Nowadays you can read stories of clergy administering Holy Communion to a dog, or advocating swearing as a means to evangelism or shoplifting as a 21st century way in which the poor can become blessed, and not turn a hair. But just occasionally you come across a news item that causes you to drop your ‘Daily Wail’ to leave a hand free to pinch yourself to prove you’re not dreaming.
This happened to me the other day when reading that the Prayer Book Society has just appointed a Youth Advisor. Young people at the few remaining 8.00a.m. BCP services? ‘Youth appeal’ yes, but if more folk came to the BCP service which the Vicar thought he’d hidden from sight, he’d immediately make it a 7th Sunday in the month affair.
Worse still, the PBS, of all groups, ‘getting with it’, is further evidence that scarcely anything now remains of the Anglican patrimony, so that those hoping to travel on the Ordinariate Express, would have so little to carry that they could travel Ryanair without paying a supplement.
Is no tradition safe? Seemingly not, for the Bishop of Manchester has backed a campaign to persuade supermarkets to stock Easter Eggs, conveying a Gospel message as an alternative to eggs featuring the traditional Easter Bunny. ‘Gospel messages’?
That’s surely something for ‘Prots’ not Anglicans, particularly Catholic Anglicans. The Triduum in Tescos; whatever next?
What’s next is even more of a blow to traditional Catholic mores. The birth of the Society of St Wilfred and St Hilda. Already acronyms for it abound. SWISH, WASH and so on – a Scrabble players dream.
Really, Fathers. Acronyms are the territory of those innovators MOW and WATCH.
You wouldn’t Adam and SSC’ve it.
Alan Edwards