac Newton, Wallace Barnes and Silk Road.

Vince Hill: Well we have to welcome all who wish to enter the Catholic Church, and reluctance must never come into it.

John Sendmehome: Apostacy, apostacy: a Scotsman has a poss to see if there is any money in it.

Barry Broadarse: Some may join after the ordinariate has been running a little while.

Lara Crofter: Bishop Broadarse, you call your colleagues bishops but don't you have to accept that they are not? You won't be on the other side but surely you are not now either.

Barry Broadarse: I have answered this before. We are bishops like Methodists have ministers, so we won't be bishops just like Methodists don't have priests but they have ministered and we have overseen. They say they are ordained, and they ordain, but we ordain them again, that is we as of now but not we as of later, when we would ordain them again if they were Catholic. But it is inspired and wonderful of the Holy Father to recognise that Anglican forms have the potential for Catholic worship, whereas I cannot see sufficient in Methodism for example.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: Why ever not? If they are properly selected Bible believing presbyters then they are just as apostolic by their confession; of course, they have fallen into the error of thinking that women can head mixed congregations and that is not possible, and in that we seek proper oversight and legal solutions for our Church that is now also seeking to enter into biblical error and heresy like the Methodists, which members of a Society we propose can avoid.

Lara Crofter: This is what it says here, that some want a Protestant society and some want a Catholic society. You could have lots of clubs and societies couldn't you? Like a Veggy Society for example, why not have a Veggy one?

John Sendmehome: We could grow our own.

Stanley Urwin: Well we will grow our only own society ees so we want it with Saints Hilda And Thomas is it or so be told, and what would yours be beetle bop de loola?

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: The Society Of Saint Augustine Global Evangelisation is coming soon.

Lara Crofter: So it is Protestant SOSAGE and Catholic SSHAT. Archbishop Treetri, what do you think about the societies SOSAGE and SSHAT?

Rowanov Treetri: Well the Archbishop of the North and I hoped, but indeed in the light of events failed, but in that we could again make some proper provision that would satisfy both sides regarding the Catholic wing of our Church, and the proposers; but I would like to think otherwise than that it must necessarily fail to meet both side's aspirations, a criticism that I would not accept either as regards the proposed Covenant, for example, in that the final draft is not intended to fail to meet either legitimate diversity and keeping people together at the table: although an element of multiforming the Anglican Communion is a way that some see as disciplinary whereas at least there is a more central table and an outer table where we can, so to speak, still pass the salt.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: But this is the point, our national Superintendant, our Moderator. If the central table you propose passes the salt to the lesser table, then the salt loses its saltiness, and what use is such salt if they then pass it back to the central table? The only way forward is for us to have the salt in a sealed container, for the one table ideally in a properly constituted confessing fellowship, for we either confess the faith or we do not. And those who don't can be prepared for the fires of hell, and perhaps we should send them on their way very warmly. Now we might say, this is just Communion business, but it is the same at home as abroad, and we need the Society Of Saint Augustine Global Evangelisation, and we need our SOSAGE to be ready and the barbecue for heresy.

Lara Crofter: Are they going to be granted their societies?

Barry Broadarse: Not from the fascist General Synod they won't. But they don't solve the problem of a corrupted episcopacy, and the ecumenical goal is so bloody great that it is time to unite by going.

Vince Hill: Look around and you'll find me there, and you'll find our managerial master the Pope there too, welcoming the Anglicans with his understanding of Cardinal Newman, who would never have bypassed the structures of the Catholic Church like this. Let us hope that the newly ordained priests will be able to go out and assist existing parishes for which we have so many shortages now.

Rowanov Treetri: I would not say otherwise except that there are a number of tensions in the Church that need to be talked through. And we can see that although we regret people leaving, most will undoubtedly probably stay, and on the basis that we pay more than Roman Catholics and offer pensions, we can probably not offer more than something like a code of practice, but the proposers and supporters of women's episcopacy may not be soon in their desired outcomes but have to wait and discuss much further before the legislation goes through, nevertheless keeping the matter moving along on a discussion basis. That relates, yes, to SSHAT, but as for SOSAGE I am not so sure on what basis we can bring that in. The issue on the SOSAGE side is not so much that but is much more the gay one, I think, where we can continue to ask gay people to ask themselves about self-sacrifice further so that we hang on to the discussion for much much longer and thus not see the need for an effective SOSAGE being made.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: Do not string along our SOSAGE, Moderator, like you string along everything else. The gay issue is a symptom of the malaise or cancer that is rife, from which we need a sanitised area, a place composed of sound believers assisted by sound overseers. We do not want to see our young people - and by 'our' I mean those whom we know to be Bible believers, not the generality - going off elsewhere with their ministry after attendance at our two main ordinand centres that we largely fund ourselves. You see, they give oaths of obedience to bishops and their heirs and successors, and we cannot know outside a society who will be their successors. These men need SOSAGE.

