Open and Shut

Living a 'convenient' distance from Swanvale Halt church, there was never a question of me continuing to go there to hold any kind of service, even on my own, once public worship was suspended in Anglican churches, so it's not an issue in which I have any direct interest. I did note the diversity of practice. Once upon a time I and Dr Bones went to a dinner with two congregants in Lamford also attended by James Langstaff, who is currently Bishop of Rochester, and was then Suffragan Bishop of Kings Lynn. He seemed a modest and amusing soul. I wonder what's happened to him in the intervening fourteen years, because as soon as the ban came in he wrote to his priests saying that if they so much as went in their churches they'd be subject to the Clergy Discipline Measure. Why did he feel he had to state that? Meanwhile, in London, Bishop Sarah Mullally was allowing clergy to hold solitary services in churches provided they lived adjoining them, or didn't have to enter any public area to get to them, but last weekend she'd reversed that, clearly lent on by Archbishop Justin Welby for not toeing the line. The whole argument is mystifying, except that it presumably reflects prejudices on both sides. Clergy and bishops don't always trust each other, and in a relationship of mistrust any stress opens up the basic rift. Bishops expect to be defied by resentful clergy, and clergy expect to be ordered about by mean-minded bishops. Each provokes the behaviour they anticipate. But I do find it depressing that, given all the things he could have spoken about in these trying times, Justin Welby chooses to take to Youtube to denounce his priests for not doing as they're told. You don't find the Pope doing that; Pope Francis stands in an empty St Peter's and lifts a monstrance to bless the sorrowing World for which Jesus died. No wonder Lambeth Palace disabled the comments. 

I think some of my spiky colleagues have taken to the missa solitaria rather too readily (no pesky laypeople around!), but equally I don't like the sense that others (perhaps many bishops) are secretly enjoying the spurious sense of pioneer edginess that comes from holding services via Zoom and so forth, and allowing themselves to imagine that this is maybe superior to a collection of often elderly people meeting together in a draughty old building. It isn't. 'Church' involves real, embodied human beings, and when they can't meet, the Body of Christ is sundered. 

This morning I took part in the Chrism Mass which the Bishop of Dorking broadcast from her front room. All very well, and as I had the order of service on my screen and so could only hear the audio it was actually less distracting than having lots of other clergy around me. But it wasn't the real thing. Even though the Chrism Mass is one of my least favourite occasions in the year, and this morning I didn't have to make my way to the cathedral, find a seat or put up with my brethren for an hour and a half, I'd rather have done that. Moving worship by preference to the digital realm is a sort of capitulation to the age-old human fantasy of disposing of our inconvenient bodies, which is surfacing once again in the transhuman movement and with which Christianity should really not have anything to do.

I have felt very out of sorts the last day or two, but we'll leave that for another time. In fact a phone call to Dr Bones cheered me up. She has been attending virtual services at St Aldates in Oxford and finding it much more congenial than the days when she used to go there in person. 'Nobody trying to touch me, no having to look at anyone,' she enthused. 'Yes', I said, 'though there's a real service you can go to which is just like that, in most churches it's called the 8am'. 'Our local church has just got a new vicar, and I've found her online services,' went on the Dr, 'it's great, when she gets annoying I can just turn her off.' True, you can't do that at an 8am.