Letters

If Anyone Can, The Anglican

Dear Archbishop of Canterbury,

My friend Ted and I spent last weekend praying that the Church of England would not allow women to be ordained as bishops. We already live with women who tell us that if we don’t do what they say, we can go to hell. Must we have it in church, too?

So you can imagine our joy when we heard on Monday that the General Synod had taken the Catholic option and pulled out moments before reaching the point of no return.

When I say Ted and I were praying, I mean drinking beer. When I was very young, a wise man told me prayer can take many forms. I decided there and then that I would praise God in the form of beer. And let me tell you, I have given a tremendous amount of praise over the years. In fact, between you and me, I am almost praised-out. But this is okay because the older I get the less I have to be thankful for.

Besides, it’s not as if God is doing such a fantastic job these days, is it? His earlier work was impressive but he seems to have lost interest.

Anyway. After three or four hours of hard praising, Ted and I came to the conclusion that women wanted to become bishops because of the funky hats and dresses you guys wear.

And who can blame them?

Purple is a passionate colour and women are passionate creatures. Christianity is a passionate religion. And who among us can forget Mel Gibson’s tour de force, The Passion of the Christ? Well, apart from Mel, of course. This crapulous son of Catholicism gave the Judas kiss to his own movie after discovering, too late, that Jesus was Jewish.

You were quoted in the heathen media as saying you hoped that postponing the decision would “lower the temperature” of the debate.

This is beyond a debate, my friend. This is 1534 all over again, except this time you’re not splitting from the Roman Catholic Church, but splitting from yourselves. A bit like ecclesiastical amoebas.

There are those who will shriek and fall about and insist that women should be allowed to become bishops because we are all God’s children. What nonsense. God is not Jacob Zuma. God had only one child – a boy, if I recall.

I blame the insufferable suffragettes, those professional naggers who went on and on and on until the British government went mad and agreed to give women the vote.

Anything to shut them up.

Once they had the vote, they demanded all sorts of things and today there are men sitting at home with no supper because their wives are out flying helicopters in Afghanistan. A shameful state of affairs all round.

As for the outrageous notion of bishops with breasts, your General Synod voted 288 in favour of postponing a decision, 144 voted against and 15 abstained.

I bet the darkies abstained. They still can’t believe their luck at being allowed to become bishops ahead of women and they certainly aren’t going to stick their heads above the parapet just yet.

This is not a time to be fannying about with votes. You don’t see the pope bothering with the niceties of democracy, do you? The faithful need to be ruled with an iron fist.

Drive across England in an armoured archbishopmobile and tell people in no uncertain terms how to behave and what to think. Get a posse of defrocked priests to round up the dissenters and have them shot.

You warned last week the church was “looking into the abyss” over the issue. I think you need to use stronger language. As long as Christianity has eternal damnation at its disposal, the idea of a piffling abyss is not going to frighten anyone. In fact, I have seen some stunning abysses. All you are really doing is threatening people with a view of the Fish River Canyon.

You allowed women to enter the priesthood twenty years ago, then turned the other cheek and hoped they would be happy with that. There’s the problem. You people just don’t understand women.

Give a girl a dog collar and sooner or later she will want a cassock. Any idiot off the street could have told you that.

You’re on a slippery slope, comrade. Look what’s happening with your morally flexible cousins, the Episcopalians. Not only have they decided to bless gay relationships, but while you were playing for time on the babes-for-bishops business, they were voting to give transgender people the right to become ministers. Transgender clergy!

Now you don’t know who you might be taking home after a particularly arousing sermon. It’s worse than Thailand.

The Episcopal Church is a hotbed of tolerance and equity. No good can come of it. Please don’t go down that road. Prejudice is an essential tool in helping us to judge others. Without it, religion would cease to exist.

And what kind of terrible world would that be? 

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