Ex Oprah Operata?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 25, 2005

The Church one of its ministers termed a psychotic kindergarten has stabbed itself with yet another plastic picnic fork in its desperate bid for attention. This time it's a chap who, at age 33, got surgically reconfigured from Colin to Sarah and was ordained a priest. The usual objections were advanced by the proles and pooh-poohed by senior clergy who belong to better health clubs than you do. Addressed to a thoroughly jaded audience, the event has failed to shock, provoking the level of "Today's Chuckle" journalistic amusement you get, say, with a photo of a nun on a Harley. Rowan Williams, meanwhile, more interested in semicolons than semi-Colins, is drafting his 173rd policy statement on the need for in-process communication between sub-committee secretariats. Thoughtfully.

I wonder, in passing, whether the original hermits were not fleeing a similar kind of pseudo-religious exhibitionism -- a series of progressively demented "Look at me!" stunts current in their own time and place -- and took their struggles into the desert in order to keep some spiritual leaven uncontaminated by infidelity and showmanship.

The Rev Sarah (né Colin) Jones to the left, I think. (BBC photo)