Latest from Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream

Latest from Anglican Mainstream

Monday, 23 November 2009

The head that wears the crown

Apropos my piece on who is now the ‘Supreme Governor’, in Anglican terms, of the Church of England, I note that the popular, and generally astute, Cranmer blog has this comment on EU legislation regarding sexual equality:
The spirit of Factortame is alive and well as once again Her Majesty’s Government is forced to amend a sovereign Act of Parliament in order that it might conform to a higher-sovereign EU directive.
Importantly, he adds,
There are now so many sovereigns that it is difficult to find the head that wears the crown.
As Christians (following the principles of Romans 13) we are, of course, subject to the governing authorities, whoever they are. But as Anglicans in particular, we recognize that the head that ‘wears the crown’ is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. That was part of the original, and almost unique, Anglican self-understanding at the time of the Reformation.
At his trial, Cranmer (the other Cranmer) was forced to acknowledge that in this, narrow, sense, Emperor Nero was ‘head of the church’ in the time of the apostles, which raises the worrying picture that the self-described ‘grey mouse’, Herman Van Rompuy, now fits that bill.
This is also a reminder that the Christian’s attitude to government in Romans 13 must always be offset by the Christian’s experience of government in Revelation 13. In today’s climate we might be especially aware of the warning in v 17 that “no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.”
The Babylon of Revelation is not a bad place to live, provided you toe the line. There are harpists and musicians, flute players and trumpeters, workmen of every trade, millstones grinding, lamps shining at night and the joyful sounds of weddings filling the air, whilst the ‘great ones’ of her world are the merchants who provide the wealth to keep it all going (Rev 18:22-24).
The only people who really have to worry about life in Babylon are the Christians. “Welcome to the suck.”
John Richardson
23 November 2009
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Saturday, 21 November 2009

