Pope Benny's Message In Full

Note that this is the NIV Good News translation of Pope Benedict XVI's recent controversial message.

Hello all you Catholic bigwigs with me here today!

Here comes the birth of baby Jesus, and only this can give every family out there a really fab party.

Even we single blokes in the Catholic hierarchy come together and give each other cards and good hugs, man to man. Ooh lovely. I'll come to this plug stuff later.

So hello everyone and thanks for helping me, the next one in the line that started with Peter. That's the Peter, not any old Peter.

Thanks a lot too to Dean of Cardinals Angie Soddo Anussy who spoke for you and the workers here at Catholic HQ. He's always such good fun: I spoke to him on my mobile the other day and apparently he got an injury.

Well our party, that special gig, is really a continuation of when all those gathered around the Holy Family, coming together as Jesus first said, 'Hello World!'

The gig is so good because it's like a big gift; Paul wrote a letter to Titus about it and said: 'Apparantly God's grace gets up your nose like fumes off a bus and it's the opposite of horrible.' (Apparuit gratia Dei Salvatoris nostri omnibus hominibus) This then gets up the nose of all men (but not women, who just tag along behind their blokes and try and see again what's so whiffy). It's the mission of Peter and the lads down the ages to get the smell really rich, strong and welcoming, like a steaming Turkey on the table at Christmas.

OK. Let's get to business. Hasn't this been one wopper of a year for the Church! And there are a few anniversaries too. Fifty years ago, Pope Pius XII died. Fifty years ago, John XXIII became Pope. Encyclical Humanae Vitae came out forty years ago, but the author, Pope Paul VI, was dead ten years after he wrote that one. It must have been the subject matter that got to him.

We've discussed them enough already, so we'll talk about something else.

Back in June 28 I was with your Big Father Bart Simpson of Istanbul and some other notables, and we had a big birthday party for Paul: that's not any old Paul but the Paul - he would be 2000 years old had he lived. But even though he is long dead he still influences us today through his letters. His letters forward readers on to the died and apparition Christ.

What Paul says is that this Church is Christ's body and if you love Christ then you love this Church and all that is in it. So make sure you love this Church and just remember that I am the boss.

What else happened this year?

Well we had that World Youth Day. That had the sceptics going: I bet they didn't think we could muster up more than a handful of youths given what Catholicism stands for. Well we proved them wrong: we bunged them on planes and buses and Australia started to sink under the weight of marching feet. Like all young people they had a good time, and thanking us for the ride said told the world that they are Catholics. I'll say more about this.

We also had a nice time in the United States and France. We got our stall out in both places and put some lights on for the world. They shone on life as we know it and the press had to go on and on about sexual abuse again.

Oh yes and there were the Bishops who gathered for some Bible readings. I enjoyed that.

You take things for granted but you shouldn't, and we didn't: God replies to text messages. He'll shape our lives and we can ask for mercy, given what we get up to as clergy. He reaches parts that others cannot reach but you need to be awake when he does it. The reply message says, 'Come together: you're more than individuals.' It is personal, but you only get it when you get together, and it always is a bit different with each generation. So let's get together.

Now the Bible was written long ago in its own time, but it's amazing how it also speaks to us, because God chatters through this too.

And the Church too: it has Pentecost today, with lots of voices and dressing up and the Word of God covers the lot, and then some more for those who suffer all this stuff. When these Bishops gathered, Big Father Bart was very clever and showed another way to get messages to the Word of God. You can do it by taking pictures as well as sending texts, and boy was he clever how he did that. So that gathering ought to give us a filip, keeping the Bible up to date as God chatters through it to us using all its variety and the mobile too.

I did some visits this year and that was about God chattering now too. I make the Church visible, like putting a dog collar on and wandering up and down the high street waiting for someone at least to say, "Hello Vicar of Christ, how do you keep your gown so white? How do you avoid stains like you get when you end up spilling your rice pudding?"

This brings me back to those young people coming off the buses. It's wow man youth culture - or is it? Yeah, we even got more people there than at the Olympics: I bet none of those sneery journalists and secular types expected that! Now the police said, if these kids can't behave then we'll give them Anti Social Behaviour Orders and will lock 'em up, but I said to the Prime Minister, these are Catholics and if I tell them to behave they will. In the end the police went off shift because these Catholic kids drank sarsaparilla and made lots of sniggering remarks to each other about genitals and when to use them.

It reminds me when I talk to my priests, and about when not to use them. I'll have more to say on all this shortly.

No, they had a wonderful time, and the few police about had a dance, like they do at the Notting Hill Carnival in England, where they nicked our churches and monasteries. Good for public relations, it was, in Sydney. Everyone got outside of themselves, with drinking all that sarsaparilla.

Everyone said, it's like a big rock festival and I'm the big attraction. Typical isn't it that they should use youth culture like this and miss the big God above in the Australian sky. Even Catholics spoke like these secularists. No it's not - because the gathering leaves a God-shaped impression in the Outback, and they can't explain that one.

