December 5, 2006
Quirk
Canon Quirk called the other day, mad enough to beat hell. (For those of you who don’t know or remember or care, P D Quirk is a former mentor of mine who often re-assumes that role on an altogether unsolicited whim, especially when he thinks I might need stirring up for Advent.)
This time, he’s got his cassock in a wad that while Iraq burns and the president dissimulates, the church stays comfortably preoccupied with its own maintenance and puffery rather than attending to be a prophetic voice for truth and a more just society. “Navel-gazing” is a favorite condemnation of his.
Now, he’s wondering whether our current flak over people’s sex lives is our own variety of civil war or is it sectarian violence or is it both. As usual, he sets me to thinking along lines I don’t find all that comfortable. But now that he mentions it and from what I’ve seen in my own diocese, it certainly couldn’t be called all that civil.
“It’s getting more sectarian every time some covey of bishops meets off in a corner somewhere,” Quirk said. “For what is a sect, anyway, but a bunch of zealots excessive for their own religious point of view and excluding everybody else in the doing?”
And violence? “We haven’t come to fisticuffs yet,” I said to Quirk. But then, how could I know what happens when a bunch of purple primates get all red in the face? Quirk interrupted. “Then what do you call it? Vows are being violated at every pronouncement and convention,” he said, “so much so, that one can’t find an ounce of loyalty left in the place.”
I wondered maybe I should do something, like maybe call up the bishop. But then I remembered that he’d said only recently that God will prevail and that we should start our Christmas shopping before it is too late.