Rowan's Roman Bluff

For a man hardly renowned for his robustness, the recent speech given in Rome by the Archbishop of Canterbury was remarkably robust. Of course, it was given partly in response to the announcement from Rome on October 20th of effectively a ‘safe haven’ for Anglicans disenchanted by the policies of the Church over which Rowan Williams presides. Few will forget his somewhat glum and deflated appearance at the press conference called for that purpose, which must have been an intensely difficult and embarrassing moment for him.
Could it be that the man has feelings just like the rest of us, and that his visit to Rome came as a personal opportunity to put a few things straight? Despite its donnish language, there are elements of the speech which are decidedly ‘in Rome’s face’, and some will welcome this.
Yet in the present climate, it is necessary to look at any such speech not only in terms of how it challenges Rome, but how it accords with the nature and doctrine of the Church of England. And here, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is of as little comfort to the Anglican as it is to the Roman orthodox.
Williams begins with a claim that there has been real ecumenical progress and convergence. Indeed, his theme throughout is that Rome and Canterbury are so close as to be almost touching. What, then, is keeping them apart? He responds that there are three key issues, whose significance must therefore be considered.
... the major question that remains is whether in the light of that depth of agreement the issues that still divide us have the same weight — issues about authority in the Church, about primacy (especially the unique position of the pope), and the relations between the local churches and the universal church in making decisions (about matters like the ordination of women, for instance).
Over against these issues, there is substantial agreement on what Williams feels are the things which really matter. And this is not just a question of theorising. The life of the Church is suffering whilst we delay:
When so very much agreement has been firmly established in first-order matters about the identity and mission of the Church, is it really justifiable to treat other issues as equally vital for its health and integrity?
But to show the difference between ‘first order’ and ‘second order’ issues, we must understand the nature of the Church itself. And this, Williams argues, mut be defined ‘theologically’, not ‘institutionally’, not set up by divine command establishing a ‘chain of command’ but ‘emerging’, as it were, from the nature of God and the incarnation.
Briefly, but importantly, Williams sums up the underlying theology of the Church as being that God is a Trinitarian community, the incarnation opens up the possibility of people being drawn into this community and the Spirit makes this actual. The Church is then constituted by a ‘filial’, godward, relationship and ‘communal’, human, relationships.
So, regarding the sacraments there is a substantial, if not always acknowledged, overlap:
The whole discussion of sacramental life is centred upon how the believer is established in filial communion through the act of the triune God; there is little to suggest that outside the Roman fold there is any ambiguity over this priority of the divine act, or any separation between the act of God in salvation and a purely or predominantly human activity of recalling or expressing that act through human practices. (Emphasis added.)
In the light of this understanding, which Williams clearly believes should be a matter of common agreement, he argues that current ecumenical debate is not really about the essential shape of the Church but “about where the fullest realisation of communion is to be found.” So we return to his three key issues three key issues, on which he poses a series of questions. On authority and the magisterium:
Is there a mechanism in the Church that has the clear right to determine for all where the limits of Christian identity might be found?
On primacy:
Is the integrity of the Church ultimately dependent on a single identifiable ministry of unity to which all local ministries are accountable?
On the universal Church:
Is it an entity from which local churches derive their life, or is it the perfect mutuality of relationship between local churches – or indeed as the mysterious presence of the whole in each specific community?
For Williams these are, it seems, the remaining stumbling blocks in the way of fuller ecumenical recognition. Yet his answers in each of these areas are confusing. On authority, he speaks of how responsibility is distributed amongst “the communion of the baptised”. But on reaching agreement, he says simply that we have different ways of expressing this.
On primacy he says, starkly, there are two options regarding the present papal model: either it is essential, or it is not ‘fit for purpose’. Yet in its place he offers“a recognition of a primatial ministry” that is “not absolutely bound to a view of primacy as a centralized juridical office”, and appeals to the Anglican covenant as an example of communities bound by what he refers to earlier as “terms of lasting loyalty, shared theological method and devotional ethos.”
On the ‘local’ and the ‘universal’, he argues that, “the church is local community gathered around the bishop or his representative for eucharistic worship not as a portion of some greater whole but as itself the whole,” whilst nevertheless recognizing it exists in connection with the other parts. Thus,
... the question here becomes one about what criteria help us establish that the same Catholic life is going on in diverse communities.
To this, he poses a further question:
The facts of corporate reading of Scripture, obedience to the Lord’s commands to baptise and make eucharist, shared understanding of the shape and the disciplines of what we have called filial holiness — can these be utilised as they stand or do we need a further test — visible communion, say, with a universal primate?
The answer lies in decision making processes — say, for example, on the ordination of women. And on this, Williams poses a direct question to Rome:
... the challenge to recent Roman Catholic thinking on this would have to be: in what way does the prohibition against ordaining women so ‘enhance the life of communion’, reinforcing the essential character of filial and communal holiness [the ‘godward’ and ‘human’ elements] as set out in Scripture and tradition and ecumenical agreement, that its breach would compromise the purposes of the Church as so defined [in terms of reading Scripture, baptism and eucharist]?
Williams answers with a further question, but appeals to Anglican experience:
Even if there remains uncertainty in the minds of some about the rightness of ordaining women, is there a way of recognising that somehow the corporate exercise of a Catholic and evangelical ministry remains intact even when there is dispute about the standing of female individuals? In terms of the relation of local to universal, what we are saying here is that a degree of recognizability of ‘the same Catholic thing’ has survived: Anglican provinces ordaining women to some or all of the three orders have not become so obviously diverse in their understanding of filial holiness and sacramental transformation that they cannot act together, serve one another and allow some real collaboration.
So far, the structure of Williams’ argument is clear: we are almost at full, ecumenical, agreement. Fundamentally, we agree on the shape of the Church and the nature of its sacramental life. We are kept apart only on what are apparently second-order issues, and within Anglicanism itself, we have found a way to organize our life which can overcome our own internal tensions. But then, still on this issue of women’s ordination, he becomes completely unrealistic, if not downright disingenuous:
It is this sort of thinking that has allowed Anglicans until recently to maintain a degree of undoubtedly impaired communion among themselves, despite the sharpness of the division over this matter. It is part of the rationale of supplementary episcopal oversight as practised in the English provinces, and it may yet be of help in securing the place of those who will not be able to accept the episcopal ministry of women. There can be no doubt, though, that the situation of damaged communion will become more acute with the inability of bishops within the same college to recognise one another’s ministry in the full sense. Yet, in what is still formally acknowledged to be a time of discernment and reception, is it nonsense to think that holding on to a limited but real common life and mutual acknowledgement of integrity might be worth working for within the Anglican family? And if it can be managed within the Anglican family, is this a possible model for the wider ecumenical scene?
The problem, of course, is with the phrase ‘until recently’. For what Williams presents as a successful balancing act, which might be “a possible model for the wider ecumenical scene” is, of course, likely to come crashing down, and is precisely the reason Rome acted in the way it did via the offer of the Personal Ordinariate.
Moreover, it is surely exactly the experience of the Church of England at this point which demonstrates it is not the way to go. Extraordinarily, Williams says that this is “still formally acknowledged to be a time of discernment and reception”. Yet as we know, the decision making processes of the Church of England mean that process has been pushed forward by facts on the ground —not least the avoidance of consecrating traditionalist bishops —and is now dominated by a ‘kill everybody’ mentality on the part of the pro-women’s ordination lobby.
Like the desperately-unhappy John and Mary O’Leary in Father Ted, he seems to hope that a smiling face will conceal our domestic conflicts from the visiting priest. Yet if there is deceit, it is one which Williams himself seems to believe, for he asks, in apparent seriousness,
At what point do we have to recognise that surviving institutional and even canonical separations or incompatibilities are overtaken by the authoritative direction of genuinely theological consensus, so that they [the divisions] can survive only by appealing to the ghost of ecclesiological positivism?
“Are we missing something?” he seems to be saying, “Or are we just waiting to clear up some trivial difficulties between Rome and Canterbury in the way that the Anglican communion is already doing so successfully?”
All I have been attempting to say here is that the ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full – and then to ask about the character of the unfinished business between us. For many of us who are not Roman Catholics, the question we want to put, in a grateful and fraternal spirit, is whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain. And if it isn’t, can we all allow ourselves to be challenged to address the outstanding issues with the same methodological assumptions and the same overall spiritual and sacramental vision that has brought us thus far?
And at this point, the reader may wish to pause for breath, for it is nothing if not a bold take on the ecumenical venture and on the issues which have divided us for the last 450 years.
Yet if we simply survey it from a confessionally Anglican perspective, it is a vision which raises as many questions for Anglicans as it must for ecumenists.
To begin with, is Williams right in his claims regarding what truly divides the Church of England from the Church of Rome? Is it our understanding of the nature and function of the Church, or is it rather, as it was when we divided, still the nature of grace and our response to it, and in connection with that, that nature of sacrament and the ‘sacramental’ priesthood?
A glance through the Anglican formularies would suggest it is still the latter. And the test of this will surely be the liturgical traditions which Anglicans will be allowed to carry over into the Personal Ordinariate. Will this include the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, rubrics and all, or will it only allow the non-sacramental services? And what about the requirement that the standard of belief will be set by the Roman Catechism? One only has to look at the sections on justification and grace to know that Catholic and Protestant are still as deeply divided as ever on this subject, where the Church of England is committed via Article XI to justification by “faith only”.
Again, Williams’ doctrine of the Church, whilst couched in terms of episcopal and sacramental significance that would appeal to many in the Anglican hierarchy, is a long way from Article XIX’s understanding of the Word of God preached as being fundamental to the Church’s nature.
And aside from all this, one must ask why, if the ordination of women and their consecration as bishops are second-order issues which we are so effectively resolving, they generate so much heat and so much potential for real division. Why, if they represent a ‘glass half full’, are so many saying that there must finally be a ‘like it or lump it’ acceptance by those who, as Williams puts it, are still possessed of some ‘uncertainty’ on the subject?
For all its robustness of tone, Williams speech represents what happens when a ‘fuzzy’ theology encounters institutionalized clarity. His appeal, in the end, relies on the acceptance of the same fuzziness. But perhaps because this is its intellectual centre, it seems blind to its own inherent contradictions. Not only is it fundamentally un-Anglican in key areas, it is not even a reflection of the realities on the ground, in the parishes, in the dioceses and in the decision-making bodies of our own national church.
It is a bold try. But Williams does not have the substance behind him to back it up.
John Richardson
21 November 2009
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Thursday, 19 November 2009

