Sunday, September 16, 2007
Rowan the Resonant
My new pal, the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave an interview to the Telegraph. I draw your attention to this for two reasons. First, it has one of the flattest opening paragraphs I've ever read in a newspaper. Secondly, Williams, after four rather hesitant years in the job, has plainly decided to harden his public posture. I sympathise with the hesitancy - short of setting fire to it, it's hard to see how anybody could make the Church of England into a coherent entity. But his new, tougher position is better. He is, in fact, very bold - questioning our obsession with paedophilia, attacking ethnic cultural fragmentation, the X-Factor and even pushy, middle class parents. He has seen, I suspect, that there is more, not less, for the Church to say in a complacently secular society. I think it's time my other pal CaptainB stopped calling him the Beardy Weirdy.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Jeez, see what you mean about the opening par - a classic. I've always been pretty sure Rowan's a Good Thing, despite many appearances to the contrary. It's encouraging to see him finally beginning to come good (and put that little twerp Chazza in his place).
ReplyDeleteJesus was a celebrity, I think. He loved performing in public, had a thing about kids (oo, wasn't married, was he!) and had an overbearing father.
ReplyDelete"I can't come to terms with the idea of a human individual being created for a purpose," he says.
ho ho ho.
"Verily I say unto thee: He that giveth the middle class youth more space and the lower class youth less shall know eternal life."
ReplyDeleteI'm sure he is a delightful, thoughtful man full of that postmodern spiritual angst, but I'm afraid the tortured soul who seeks succor in a modern Anglican church in order to deal with his doubts and problems will learn only that he has lots more he wasn't even aware of and is on his own about how to cope with them.
What did he mean when he mentioned the government's proposal of "happiness classes" for kids? What the heck is a happiness class???
ReplyDeleteNobody knows, Susan.
ReplyDeleteWhatever they are, they 'depress pupils'.
ReplyDeleteWhat on earth did you say to him during that dinner? Was it something like "Look here, Beardy Weirdy, get a grip, you're about as relevant to modern Britain as a packet of perforated condoms; your leadership skills make Cameron look like Attila the Hun, the immediacy of your 'message' feels as though it was delivered by Pony Express, and the Chief Rabbi just whispered "Tell him he's got dried egg down the front of his cassock"
ReplyDeleteYes, just as the modern cant about how children shouldn't be raised to fear their parents is only believable until the moment you actually meet one who doesn't, so the modern thinking that priests shouldn't be trying to make us all feel like guilty sinners stops resonating the minute you encounter Rowan Williams.
ReplyDeleteI dimly remember something about Russian poetry, but that can't have been it.
ReplyDeleteI dimly remember something about Russian poetry, but that can't have been it.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. You are trying to provoke a response Applegarth, (!) but you won't get one. Isn't Beardy writing a book on Dostoevsky? No, I am going to exercise uncharacteristic restraint.
ReplyDelete