Holy Hypocrisy!

For those of us not of a religious bent, this furore over gay priests and women bishops in the Anglican church is somewhat mystifying. What does one's gender or sexual orientation have to do with anybody's ability to preach the Christian message? In any other walk of life excluding someone from a job on such grounds would count as sexual discrimination and be illegal. They really should take a leaf out of their Roman Catholic rivals' book and adopt a more liberal policy when it comes to employment. I mean, the Catholics don't just have gay priests (albeit in the closet ones), but they've gone a stage further and have decided that sexual deviancy need be no bar to entering the priesthood - just look at the number of peadophiles they have in their ranks. They're also highly supportive of single mothers - their priests have certainly been responsible for creating enough of them. They also aren't too worried about your political leanings - they're currently being run by a retired Nazi, after all.

Of course, the secret to the Catholic's flexibility on such moral issues lies with the confessional. It doesn't matter what horrendous things you do, how many choir boys you bugger, how many Papal bulls you sexually molest, or how many illegitimate children you have by the local nuns, just so long as you confess it all, it'll be OK. Your soul will be saved. OK, you'll have to do a bit of a penance, but I think we'd all agree that fifteen hail Marys for each breast groping of a novice nun in the vestry isn't a bad exchange rate. Consequently, it doesn't matter how colossal a pervert you are, or what your culpability in the Holocaust might be, your soul has been cleansed and, in the eyes of the Church, you are forgiven. Unless you commit suicide, obviously. Then you're buggered. So, that's my advice for the Lambeth Conference when it comes to all these moral dilemmas they've invented for themselves - just follow the left footers' example; confess all your 'sins' in private, sweep it all under the carpet and just carry on as if nothing has happened. Hell, it's worked for the past couple of thousand years.