Anglicans, Anglican'ts and Anglicuckoos

There is a moment in the otherwise-dire Once Upon a Time in Mexico, where Johnny Depp’s character asks a henchman, “Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican’t?”
I want to steal that idea to say how tired I am of the Anglican’t. You know the kind — the member of the Church of England (often one of the clergy) who hasn’t got a good word to say about it. Bishops are useless, Archdeacons execrable, the parish system an obstacle to gospel ministry, the parish quota an imposition, the priesthood unspeakable, the sacraments unnecessary, the Prayer Book a relic and modern liturgy a waste of space.
Now of course, there are many things wrong with some, if not all, of the above. But oddly enough, when you go to other parts of the Anglican Communion than our own, they have the same structures yet they are growing healthy churches in expanding dioceses.
I said to someone just the other day, it is rather like comparing armies. They all have footsoldiers and generals. They all have a bit of gold braid and a bit of ‘square bashing’ — but they vary hugely in their effectiveness and performance. The key is not having generals or getting rid of lance-corporals. It is in what you do with these things.
In the same way, such problems as the Church of England has are not because of bishops, parish boundaries, or any of the other things per se about which Anglican’ts complain.
So enough with the constant whingeing. If you think its that bad, why not go somewhere else? There are other boats, and there are plenty of fish out there to catch. And hey, it might actually be more fun.
But then we come to the Anglicuckoos.
What is one to make of someone who is adamant that a bishop should be accorded the functions and authority ascribed to them in the Church Fathers, but who does not give a hoot (or a cuck-oo), for what the Church Fathers believed about Christ, heaven, hell, salvation and damnation? What is one to make of clergy whose ascribing to the Declaration of Assent means, in effect, they merely acknowledge that the Creeds, the Prayer Book, the Thirty-nine Articles and the Ordinal express what people believed when they were written, but have no definitive status for what Anglicans should believe now? What are we to make of those who revel in the orders of the Church and the performance of its liturgy, but sit light to its doctrines and whose manner of life is scarcely any different from the local teacher or social worker?
The Anglicuckoo is, ultimately, far more of a problem, not only because they absorb the energies and resources of the church, but because they can actually rise high in its ranks. It would be bad enough if they were confined to preaching and teaching for a small congregation — for even small congregations in 'insignificant' parishes need the word of life. But sometimes they are actually responsible for the selection, recruitment, training and deployment of other clergy. And, like its ornithological namesake, the Anglicuckoo is jealous about the nest.
So let us hear less from the Anglicant’s. But if you hear an Anglicuckoo, keep away!
John Richardson
19 November 2009
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Wednesday, 18 November 2009