Stanley Urwin: He is righto about thatty wold.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: And also legally they can be and must be ordained among fellow male ordinands without females. Bishops now must make that provision, when requested by our people, but what if this changes? Women cannot be curates liked by their congregations and presbyters loved by their congregations: not when the congregations have men in them. You seem not to be a believer, Moderator, our national Superintendant, and your leadership is like a colonial privilege or a British Prime Minister at a Commonwealth meeting whereas we should have a chosen Bible believing Moderator.

Rowanov Treetri: There is no doubt that there exists some difficulty within Anglicanism of differences about the nature of authority. I was in India recently and praised difference and variation in religion in general, but clearly in our Anglican Church there is rather a strained version of diversity we might say, though it is because we have high expectations from the different perspectives of the unity we should achieve and that is the positive side, I think, to be welcomed.

Vince Hill: This sounds like Gas Street to me. Unity needs structure, a structure of Cardinals and Archbishops, bishops and priests in archdioceses and dioceses and parishes. We mess around with these structures, bypassing lines of proper authority at our peril, but we have at least the great leadership of our pontiff above the cardinals with his direct interest in the new ordinariates.

Lara Crofter: We are coming close to the end.

John Sendmehome: Looks like we are, the end to a particular witness.

Lara Crofter: I've learnt a lot, though I don't know what about. Do you think, then, that the Church in England will have women bishops soon?

Stanley Urwin: Not while we don'ty wonty have what we don't weedy needy. The Sin Synod can still voty nowee no, and that'll doodle do for me oh. I love just getting up in the morning, saying thanks for that to my friendly friendissio, you going off in your Anglican tat and me in mine, and enjoying meeting all the boysio in townsing up and down the landed gentry tree Treetri.

John Sendmehome: It's a good yarn, this.

Stanley Urwin: Beautififul materiality to the touchtush indeedio.

John Sendmehome: It's a good yarn that you tell very well, except you talk funny. Hey I'm the comedian here.

Bishop Barry Broadarse: Let them have women bishopesses. Nothing will stop them and let it become the Protestant Church it wants to be with all these women.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: It is not a sound Protestantism that I could recognise. I don't remember John Knox at the Reformation saying, suddenly, now we are Reformed we will have women presbyters. He knew his Bible if anyone did. No, we cannot have an unsound Protestantism. Well liberalism is its own thing, its own virtual religion, a sort of dressing up of appearances.

Stanley Urwin: Now come come on to me there now don't ooh naughty boysyoats.

Lara Crofter: My researcher tells me, Archbishop Treetri, that according to a Bishop Monarch you could be the new Catholic leader of the Church in England, now that these other Catholics are leaving.

Rowanov Treetri: Only in the sense, I think, that I wish to see our Communion as not less of a Church, as more a collection of bishops and archbishops in communion on the Catholic side, but also guided properly by belief and not just orders of consecration with a full use of the guidelines of the Bible. Since arguably in the eyes of some I stopped being a theologian, I have had to see the much more limited view that my employment approach to reading the Bible allows, although there is a level of ambiguity allowed by where the centre of gravity happens to be in our Communion as at present in the representation of any one point of view. So I would agree more with Bishop Bigg if there were more people like him at the time. Perhaps we could live with SOSAGE and SSHAT if there are few involved, but I doubt the General Synod will agree with something that looks like a Third Province and restricted episcopacy by another name.

Lara Crofter: Gosh and I thought going shopping was complicated. Perhaps we need the weather from George Hudson.

George Hudson: Lara, there is a cold front bringing north westerlies veering north, obviously resulting in precipitation of a persistent kind, of both seasonal causality and due to the Jet Stream moving further north.

Lara Crofter: George, stop speaking like that. Where are you?

George Hudson: Platform four, Doncaster, and it's cold and wet. There are quite a few people here cleaning the platform and it's already clean but people on the dole have to do what people used to get paid for.

Anthony Wedgewood Bigg: The Bible says if you don't work you don't eat.

Lara Crofter: That's good you said that George, 'cause people can text in about that. I'm sure they've loads of opinions on the unemployed being forced to do community service, than on something they don't know anything about or couldn't care less.

George Hudson: Hasn't stopped them before. Anyway, plenty of anoraks needed in this weather.

Lara Crofter: Thanks to my guests and hope the weather doesn't affect your travel too much.

Stanley Urwin: Any of you boysyo fancy coming baccalaureate with me where I can getty changeo in my hotelier roomy nice and warmo and cuddlyo? It's a course for the curioser and curioser don't you knowno.

Rowanov Treetri: No no I shall accompany John and talk about the coming Synod.

John Sendmehome: How come a man was arrested for having a first class ride on a second class ticket, when he was in a second class carriage with his girlfriend? The British Transport Policeman caught them at it, and he didn't think too much of the girlfriend.

Lara Crofter: That's misorgy mis orgyanistic. Misorg. She's probably a lovely lady.

John Sendmehome: Misogynistic? Hey it's my Church you're on about love. Anyway, time to go. Did you hear about the excited naturist clockmaker down on the sunny beach who never needed a watch?

Rowanov Treetri: Humm: as your colleague, your Archbishop and, er, your Moderator, I think it is time we were all going.

Barry Broadarse: Good God the man has shown some leadership at last. Keep going and you'll be coming to Rome.