Anglicanism must be the world’s most non-prescriptive faith. It follows the Ten Commandments, the teachings of Jesus and the 39 Articles. It urges you to love your neighbour.

It doesn’t say that’s conditional on her not being black, or Muslim, or homosexual; it’s simply Christ’s teaching: Love Thy Neighbour.

Anglicanism doesn’t say you can’t drink wine, or whisky; there are no proscriptions imposed against eating prosciutto, bacon, salami di Milano or Scottish hen lobster; you don’t have to treat women like second class citizens; you don’t have to wear fur hats all year round or appear in public as a moving black object. You can even wear condoms, which help protect against sexually transmitted diseases and prevent unwanted pregnancies. You don’t have to pray five times a day. You don’t have to have your genitalia mutilated.

In Anglicanism men and women are (virtually) treated as equals. A person’s sexuality is a matter for themselves, not a barrier to certain occupations. Anglican priests can marry and have normal families, putting themselves in the position of most of their parishioners. They are not compelled to live lonely celibate lives, with dreams of young boys.

The leader of the Anglicans is a human being, and like all human beings he can make a mistake. The leader of the Roman Catholics is also a human being, but he cannot make a mistake. He is infallible, by the decree of his Church.

So when the nice, pleasant, intelligent, gentle, agreeable, middle class Welshman Dr. Rowan Williams met the former Hitler Youth member Joseph Ratzinger (that is, when the Archbishop of Canterbury met the Pope last week) to gently enquire why the Roman Catholic Church had performed an Anschluss on the Church of England, capturing the disaffected homophobic anti-feminist factor who vehemently disapproved of the liberalism of the Church of England, the meeting was an abrupt 20 minutes. At the end the Pope smiled beatifically and handed the Archbishop a bishop’s cross, a strange and still to be explained gesture.

Very nice, but why don’t the Anglicans just make a counter-offer?

If there are any Catholics out there who believe that priests might be allowed to have families, who accept that homosexuality is now legal in civilised countries, that some form of birth control may not be such a bad idea for the future of the world, that woman can lead as well as men, that pederasty among the clergy should not be hushed up, then come over to the Anglicans!

Love thy neighbour, after all.

How quickly would we see Benedict arriving in Canterbury?

This post is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.