A Potential Curate, and My Sunglasses

In response to my recent loyalty to our apostate liberal hell-in-a-handbasket ‘Bishop’, who is destroying the Church by his denial of the Scriptures, His Grace sent the first of his recommendations for our new Curate for my appraisal.

At first I was wary, as the young man, named Eric, is an evangelical trained, of all places, in Australia under the beady eyes of that heretic with whom I am in sworn eternal schism, “Archbishop” Peter Jensen of Sydney. Still, as one never knows what might be gained by keeping closed lips when talking to a member of the enemy’s forces, I decided to interview him regardless. Besides, since His Grace clearly has no idea what else to do with the young Puritan, so it might be in my interests to help deal him deal with the pesky little know-it-all.

As it turned out, Evangelical Eric is engaged to a local lass, Celia Crane, who comes from a very wealthy family. This of itself made him far more interesting than might otherwise have been the case, as well as having the added bonus that in hiring im I would soon have two employees for the price of one, since like all Traditional Rectors I am a firm believer in making a Curate’s wife work equally as hard in the parish as her husband.

During his interview the lad seemed nervous, but the sense of desperation for a job of any description in his voice certainly warmed my spirit. As might be expected given his seminary, he was wary of some of St. Onuphrius’ liturgical practices, but he had the evangelical’s Pavlovian response of relaxing if the person to whom he’s speaking uses the work ‘Bible’ in every second sentence, and was quickly off his guard.

At the end of the interview I asked him if there were any questions he wished to ask, and I must confess to being quite startled when he said here was. Even more startling was that his question was almost identical to one recently asked by a certain Panaman Missionary with an interest in liturgical dance; namely “Why does Father Christian wear shades all the time?”

Since I prefer to not boast of the price I have paid for my faithfulness, I didn’t tell him the real reason is because my vision has been damaged by spending hours in a darkened room watching videos exposing the sin in people’s lives, and instead I gave him my usual spin, which never fails to impress those of his persuasion: “My eyes have been dazzled by the glory of the Lord as revealed in my interpretation of the Scriptures, and once one can see the Bible’s judgement with the glaring discernment of a true exegete the brilliance of the Word’s Truth there is no option to wear sunglasses.’

Yes, of course I know how silly that sounds, but you’d be amazed at how many people are impressed by it. Evangelical Eric was awe-struck, which suggests he might just be stupid enough to be useful.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.