Bishop's Move

For those amused by the discomfiture of the clergy, there has been undoubtedly an entertainment in watching the officials of St. Paul's Cathedral tying themselves into more knots than you would find in a Franciscan's cincture. Unfortunately all jokes eventually wear thin (a fact of which Jonathan Ross should have been apprised in about 1993) and it's becoming more difficult to see the funny side. Not least on account of a report today that Dr. Richard Chartres (surely that isn't his real name?) is advancing the argument that the protestors camp should be evicted on the grounds that it might be infiltrated by violent activists.

Chartres, described by The Times as "the third most senior cleric in the Church of England" apparently voiced the following concerns: "we do not know what is going to happen. The camp could be taken over by people who are very different from the ones who are in charge at the moment."

Well, much as it pains Sordel to slip into the vernacular, duh. I don't know who will be running Dixons next week: it could be taken over by people who are very different from the ones who are in charge at the moment. Just in case, maybe it should be closed down.

The counterargument to this is obvious: Dixons is operated by a bunch of professional retail experts (bolstered, it should be admitted, by a load of spotty teenagers who always seem keen to chat in a back room rather than show their acne-ridden faces on the shop floor) whereas the Occupy London protestors are a bunch of naive and erstwhile-tree-hugging hippies ripe for exploitation by would-be criminals. Violent infiltrators usually gain entrance to Dixons through the front windows via the energetic application of waste-bins, not by applying for jobs and working their way up. In this (and perhaps nothing else) Dixons would seem to have a robustness and resilience totally absent from a protestors' campsite.

Yet while Dixons does not seem to warrant the mistrust that Dr. Chartres lavishes on Occupy London, I can think of at least one institution that does.

The Church of England.

Isn't the Anglican clergy full of precisely the same variety of wide-eyed idealist who is currently camping out in front of St. Paul's Cathedral? Aren't they all the same feckless bunch of warts on the behind of society who have demonstrated by their lifestyle choice their complete incapacity to make a conventional contribution to society, yet who make a profession of asserting their high moral standards? Aren't they a proven target of criminals (in this case, child molesters) who would like nothing better than to infiltrate their organization and use it for other purposes?

When we start evicting people on the basis of what might happen in the future, it is my modest proposal that we don't stop at the doors of St. Paul's but proceed directly into the body of the cathedral.

In the meantime, perhaps Dr. Chartres consult a book with which he is supposedly familiar and take "no thought of tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought of the things for itself". Or he could, you know, pray.