Spiritual Counsel

So, as I said before, I did eventually get to speak to S.D. Here are a couple of nuggets from the conversation.

"How appropriate that from my angle, you should be sitting directly in front of the spire of the great Forward in Faith citadel of St Raphael's, framed in the window. They are in the process of getting a new incumbent, who comes from a successful time emptying his previous church in Kent. I am calling him Fr Bigot. Even before his installation he has already written to the PCC to tell them how disappointed he is that during the interregnum they have allowed the marriage of a divorcee to take place in the church. He says he can't stop it happening, but will make sure he is absent from the parish that day as a protest."

"I can't discover a single bishop who's willing to defend the House of Bishops' letter about same-sex marriage. Most of them claim not to have been there when it was drafted. They all say things like, 'I had to wait for the boiler man', or 'I couldn't get into London', or 'I had to go to Doris's funeral'. The closest anyone I've spoken to came to defending the letter was one bishop who said, 'Well, it would have been much worse if I hadn't been there'."

"They said to me, If you do the christening Brian Cox will agree to be one of the godparents. So I pointed out that he really is a bit of an atheist and probably couldn't make the promises with a clear conscience. Then I brought out the Order of Thanksgiving For the Gift of a Child and we agreed to do that rather than a baptism. In the service I asked Professor Cox, 'Do you, Brian, undertake, in so far as in you lies, to unfold to Abbie the mysteries of the universe?' and he replied 'I do promise so to do'. We should have done it in trad-language, really."