Nothing is the same again when Catholics get off the buses and start to smell that rich aroma of ripe humanity. Your Holy Mother accompanies these kids, keeping them in good order, in case she gets Cross, and so it was like a pilgrimage as they behaved themselves. We didn't hand out condoms either.

They encountered the one who died and made an apparition or two, so they thought about that and the Holy Mother who accompanied them when they met each other and Christ as they walked Via Crucis on the way to the Opera House. And I'm not the star: I just point to the star in the sky who twinkles down over Bethlehem at this time of year, though no astronomer says this.

We had a church service outdoors - we couldn't get them all in anywhere and we weren't going to ask that raving Protestant Anglican in Sydney for his place - and this was the big event when all our heavenly friends were present.

The guy who said 'God is dead' also said a good party needs partygoers, and boy were they goers and fruity. No wonder so many boys and girls made friends afterwards. Our other heavenly friend present at the gig was the Holy Spirit. And he had a few words: The Creator Spirit moved over the waters to get to Australia. The Creator Spirit made mathematics and gave a woof under nature, making it all bouncy and springy and thingy.

Now this nature has got brains, and so have we, and our brains see its brains, and they both come from the Creator Spirit. But that means our brains must look after the brains of nature because nature is a gift and we are its administrators like in those high rises that you do see in Sydney. Now this brainy creation that the Creator Spirit made not only adds up, and lets you do experiments on it with regular results, but says it wants to be good and ethical too.

It's not just mathematics but actual goodness itself as the animals chase each other and gobble each other up. Catastrophes? Who needs humans when the universe can provide its own catastrophes. Anyway, we have a responsibility in public to avoid catastrophes. And in defending the four elements (earth, air, fire and water) and their braininess, so we should defend the braininess of men (women can tag along behind).

No matter what every other academic discipline says, no matter how much tosh this natural order rubbish represents, we are not outdated for us when we use it, and thus go on to tell men that they should choose the right female orifice for their stick-ups and not the wrong ones or those fewer ones men have got.

Now come on and respect the natural order: after all, you don't ram a plug into another plug do you? No, you bung it in a socket. And who ever heard of sockets plugging into sockets (though we don't really care about women and women)? See, we have to stop men getting electric shocks by getting the wiring and the pins all mixed up. What we want is the electricity that flows when a plug goes into the proper socket that only the woman possesses. You should respect the natural order. There is the woman, there is the man, and he's the plug and she is the socket. Now get the real electricity going!

This is what we said to the young people. We said to our priests that plugs do not produce electricity on their own by caressing the plug, nor by invading those plugs and sockets that aren't yet up to the right voltage. As Monty Python has said, 'Every sperm is sacred.'

It is all about the Creator, this. Bugger evolution and all that tosh; but we also believe in evolution so we are not like Protestant fundies, like some in Sydney, but we easily ignore evolution when we want God involved again like a puppet-master with long strings. Bugger too all this nonsense called 'gender'. What's that when it's at home? You think you can do what you like - plugs pushing into plugs and sockets rubbing up against sockets. Talk about gender and you upset the God who wants sex, sex, sex in his Church, and no condoms.

So we don't put big condoms on trees, and rainforests deserve such freedom from making them even more sweaty, and therefore we can't have the destruction of humanity through Gender Studies in universities and so these departments should close down and do Catholic theology instead. Read the scholastics. They knew enough about getting pregnant and having lots of Catholic babies, and called it the Sacrament of creation. A man gets with a woman, bangs out as many children as possible, and then he stays with her when she is worn out and both then die.

Now plugs with plugs (and sockets and sockets) have nothing to do with this, with no one to baptise and the danger that the world might not overpopulate. The real danger is the Europe might became a vast wasteland of importing children from Africa, as started by youth culture personalities. The Creator set up nature, and we wrote Humanae Vitae saying that we don't want consumer sex and Gender Studies but, rather, lots of roly poly foreplay and lovey dovey type stuff before putting the plug in, all that we priests cannot understand unless we have the odd mistress.

I would like to go on and on, and now wish to talk about pumping up car tyres (pneumatology), which also reflects the natural order as a pump screws around a nozzle thing, even if this is a bit the wrong way around.

It's fantastic that the Creator Spirit speaks Latin and Greek and tells us that the world has got brains, and thus we know how to make tyres and pump them up via a good screw. The wheel (on to which created humanity can attach tyres) is a fabulous invention fully supported by the Catholic Church, as it indicates how the Sun goes around the Earth. As the Sun circulates, so history is made, and God has his words circulate out of the New Testament and other writings.

This was expressed wonderfully by Saint Ambrose, when he wrote that God walks through the milky paradise (Ep 49:3). So we too splodge through the rice pudding of life, and realise that like the rice and the milky made stuff, Christ and the Holy Spirit are inseparable. Not only does the rice pudding show God the Trinity, but eating it all up is the metaphor we need for salvation. Young people love rice pudding and this is more than youth culture because people and bishops have eaten rice pudding down the ages.

