+Rochester clutches at Straws.

When little Bishop Wizzer-Wally of Rochester recently announced his intention to retire I knew it wouldn’t be the last we’d hear of him. Men as ambitious as he is don’t quietly drift off into a long good night of sweet sherry and gentle meandering walks, and neither do Bishops who describe themselves as “Catholic and Evangelical” (which everyone knows is clergy-speak for “I’ll run with whoever’s prepared to offer me the most”) ever lose their taste for the limelight.

Clearly it took him a while to realize that if the public-school boys at the top of the British church’s totem pole were prepared to give the nod to ++Rowan ahead of him then Bozo the Wonder chimp could just as easily have beaten him to the bed with the fluffiest pillows in Lambeth, and the local Jehovah’s Witnesses could have fielded a successful candidate before he’d be entrusted with the keys to Canterbury, but when the awful truth finally dawned +Wally-whizzer didn’t waste a minute more before calling a press conference to tell the world he was quitting “to turn his attention to working with the persecuted church”.

Since no clarification was made as to which members of the persecuted church stood to benefit from +Willy-Wazzer’s help, people naturally started speculate he was entertaining aspirations of becoming “Mr. Gafcon” or “Lord FOCA” (or whatever acronym is currently in fashion). Not that anyone could take that much more seriously than his earlier delusion that the stiffest-upper-lips in England would have risked the chance of someone holding a Pakistani passport conducting the funerals of their dearest, wealthiest, and most inbred. In the first place, as an outspoken supporter of women’s ordination, +Whizzy-Waller is considered an out-and-out liberal by little Peter Jensen and Big Pete Akinola (when in one of his more cognitive moods), and, more importantly, there’s a whole queue of ambitious men hoping for that position – not a few of whom can promise to bring much more of Howard Ahmanson’s sweaty money to the table than anyone from the beautiful English South-East could hope to ever wave around.

Consequently it appears +Where’s-a-Wally has started fishing around in the Tiber again. Rupert Murdoch’s religious Tinkerbell, Ruth Gledhill (c’mon Ruth – you’ve got to admit that’s a nicer epithet than the Viagravillains’ “instrument of Satan”) reports that at a recent talkfest organized by the Oxford Newman Society, the unabashed Evangelical declared that “Anglicans must look to the Pope”.

As a Christian I can’t deny my initial reaction was one of shock, but after reading the piece, and viewing an interview to which Ruth links (clearly it’s only courteous to give your source credit when he’s a dashing young Oxford organist who’s accent simply oozes money, unlike when you pinch stories from some other people), I’ve come to see +Willy-Wear has a point. For too long Anglicans around the world have had to endure a leader who looks like Catweazle, or a member of Jethro Tull. It’s high time we went for a different image, and gathered around someone who reminds us all of Uncle Fester.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.