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By Diogenes ( articles ) | Nov 04, 2003

SCHOLARS, ARTISTS CONDEMN GAY ORDINATION

by Julie Segert, CDN Staff Writer

LONDON. (4 Nov 03) CLAIMING TO BE "very gravely concerned by recent developments," a Cambridge don deplored last Sunday's consecration of the Reverend Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire (U.S.A.), calling the move "a severe blow to readers, purveyors, and above all composers of the limerick."

Nigel Twisbury-Fostle, fellow of St. Onan's College, argued yesterday that "abuse of the clergy, and particularly the delinquent clergy, has provided the limerick for over a century with a capital thematic tradition, but the fun hinges precisely on the clash between outward propriety and private turpitude. Now that episcopal buggery has become 'official', it rather spoils the joke."

Headmasters, colonels, and even high court judges may be pressed into service to fill part of the "vacuum" left by senior ecclesiastics, suggested Twisbury-Fostle, but he professed doubts as to whether the verse form could long survive bereft of its principal and best-loved character, and insisted it was the "clear duty" of Lambeth Palace to repudiate the Robinson ordination and restore the discipline of the Thirty-Nine Articles.

He is not without allies. Wing Commander G. P. F. "Kitty" Spork, corresponding secretary of the Buckinghamshire Intermittently Ribald Poets Defence League, wrote an open letter to Dr. Rowan Williams denouncing what he called "concessions and timid half-measures" and pleading for ecclesial support:

"We can hardly express our dismay at the news that Your Grace would betray those anonymous poets, whose verses will show it's a sin to throw sinning away.

"As artists, we travel a road that may skirt the Levitical Code, but the churchman who kicks against gay bishoprics is entitled to reap what he sowed.

"We've been utterly robbed of our means of exhibiting clerical scenes. Bishops' spilling their seed, we can manage, at need, but they mustn't stop dropping their Genes."

The Archbishop of Canterbury was unavailable for comment.