Now, at his first apparition of resurrection, as the disciples ate their rice pudding in the field, the Lord breathed on them and they gained the Holy Spirit. This was a bit like at the dawn of creation, when the universe was a celestial rice pudding, and the Holy Spirit breathed on that and made it hot and eatable and it formed mathematics and brains out of the lumpy bits.

And the other thing is how the Church too comes off the Holy Spirit, and don't forget that I'm in charge at the moment. And we are all in it together. 'Join the club,' said Augustine, and this is what a lot of the Catholic girls did in Australia, with the Holy Mother doing her bit of keeping some of them in order, but not quite all of them. Yes we did a few quick weddings before they got back on the buses and aeroplanes. Some of them had to change buses and aeroplanes and write to the created order of mum and dad saying why they had to go to a different country.

They didn't do that at the Bishops' Synod. Don't believe what you used to see on Father Ted, that disgusting TV programme, accurate as it may have been.

No, with all these events there was more than one charism among so many, the Pentecostal image of the multitude of languages and cultures. And we love it and are so grateful: thanks God!

All these God bits give us joy, happy happy happy, like a lot of young people in Australia. How to be happy? Well, with the created order of plugs going into sockets! Then electricity radiates, and gives a bit of heat to overcome the problems of the world collapsing economically, which I haven't bothered to mention really because like that Anglican Archbishop in England I wouldn't know what to say if I did mention what actually matters to people. Well well, let me say thanks again, because I can ramble on and on!

Anyway, we ask the Virgin Mary if we can enjoy Christmas and if not ask her why not. So from my family of celibate plugs, I give all you plugs and sockets out there Seasons Greetings. Hurrah!

Starting a Denomination

Apparently there is a new impetus in creating denominations to suit. This is a very good idea. Now I have a number of imaginary friends who sit on my shoulders and whisper into my ears, and so a number of us are going to start some new denominations. We can't quite agree, so we are cutting the salami quite thinly:

Unitarian Anglican Church

This is an Anglican Church in all its usual features except that the liturgy is rewritten to replace the doxologies and other areas that refer to the Trinity, rather like the Free Christian side of the Unitarians did with their liturgies in the nineteenth century and finally, seriously, in 1932. It would adapt creeds and articles accordingly (the central European Unitarian tradition has a catechism and, indeed, bishops). The Eucharist would be celebrated but selected lay people could preside. The Gospel and other readings would continue with the lexionary but other readings would come in.

Anglican Unitarian Church

However, this is more like the Unitarian Church of today, a Church that evolves its beliefs and sympathies, and in the United States has distinctive liberal Christian, religious humanist, Eastern and Pagan constituencies, but adopts again a more liturgical approach to worship. It would not use creeds and articles as such, or if it did they would be understood as non-confessional historical documents and not exclusive. If there were bishops they would only be superintendents that dressed up. If the Eucharist is celebrated it could be lay or minister led. Whilst the Bible is usually read, according to choice, other sources exist for the other readings.

Liberal Anglican Church

This would continue as an Anglican Church, but follow the marginalising of the historic formularies and do the same across all confessional statements and scrap the promises for clergy regarding belief. People would take theology as it exists and simplify it for preaching purposes. You would expect a wide expression of Christian belief in pulpits from Open Evangelicalism through to non-realism, and from Radical Orthodoxy to nihilistic textualism. The maintained Eucharist, perhaps opening out to some lay presiding, would have a whole variety of interpretations. The Bible lexionary would continue including the Gospel (without obvious intepretation and limited expectation regarding any guidance).

Anglican Liberal Church

This might be Liberal Catholic and Liberal Protestant (as in Europe) in emphases, and will have strayed into multifaith expressions and a variety of theologies. It would have Anglican features: in its forms of liturgy that included but went much further than Anglican inheritances (incorporating elements of other faiths), and variable understandings of Catholic and Reformed ministry, without having to give credal promises. The Eucharist would be one of several dramatic rituals and could be led by anyone. There would be a variety of scriptural and other sources for services, but there may be a pattern to Biblical readings introduced.

Free Anglican Church

This is an Anglican Church that has done nothing but marginalised all its credal and other statements; the name suggests it goes more towards the Reformed side than the Catholic, but would do so only like the Methodist movement did, and so some would be high. It would also reduce the powers of bishops over priests, and in fact might so organise itself that each were rather like the other in responsibilities. The Eucharist could be lay or minister led. The Bible would have set readings but other material also read in services.

Anglican Free Church

This would be a Protestant Church that becomes more Anglican in features, perhaps a series of independent Churches that gather together. It might develop bishops from below, along with councils and other meetings. It would have quite a span of belief, but not as wide as some. The Eucharist could be lay or minister led. There would be some greater emphasis on using the Bible as a guide to God and life.

All these Churches would be socially inclusive, so there would be no bar to ministry on any bases of gender or sexual orientation. Indeed selection for ministry would be task and education based, that is meeting competencies of pastoral support and management, as well as knowledge of and sympathy for the ethos of the Church.

