The Church - don'tcha just love it?

It's the silly season in the Church just now, with the Bishop of Willesden getting it in the neck from My Lord of London for being a gobby twit on Facebook (slagging off the boss's grandson when your area manager was best pals at Trinity Cambridge with his dad qualifies as just plain dumb in any walk of life).  Add to that the joys of the C of E tying itself in knots over that Covenant thing (only the Mexicans have agreed to it so far - I blames it on the tequila!), Pope Benny going slightly reasonable on rubber johnnies (marvellous news actually, as it begins to unravel the deeply destructive silliness of Humanae Vitae at long last) and you begin to wonder if it's really worth sticking with the damnable institution?

Well, yes, because when you step away from the "organised hypocrisy" (as our 1st Jewish Prime Minister described his own Political Party) that the Institutional Church often is, you mostly find the reality of a praying caring community at the local level.  Sometimes sadly, you find a feuding, inward looking, bitchy rat's nest impersonating a congregation but mostly you don't.  It is that Church, the plebs sancta dei that keeps me at it.

Corrupt religion.

"A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion, in spite of the provisions of Holy Church. If she is to be Catholic, you must admit within her net fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavourably from abroad:—a high grand faith and worship which compels their admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite their contempt."

JH Newman "Letter to EB Pusey"

Good old JH! This helps to balance the sense of despair at the attitude of Ugandan Bishops and the Anglican heirachy: "guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth". The Church as she has ever been really. Or Walsingham: "a high grand faith and worship which compels admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite contempt" if you think of the situatiion there regarding women priests. Yes, John Henry gives balance and perspective. And this prayer makes sense just now:

For the Church

Most gracious Father,
we pray for your holy catholic Church:
fill it with all truth
and in all truth with all peace;
where it is corrupt, purge it;
where it is in error, direct it;
where anything is amiss, reform it;
where it is right, strengthen and confirm it;
where it is in want, furnish it;
where it is divided, heal it
and unite it in your love;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.             

William Laud