Hypocisy and protest

It is being said that the protesters outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London will now be allowed to stay until after Christmas. This is a curious tale: the protesters seem unable to articulate what they are protesting about, and must be reflecting now that their protest has caused a lot of damage to the Church of England and none whatsoever to the City of London.

There have been three resignations so far from the Chapter of St. Paul's, one of them saying that he could not condone violence against the protesters, even though no violence has been suggested or considered.

The truth of the matter is that they are in favour of the protests: the Church of England was long ago taken over by the political left, and the current crop of priests learned an almost Marxist philosophy at their seminaries. It is hard now to find anyone in the Church who talks about God or Christ.

One who does is the excellent Bishop of London Dr. Richard Chartres, who, although strangely he has no authority over the Dean and Chapter, has tried to inject some sense into the proceedings, something sadly lacking in the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, as well as the BBC (as noted earlier).

Dr. Williams wrote an article for the Financial Times. He is as strange a correspondent for them is the FT is as an outlet for his views. He offers little in the way of suggestions and much of the 'something must be done' line of thinking. 'Everyone has been able to be wise after the event and to pour scorn on the Cathedral in particular and the Church of England in general for failing to know how to square the circle of public interest and protest.'

Since when was the Church's role to square the circle of public interest and protest? It is not, or at least shouldn't be, a political body. And speaking of being wise after the event, the Church was fairly uncritical of the Blair / Brown administration which failed to regulate the banks properly. And when things were going well, did we ever hear Williams praise the financial world for providing cheap mortgages, loans to the needy and a successful economy bringing wealth to everyone? I don't think we did.

Let the Church of England look to its own failings. Attendance has been dropping steadily for years, indeed ever since it decided to be a politicised branch of the social services rather than curators of men's souls. People don't like this wishy-washy social liberalism and cannot support the Church while it is a blatantly political organisation supporting a creed which has now been discredited. It used to have a creed of its own.

'And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye and considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?' I don't suppose they read the bible much nowadays.