For me, any of these would be better than the current Anglican Church of England (and, if you can average it, the Communion), but the best would probably be the Anglican Liberal Church and then the Anglican Unitarian Church.

Archbishop says: Send the Jackboots In!

IIn an astonishing article, misread by a journalist at the Daily Telegraph, and nothing like the diatribe they do understand by regular columnist Janet Daley, the Archbishop of Anglicanism today said it was time to get the jackboot Nazis in and give everyone a good kicking.

He claims that the twentieth century theologian, Karl Barth, was a brave weakling who ran away because he was Swiss; this theologian said that we should learn to live without principles. The Archbishop adds:

Various philosophies solemnly assured us that the human cost is really worth it, because history will vindicate the sufferings and sacrifices of the present. Keep your nerve, don't be distracted by the human face of suffering, because it will be all right in the end...

The Archbishop did not quote Christianity directly, which many people have believed in and some still believe in so that they can have their earthly sufferings and sacrifices of the present vindicated: life after death will make it all right in the end.

Writing as a happy amateur of economics, whose own paypacket is the most secure in Britain, the Archbishop asks:

What about the unique concerns and crises of the pensioner whose savings have disappeared, the Woolworths employee, the hopeful young executive, let alone the helpless producer of goods in some Third-World environment where prices are determined thousands of miles away?

The maddest evangelical in England, the Rev. Chris Sugarpuff said, in response:

Well, when the people are dead, so long as they belieeeeeeeve in JesUS, they will have a happy eternal life when they will want for nothing and never become redundant again. We don't have to go through the Archbishop, you know, so why not let me write instead of Janet Daley and not him?

The Archbishop claims that the government is run by a load of fascist pigs who can't make the trains run on time. This is yet another coded criticism of Gordon Brown Nose, who after flying the Union Flag, has lately become power crazed, has taken up the V for victory salute, started smoking cigars and now drinks heavily because he recently bought a black dog. However the Home Secretary came to his defence:

This is not fascism. This is Churchillian. Fascism is when you send in the police to arrest a Member of Parliament doing his job over a leak, in order to give the opposition a good drubbing, and then make a further controversy over it with policemen apologising and so on, and whatever else Gordon and Mandy tells me to do.

The Archbishop, who if he's not careful could receive some of this treatment, further writes that Christmas doesn't offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social programme. However, Robert Preston, the man who lives in the middle of the original bit of the M6, said:

Oh yes it. Does beeeeeeee cos it GENERates a, well let's... say buying pattern and production pattern that allows inDIVIDUAL pro. Ducers and consuuuuuuuumers to plan efficiently and [cut off]

The Archbishop denied that the God of the Christmas story is yet another dogma, backed up by creeds and articles and Bible bashers like the Rev. Sugarpuff, and that the Christianity that upholds this belief has been responsible for mass killings and war throughout the ages. Indeed, even now, there is thuggery in Nigeria after his colleague, and Sugarpuff's consultant, Archbishop Akky Nolo, said that the Muslims in the north do not have a monopoly on violence.

Note: The Archbishop denied being a Unitarian while writing this article, and prior to his own everlasting death plans to retire in a Roman Catholic monastery along with a friend called Benny.

Systemic Degrees of Dishonesty

I've tended to sit at the front in the parish Eucharists in recent weeks, as no more than a condition of laziness. There have been two benefits: to go up to the communion rail sooner and get back quicker, and sit down more quickly at passing of the exit procession. Also, because no one occupies the first or second row on the right hand side, I can sit at the second row, spread out my plastic basket and stuff, and stick my feet out in front around one chair.

However, the first benefit is lost as I have stopped going to the communion rail (at least, as planned, for the time being). It also has a disadvantage, in that although I am up and down like everyone else and know when to do stand and sit, I'd really rather stay sat during the creed I do not say. You get up for that after a sermon and then sit again. However, it is not for me to make public protests, so I get up, and simply say nothing before sitting again.

Unfortunately, I give off body language, and the different preacher today, who I know has the full understanding of the gospel-written and mythic origins of the nativity (borrowed my Bart Ehrman book recently) gave a history-like sermon that just filled me with incredulity. My reactions were rather obvious to an observing choir member (given my seated position). The preacher included, for example, what Mary must have thought as a 12 year old when visited by an angel, and angel who had been rather busy. There was quite a discussion afterwards. I said it brings up the issue of truth. As for the twelve year old element - why should she be a young virgin - I suggested it is because of suggestions of a different view of virginity that equated to coming to puberty. That's by the by, however: another, immediate and reactive discussion was on this history-like presentation, so I'm not alone.

What must she have thought? Perhaps she really liked Joseph! Perhaps it was expected that she join the builder in a good Jewish marriage and have lots of babies, so that enough survive. Who knows what she thought.

