Critical Wit

This splendid parody from the Anglican Cyber Ordinariate amused me:

"I am the very model of the focus of great unity
I say who is to be a bishop vis-à-vis who's not to be
And when four-thirty's come and gone with tea and crumpets for each one
I read a little Johnny Donne and give thanks for impunity

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters theological
With books and thoughts from Genesis to Greek eschatalogical
You'll never find a brighter mind just knocking 'round and killing time
The Pauline corpus whole is mine - that's why I'm Christological

Yet even with so fine a grasp on life-behind philosophy
I'll write a poem, make a vid, and burn it all to DVD
I've yet to have a thought that wasn't captured without modesty
And posted up to interwebs in matters most postmodernly

This purple cassock hides a frame that's wracked with years of self-regret
Perhaps I'd show you after ten, but not until just then, you bet
I'd like to quote 'The Body's Grace' and get along with homophiles
But unity comes with a price and Lambeth is my domicile

Because the Thames, so fast and deep, so easily o'erflows its banks
And we have all these partnerships the world around, and we give thanks
To God the Father in whose name we obfuscate and place the blame
And dare not speak the love whose fame incites us all to spank the Yanks

Who even now would like to say that what they said and what they meant
Were justice-born and justice-done and no great cause for gross lament
When some elect and some consent, it's democratic government
So let's get on our knees, repent, and sign up for the Covenant

Yet there's a place for each and all at God's communion table
And I am called an Instrument to say that we are able
If we could only change the tide and Unity could take a ride
And Faith and Order lay aside ... Perhaps it's just a fable"

 

Wit is perhaps the most potent weapon against the bully or the egoist.  It is a shame that it seems to be necessary to use it against the ++ABC. But twas ever thus.  Ever since the wonderful Dom Gregory Dix OSB replied to the question "Don't you trust the Bench of Bishops?" with the observation that Scripture tells us not to put our trust in Princes - even princes of the Church and noted that the sign of a bishop was a crook and that of an Archbishop a double cross (Oww!), the Episcopate have been fair game for satiric wit on their words and deeds.  Of course, these days Dom Gregory would I suspect have been part of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.  ++ Rowan can console himself that Robert Runcie was lampooned as a puppet by Spitting Image and he hasn't had to endure that.