Today’s turn: bashing the bishop
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s observation that rather a lot of bishops think their clergy aren’t up to snuff comes a different story. This time yet another bishop gives everyone pause to wonder at his monumental crassness.
At one level, there is a certain commonplace nature (particularly within some theological traditions) underlying his observation, namely that since all have sinned, all deserve God’s judgement, however humans rate the sinfulness involved. But in fact, the bishop seems to wish his comparison with Josef Fritzl to highlight the heinousness of environmental sins, so this isn’t much of a get out clause for him..
It would be remarkably easy to think that rather a lot of bishops have two modes of verbal operation: the anodyne and the daft. Almost certainly unfair, but remarkably easy. It’s probably true of anyone who regularly has to speak in public and doesn’t have an army of PR people watching their back. Yet even in professional politics a remarkable number of gaffes get through.
No doubt it’s as much a media problem of ignoring all but the most outrageous things said, unless they come from a particularly vacuous celebrity source. Not being celebrities, bishops (and other clerics) compete for attention in a marketplace of noise, and send their sentences over the top in the hope of reaching the trenches between their audiences’ ears. Unfortunately, as in this instance, they end up dropping their verbal grenades on their own positions, leaving their holes well and truly foxed.
It is no doubt unfair to have a real go at the Bishop of Stafford for doing what many a cleric has managed (whether episcopal or more lowly). However, in the aftermath of being told that many bishops think large swathes of us clergy aren’t fit for purpose, it’s irresistible, even if I shall leave you to read the insult into this post’s title.