The point that annoyed me, and I mouthed the words, "Oh bullshit", turning away though (I start to look sideways) was when the nativity story was said to be the true one when the St Nicholas and Santa Claus myth has overtaken it with tinsel. My personal reaction was that it is all myth, and that at least the Santa Claus and related business is understood as myth and has become as meaningful (and more meaningful) for many.

Up and down the land preachers who are aware of how the nativity story has been constructed will have done this history-like presentation, in a focus on Mary. It is because they are obliged to do it. Some further think that if they examine it as myth it will be upsetting. Upsetting to whom and of what? Only surely because of perceived expectation. No surveys get taken in the dance of perceived expectations: congregation of preacher, preacher of congregation, preacher of his or herself.

I happen to think truth is a precious commodity, because it is connected with honesty. Truth has to be individual, and this notion that you can say something collectively while disbelieving it is extremely limited. It should be very limited in religion, because of all places where honesty is practised religion should be the first place.

There are people paid in public relations jobs who mouth their employer's case. We know that these people are spokespeople, and that they are paid. We expect them to give a collective view. Nevertheless the person who does the role should be comfortable in making the expression given. You would not expect a personal vegetarian, for example, to be a spokesperson for Mac the Knife Butchers in justifying factory farming. However, in a less extreme case, it may be that a meat eater cannot quite justify factory farming. We must allow the paid person to stretch somewhat over some difficulties on the basis of having general agreement.

Politicians also take collective responsibility or put the party argument. We know that many squirm when presenting a particular policy; they compartmentalise their personal ethical stance when presenting the asked for Civil Service briefing or retelling the latest paper from party headquarters. I always watch for the grin on some politicians as their answers are given to journalists; some would make poker players.

So it is with the Church of England, where there are these promises, and for some the difference between the presented liturgical dogma (to which the promises relate) and what they have studied at theological college and university. The promises do not ensure personal integrity: they undermine it. To me, truth is sacrificed if the collective view is put, if that is consistent with "preaching the Gospel" but inconsistent with study. It's like say a sermon on the genealogy of Jesus, where at no point comes the comment that this is a load of rubbish; why not say: they didn't know, they made it up, one genealogy is inconsistent with another and both inconsistent with a claim about virginity, and they don't fit the likely timescale involved, and in any case Abraham is something of a made up patriarch and Adam is a complete myth (where the ancestral issue is species of human). So it is treated as if it is beyond criticism, when actually it is tripe. So it can be interpreted as significance, just as virginity suggests the chosen prophet. It is myth after myth after myth.

And I do find it offensive in the sense that truth is compromised and honesty is compromised. Why should people criticise "liberals" for crossing their fingers at the creed and in sermons when the whole thing encourages dishonesty?

Our language of presentation today suggests that these so-called events are open to historical methods, that they can be falsified, or somehow evidenced, but given the privilege of the pulpit, they are heard as having happened. The necessity instead is to stress meaning/s over event: event after modernism does not suggest meaning.

Dealing with organised religion today is like dealing with degrees of dishonesty. Please understand that the argument here is not about particular people and any particular place, but about the systemic dishonesty that takes place when there are promises made by those then approved and expectations understood that then get played out.

There is a solution to this, and we hear it from Evangelicals. It is that only the actual, real, heartily subscribing believers in this stuff as history (in a modernist sense) should occupy teaching and presiding positions in the Churches. Such then has a simple outcome: the rest of us, usually with brains attached, leave. So there has to be a compromise built into the system, a little wriggle room.

However, my point is that the wriggle room is tiny, and it is still about degrees of dishonesty.

This is why (for me) it starts with a reflection that I cannot say those promises, then goes on to not saying the creed, then finding what is said by others to be degrees of dishonesty. It comes to it that the personal space one tries to find is harder to maintain.

The best part of the service is the organ music at and after the procession. I have become better trained at cutting out the chatter and using it as a kind of reflective space (so I sit until it finishes). Also a silence before a service starts is good. There are several reflective points, including intercessions, that are engaging and some may come as surprises. You just find your way through. One should say that sermons and readings do include positive jolts: after all, a week ago a sermon said, "Do it," and I did.

In the end, though, the tide is going out again. The institutional-personal dynamic is stretching very far again, as this particular piece of elastic always threatened to do. Yet, what has really changed? I had these views years ago, and I have them now.

Technique for Emphasis (GAFCON)

Sometimes it is worth reading an article the wrong way around. Rather like a journalist starts with the summary punchline, many an essay can be read with its main points in reverse for added understanding. In art the equivalent is to look at a portrait upside down to see if it looks like the person.

I thought of this when reading online a piece written by Rev George Curry to be in Evangelicals Now in January 2009. He is vicar of Elswick Parish Church, Newcastle upon Tyne. By doing this in reverse, you can see in some relief where any lack of certainty exists and where there is no lack of certainty. I think these are the essential points, starting (ending) with GAFCON:

Will [GAFCON] foster spiritual renewal and reformation within the Church of England and the Anglican Communion? Surely our prayer must be that it does.

