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Square Pegs and Round Holes?
Sitting in the pews and looking around me, I felt a little perplexed.
It was in the olden days, when things were still done properly, and I was
awaiting the start of the Mass which invariably preceded a meeting of the
Deanery Synod. Being a relatively new curate, I would not have expected to
recognise many people but, as it was, I could not put a name to a single
one of those around me. The truth slowly dawned that I was in the wrong
church, in the wrong town, on the right day and at the right time. It was
too late to make an excuse and leave so I had to assume the guise of a
casual visitor. The people were very nice to me so they are probably still
wondering why I ran out of the door at the end of the service and took
off, in the old motor, at a rapid rate of revs.
Have you ever done that - attended the wrong funeral, or gone to the
wrong wedding reception? You suddenly find yourself in a room full of
total strangers, eating canapés and sipping a sherry whilst making
small talk and nervously eyeing up the exit, hoping that you will not be
exposed.
Twenty-three years ago this month I entered Holy Orders. The territory
then was familiar. Now I ask myself, am I still in the same church that
Archbishop Blanch ordained me into? I think that I am but the others seem
to have gone astray. We have gender modified translations of the Bible,
politically correct liturgies, delivered like a Punch and Judy show, the
spectre of women bishops looming on the horizon, and gay rights activists
taking over centre stage. In a state of confusion, I wonder exactly where
I am. Once outside the strict confines of this parish, I am like an
astronaut who has landed on an alien planet. I don't think that it is my
age.
When When I came here someone, rather unkindly, described me as a square
peg in a round hole. Well, the hole has become squarer and the peg rounder
but, in the Church of England at large I feel like a relic. Standards seem
to have gone out of the window, anything goes. "Bags of pride"
was the watchword barked out by the Company Sergeant Major, but we seem to
have lost ours. On the Feast of S. Peter I shall look back to my
ordination and wonder, as I always do, if it was worth it. The answer is
ever in the affirmative. Square peg indeed!
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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