Delectable Enormities, Or, Enough is Not as Good as a Feast

On Wednesday of Holy Week the Bishop of Rome recieved a present of a 551-pound chocolate egg, decorated with the papal arms (full story here, at the Catholic News Service). Was it filled with fondant, with yolk and white? Probably not, but it is very splendid all the same. 

The papal master of ceremonies, however, has missed a trick. Clearly the egg should have been carried into St Peter's this morning on the sedia gestatoria, before - to great fanfare - His Holiness burst out of it at the altar. Next year, perhaps.

Having not much of a sweet tooth, I cannot blame His Holiness for charitably giving this monster egg away, although the mistress of Plumstead Rectory says that if someone were to offer us such an egg (with appropriate coat of arms, of course) she would have a good go at finishing it.

Yet although this egg is far too much for one elderly clergyman, that is surely the point. The God of Easter gives us, not as much as we need, but more than we could ever desire. The table is fully laden: not only need none go hungry, but however much we recieve, there is always more. So even if you are still hung over from the party after the Easter Vigil (ahem) I hope you will be opening another bottle of champagne today. Or the largest possible chocolate egg, if your taste runs that way.

It is your solemn duty to feast. For Christ is risen, and of his fullness we have all recieved grace upon grace.

Happy Easter.

Take-away and Eat: This is my Body.

 

We have a branch of Greggs within two hundred yards of Plumstead Rectory, which is more than they can say in Downing Street. In the cause of local loyalty I should add that nearer still is a branch of Greggs' lesser-known Liverpool competitor Sayers, but I am not a regular customer of either establishment, nor (unlike our political class) do I feel the need to pretend to be. Incidentally, if the Prime Minister is reading this in his report from GHQ, we were not fooled.

The products of Greggs and Sayers are not at all to my taste: greasy outside, suspect inside and fundamentally un-nutritious. You can see how the political class might feel an affinity.

Sadly this is one area in which the Church of England, normally so out-of-touch, is thoroughly inculturated.

Zombies: the urgent question of modernity.

As any fule kno, Scripture may be interpreted literally, allegorically, morally, anagogically and whimsically. The fifth sense is much underrated, in our view.

On an unrelated note, the thoughts of the Angelic Doctor on the subject of zombies yesterday were right up our street.

The Anglican Covenant: Not Making it Worse

Bishop James Jones - Presidential Address - Diocesan Synod March 2012 from Diocese of Liverpool on Vimeo.

Half of all English dioceses have voted against the Anglican Covenant, and it will now be technically impossible, as it was probably already practically impossible, for the Church of England to be part of this experiment. Whether this will be fatal to the existence of the Covenant we cannot say, although there is a delicious irony to its rejection by what used to be the heart of the Communion.

The proposers of this scheme should have known, if only from their history books, that to be a Covenanter is by definition to be an opponent of the Church of England. Indeed, the victorious anti-Covenanters have been a curious alliance of those who see nothing wrong with the new liberal Anglicanism and those, more traditionally-minded on the whole, who could see that the whole idea was simply not very Church of England.

Budget Day

There can hardly be much to say about the contents of the Budget itself. Of course, all of us wish to see the prosperity of the country established, while maintaining our own political prejudices and benefiting our own pocketbooks. Here at Plumstead Rectory we favour for this purpose a large measure of tax relief for clergy of the Church of England, perhaps reverting to the system of the payment to the Exchequer of a nominal lump sum agreed by Convocation.

An ecumenical proposal

The Holy Spirit is clearly speaking to the churches, with the heaven-sent opportunity this week of vacancies (or impending vacancies) in two worldwide communions.

Anglican readers may not be aware that the Coptic Orthodox Church, though essentially a national church in Egypt, has dioceses and parishes on all continents. The Pope of Alexandria has jurisdiction over perhaps 9 million members in Egypt and the same number elsewhere, with a further 50 million members of daughter churches, mainly in Ethiopia and Eritrea, with historic links to his church.

Clearly the Coptic and Anglican communions have a great deal in common: roughly equal in size, with their mainly African membership and their perverse doctrinal differences with the mainstream of Christianity. Both share a current experience of repression by governments who took power under dubious circumstances, and now pretend to conservatism while attacking the historic traditions of their peoples. And crucially, both communions have vacancies for their spiritual leaders.

Is there now a critical ecumenical opportunity: to appoint the same person to be both Pope of Alexandria and Archbishop of Canterbury?

Happy St Edward's Day

Happy St Edward, King and Martyr's Day. This is a day for all of us to be thankful for our anointed monarchs. Have you sent your king or queen a card (available from all good stationers) and bunch of daffodils to let them know how much you love them? A call to his or her private secretary will also be appreciated.

It is, of course, a terrible Americanism to call it Edwarding Sunday.