Then looking at it this way picks up those of this sympathy they may want to separate from but are not sure:

Sadly most heresies begin as modest distortions of some aspect of truth.

But nor should we imagine that all differences encountered are insignificant.

Just because someone does not yet see things the way we do does not necessarily mean that they must be a false teacher with whom we should not be in fellowship.

free church evangelicals are right to challenge Anglican evangelicals not to compromise or confuse others about how Scripture defines a Christian.

Jim Packer wisely reminds us that some people’s heads (their understanding) are fully aligned with the experience of their hearts. He also counsels that the principle of charitable assumption is of value unless we have hard evidence to the contrary.

we must be careful not to unchurch those who really do believe that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone.

What the above shows is that it is easy for this group to cut themselves off from those who are close to them, that small differences lead to big differences, but then they cannot be certain. The next part is the problem GAFCON sees within the Anglican fold (the second two paragraphs appear in actual order):

Some believe that those who wear robes when they lead worship or use set forms of worship may have a defective understanding of Christian life and practice.

a definition of a credible profession of faith may prove more problematic than we at first thought if the examples of Ananias and Sapphire (Acts 5) and Simon (Acts 8) are anything to go by.

Some non-Anglicans have been wrongly informed or mistakenly assume that, as an Episcopal church (a church with bishops), authority within the Church of England is centred upon and derived from bishops. This view has been fostered by those of a Roman or Anglo-Catholic inclination, But it is decidedly at odds with the teaching of Articles 19-21 of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion.

...[These] teach that Christians are not to act contrary to nor do anything repugnant to God’s Word. They inform us of the necessity to be led by the Holy Spirit and governed by the written Word of God. This, of course, presents a challenge to evangelicals within the Church of England. What do they do, and what will they do, to ensure that the FCA proves true to the Biblical Christianity of the Thirty Nine Articles and Canon A5 of the Church of England.

The fact that Anglicans include the above Catholics, who have to be 'corrected' is why the Free Church Evangelicals have difficulties with GAFCON as largely Anglican:

Non-Anglican evangelicals find themselves confronted by serious questions when they see who is involved with GAFCON, Anglo-Catholics as well as evangelicals. Nor are they convinced about the strategy adopted. Of course, they are not alone in asking such questions.

Now we get to leaders and leaders who are reliable. The next two paragraphs of the four are in actual order, and so are the last two, as each pairing cannot be uncoupled:

the ascended Christ provides the church with pastors and teachers. These men are charged to equip his people for service. In so far as their leadership is godly and biblical we do not reject their lead. Rather, we respect it and learn from it.

...they agonise before God in prayer as to what he would have them do to protect their colleagues from the ravages of the revisionist liberal cancer.

Jim Packer, Roger Beckwith (one-time Warden of Latimer House), Wallace Benn (Bishop of Lewes) and Mike Ovey (Principal of Oak Hill College) provide advice and guidance to the growing movement. On the other side of the world, Peter Jensen (Archbishop of Sydney) provides theological and administrative support to the Primates who were charged, by those who gathered at Jerusalem, to provide appropriate support for those beleaguered brethren persecuted by the juggernaut of liberal revisionism

....should Reformed evangelicals within the Church of England ignore the leadership provided by these men known for their faith and courage? And two, should Reformed evangelicals be part of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

Now with these Reformed Evangelicals we get to other Evangelicals again (first), this time about the ones causing some difficulty for the hard right, and this questioning is done by looking at non-Anglicans looking in:

Many independent and free church evangelicals probably hold this view [with] Some Anglican evangelicals [of being] fearful that the GAFCON will not generate the much-needed reform of Anglicanism. Whether or not a new reformation comes is in the hand of our gracious and sovereign God. His people pray earnestly for a season of refreshing. As they do they seek to avoid the extremes of passivism (doing nothing except pray) and activism (doing what we think is right, in our own strength and in our own way.)

They acknowledge some have stepped out of line with what was agreed about same sex sexual relationships at Lambeth in 1998. However, they also believe, following the publication of the Windsor Report in 2004, a new way to define the limits of what is acceptable for Anglicans in the 21st century is being drafted. This is usually called the Covenant Process.

They are suspicious. They are fearful as to where GAFCON and the FCA will lead. Will it produce rival structures? Will it precipitate a formal split? There are professing evangelicals within this group, most obviously those associated with Fulcrum. This last group emerged at time of the last National Evangelical Anglican Assembly in 2003. Although its stated aim has been to renew the evangelical centre, it has been described as a group of Open Evangelicals who provide a rival to Church Society and Reform.

Then we get to the actual opposition (note how they get associated with supporting the Archbishop of Canterbury):

there are those within wider Anglicanism who see GAFCON and its growing baby, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) as traitors. Traitors because they created something new; a fraternal outside existing structures. A fellowship which is seen to challenge the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This group is mainly composed of liberal revisionists.

