Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Monday, 14 July 2014

National Apostacy



So, 181 years to the day after John Keble's sermon on National Apostacy in St Mary's in Oxford - and 225 years after Bastille (the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 hovered ominously in the backs of the minds of the founders of the Oxford Movement as an awful warning) - the General Synod of the Church of England meeting at York has finally voted through the legislation to have women bishops. It now has to be voted through Parliament - and no-one expects opposition there. There appear to be flimsy safeguards for those who dissent from the mandated orthodoxy of equality.

Well, so far as I am concerned, 'nough said. It is no longer my direct concern, and has not been for a decade, other than to regret seeing a national instition implode in the delusion that this will somehow lead to spiritual regeneration, and also to point to the forthcoming nauseating sychophantic media circus around the appointment of the first women bishops. Presumably they will be suffragens at first - Wilma Woolwich, Katie Kingston, then we shall have the sight of diocesans - Beryl Birmingham, Tina Truron, Dora Derby, Linda Londin, Gloria Gloucester, Wendy Winton, Chrissie Chelmsford (a true Essex girl), Dorothy Dunelm, and finally Evadne Ebor, and Cathy Cantuar... Will somebody please pass the sick bags around?


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