The final part is what was introductory, but it serves as a kind of conclusion, in that the actual conclusion here shown as an opening shows the actual sympathy of the piece.

There are some – dare we say many – Anglicans who have questions about the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) which met in Jerusalem in June 2008. The doubters are not all evangelicals, but you will find conservative evangelicals among them.

This technique of exposure does not always work, but often brings out in some relief actual intentions and sympathies. The craft of writing is often to smooth over and cover up by narrative, or build from small assumptions to bigger intended arguments. The reversal tends to disturb the writer's method. The reader separates the paragraphs up when viewed in reverse order for meaning as they stand.

Having done the reversal, the question is about what is better exposed about GAFCON: its carving up of those in and those out, its passing judgment, the matter of approved leaders, its concern about a Free Church Evangelical perspective versus the Anglican Catholic.

Vatican Waits to Get the Lot Back

The Vatican has indicated that it can find no cave in which to bury Traditionalist Anglicans and keep them out of sight of unmarried Catholic priests. This leads to the dilemma that Anglican priests joining Rome continue to be visibly married.

A trusted but recent Jesuit, Father Paul Gambaccini was given the job of reporting the findings of the Vatican hierarchy and its considerations after leading members of the Traditional Anglican Breakaway wrote to Cardinal Seton Lavatory and pleaded for TAB to be plumbed in to the Vatican.

On the one hand, said Father Paul Gambaccini, there is not enough prejudice developed in these wayward Anglicans - simply being against the gay agenda and opposed to women priests is not enough. To qualify for full red meat Roman Catholicism, you have to write volumes on both subjects, to be intepreted as homophobia and a fear of women by outsiders. You really have to want to join Roman Catholicism in all its gory.

On the other hand, the clinching argument is that despite the difference in level of prejudice, the TAB people are too like the RCs to have their own uniate but RC Church.

Nevertheless the Vatican is sympathetic, and has been eyeing up the comparative advantage in letting in a group to have a uniate existence, set against upsetting Anglican structures and an Archbishop of Anglicanism they might well attract over himself. In any case, the previous pope in 1980 set up means by which married Anglican priests could go over to Rome.

Father Paul Gambaccini himself has had a varied ministerial career and is uniquely able to comment on these matters, and indeed was consulted by Cardinal Lavatory before decisions were made. First as a Lay Reader in the English Anglicans in the 1970s he preached regularly on the United States Episcopalian controversies, which he then took to the Methodists in England, becoming an ordained minister. He returned to the Anglicans for liturgical forms and became critical of cost cutting and parish mergers for the workload on ordained and lay readers alike and thus moved to the Roman Catholics for the first time, where he was ordained according to RC rites and enjoyed a higher quality of liturgy. He went even higher when soon returning to the Anglicans, being accepted as a priest, but was criticised as exactly being the sort of person who would leave once women became bishops. Therefore, after some time offering a clearer Catholic identity into the parish, he left for the Roman Catholics again, being given added journalistic duties on arrival as an incentive to stay. He then left for a Liberal Catholic group, now earning his income as a journalist, and although they seemed to be as high as a kite, the gnostic tendencies proved too much, and he became an Anglican again and went even higher. Despite being involved in a number of projects he found Anglican controversies too overwhelming and returned to to serving the Vatican again, joining the Jesuits, and is now known as 'the Professor'.

Cardinal Lavatory has been an academic writing on Last Days Scatology and has long been a friend of Father Gambaccini; it was he who decided to ordain him into the RCs and give him a continuing role in ecumenical relations.

So what Fr. Gambaccini says is authoritative. He advised that the RC hierarchy wait until after the Lambeth Conference, and then further advised the hierarchy that the Archbishop of Anglicanism was trying to move the whole Worldwide Anglican Communion into a centralised Church - with bishops in dioceses ignoring national Churches and all reporting to the Archbishop. This, he argued, leads to the distant prospect, but real itself, that the whole thing might be taken over personally by the Archbishop to Rome, rather than the 300,000 said to be in TAB, or the 1333 English Anglican bishops, priests and deacons moaning about women becoming bishops. However, it is understood that the Vatican would want the African and Conservative Evangelicals to separate off first, as being far too much to bear, before they would swallow back the original breakaway started by a randy and dissatisfied King.

Loss of Financial Trust

Probably my latest offering to Episcopal Café will appear after Advent and even Christmas. It makes parallels between economic exchange and ritual gift-exchange, and thus develops parallels between financial trust and religious trust/ faith, and how even in Churches such trust could undergo a chaotic collapse. I'll leave it as it is, for later appearance.

For centuries civilisation has been confused about money. They have taken its value to be in the medium. Even the ten pound note promises to pay on demand the sum of Ten Pounds. That meant gold, but now you'd get another note. Essentially it is the promise, and that promise is trust. Money value is really the value of goods and services. What money does is effect a time-shift, through saving and borrowing, that barter cannot achieve. When States monopolised money they used to undermine trust in it by clipping and by producing more, and that lack of trust came out as inflation. The state though facilitated larger scale handling of money, so that risk became generalised over larger amounts saved and lent. That risk allows leverage, that for the most part only a small deposit is needed for a lot more lending, and this is fractional banking, but such leverage also relies on trust. Loss of trust equals a run on the money. To get around lack of customer deposits, banks have borrowed from each other, thus with more leverage money has expanded. However, when a bank fails, there is a house of cards effect.

Here is the odd thing in banking: liabilities are the money you have got; assets are the money you haven't got and yet do the earning. A banker needs liabilities to support the assets. However a bank can create assets to become another bank's liabilties - and that's a monetary expansion route towards danger.

The more integrated and faster moving a system, the more chaotic it becomes. All that has gone wrong with our system has been intensified by computerisation and producing one world economic system.

I taught chaos recently in a church Wild West event where I managed the roulette and craps. I told a girl to lay a single chip after she had won on a half to half bet (though less than 50% chance because of the zeros) such as red, black, even, odd. When she lost, she should double the next gamble on that bet. Having won but lost many chips so far, this proved to be a nice earner. Her pile got bigger and bigger. However, there was a miscalculation here: that each spin of the random number generating wheel has no memory, and it only took a string of blacks for her red gamble to wipe out her pile as she doubled and doubled. The lesson was, don't gamble. Of course, in our banking world just crashed, they used to keep borrowing to get a pay out.

Once upon a time governments issued bonds (from mid 1700s), to be paid back later or never, but paying a rate of interest. Issuing bonds means keeping taxes lower. Then corporations produced bonds and we have even seen bonds for mortgages, called Collatoralised Debt Obligations. Agencies marked them too highly, and sliced and diced mortgages within a bond paid an interest rate. When the mortgages failed, bonds themselves could not pay their rate of interest, and their price fell, but the unpaid debt shot through the system - the bonds still existed but were worthless.

Share markets are secondary markets based on future profit expectations. The expectations come not just from earnings on shares (the dividend) but rising prices. When money is cheap, and interest rates have fallen, it tends to transfer itself into the future expectations of share prices. Here's the problem: the 1970s inflation may have gone but the asset prices of shares (and more) were forever rising, and they started to produce a bubble waiting burst.

Property too was asset price inflationary, and only the inflation was paying for the bad mortgages wrapped up in the bonds. Too many people without assets of their own for deposit were getting mortgages. The asset value is essential to the lender, not the borrower (despite negative equity) because the lender cannot realise back the amount lent towards the borrower making the asset purchase. With an overstretched mortgage market, the asset values fell, and the lenders were caught. The assets are sold, the money is not realised, the borrower cannot repay the missing amount (nothing there) never mind the interest rate, and so there is a financial loss.

Most insurance works because it spreads risk of bell-curve events and passes this on to individuals. Sometimes we can see that our own risk management is better than deals available: for example the rubbishy extended warranties that mean paying more than the bill for occasional repairs to an item or, indeed, its replacement. Some events, though, can be so catastrophic to an individual, that the insurance is necessary because the gamble is too great. Now the problem in the economy is that systems have developed to insure against an economic downturn. The problem is an economy is a chaotic system and severe recession has no bell-curve feature of predictability: when the economy collapses insurance cannot cope. The derivatives that built up against downturn have themselves become victims of the downturn.

All of this has been compounded by China having a savings glut and the United States especially having a huge debt but necessary for China to sell. China has been lending to the US in particular and the West in general so that the US can consume. That lending, being relatively cheap, has found its way into asset prices of property and shares and bonds. Credit cards have been bulging with nothing: UK households were far more leveraged than could be good for any long term view. As each of these failed, so has money that expanded shrunk back.

Also we have cheats and bad practices, such as Mr Madoff who made off with over-encouraging pyramid paying deposits.

All these have led to a huge crash in money and trust that is at the heart of money, and it is why banks are not lending: they cannot. So public debt is now spiralling to replace the money supply lost in the expansion of lending and the liabilities that never came from assets. Yet there has been a shift in the equilibrium from what would have been the case a year ago had lending been so close to 0 per cent.

All this is evident of a chaotic system, that once the crash happens, there is little that can be done about it. My view is that what is needed is not cheap lending, or tax cuts (except for the lowest paid, and benefit increases) but project spending: spending on housing stock for rent, roads, rail, fuel cell cars, Internet and the likes that employ and that lead to real added-value in the encouragement of spending for other added-value goods and services. The Archbishop of Canterbury would be right to criticise government for returning to the drug if public debt replaces private debt only to continue to consume; it's not about fairy dust or, instead, tangible thingies being made, but adding value in what you do, and investment is further expanding the capacity to add value in the future. The benefit of spending on housing is that it would reduce the potential for its asset price inflation in a recovering economy. The shape of the curves has altered now away from the monetarist stance towards the Keynesian, and the monetarist view (of a 'natural' rate of unemployment built on technical efficiency and trading competitiveness) will only come in once activity is restored to a higher equilibrium.