Episcopal credit where it's due

In the ‘credit where credit is due’ department, I want to note that I’ve just come back from a very positive episcopal review with my Area Bishop, the Rt Revd Christopher Morgan.
It was a bit overdue (like about two years), but timely given our interregnum and the other stuff currently going on.
I think it was helped by me not completing the official review form. I spent a depressing half hour the other day trying to tick its particular boxes and eventually decided I’d just write him a couple of sides on where and what I was up to.
We thus spent a happy hour and a half discussing a whole range of things, which included sharing our perspectives on what it means to be Anglican, doctrinally as well as functionally.
He has also invited me to go back and talk with him in the New Year over the issue of women bishops.
So, all in all, a much better start to today than yesterday which began with a sudden invitation to see the dentist about a painful tooth, followed by half-an-hour drilling for gold. (At least, I guessed that must have been what he was after, when I got the bill.)
John Richardson
18 November 2009
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Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Which of our bishops are guarding the gates?

Back in the mid-1980s, I was at St Helen’s Bishopsgate for the Evangelical Ministry Assembly at which the Revd Phillip Jensen gave a rollicking series of talks on ‘A Ministry that Changes the Church’.
Certainly these talks changed me, for they restored my lost confidence in parish ministry. However, there was one thing in what he said which has, I think, been very unhelpful for the church in this country, and that was his memorable use of the phrase, “Bishops are deacons and priests are bishops.”
It is not the second part of this phrase that bothers me. There is a widespread acknowledgement, going back to Archbishop Cranmer and beyond, that the ‘presbuteroi’ (for which read ‘priests’) of the New Testament church can be identified with the ‘episkopoi’ of the same (for which read ‘bishops’). And in a world where priests are being expected to become ‘managers’ of groups of parishes, their office is (or ought to be) becoming more consciously ‘episcopal’.
No, the problem lies in the first statement: “Bishops are deacons”, which Phillip argued on the basis that they spend most of their time on ‘admin’, like a deacon, and almost none on preaching, teaching and evangelism, which is the ‘front line’ work of the church (as, I would suggest, the Apostles understood things in Acts 6).
Understandably, the line played very well to a Conservative Evangelical audience. It was what we wanted to hear, and it was true to our experience. Nevertheless, I believe it has left a dangerous legacy, not least because it is so memorable. Thus I continue to hear the same view asserted in the same circles, yet I look around the world —indeed, I look at Sydney itself —and I see remarkable things happening where there is effective episcopal leadership.
Virtually all of these examples come from overseas, I am sorry to say. But there is one area even in England where the work of a bishop is unique and powerful in its effects, and that is in being the gatekeeper for the church’s ministry. It is the bishops who, in the Church of England, are those who, as Article XXIII carefully puts it, “have public authority given unto them in the congregation to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard.”
It is therefore the bishops’ responsibility to make sure that these ministers are suitable for the job. At their ordination as priests, the bishop is to ask the archdeacon, presenting the candidates, whether they have been examined as to the soundness of their learning and the godliness of their manner of life —and the archdeacon is to answer in the affirmative!
The question that must be asked, however, is whether this is happening — or to put it another way, whether the necessary questions are being asked.
This is very important when we consider the way ahead for the Church of England at this present time. Since October, it is certain that it will lose some of its most ardent traditionalist Anglo-Catholics. Meanwhile, the ‘evangelicals’ are so divided amongst themselves that the word has ceased to have much use. (I have heard just recently that one evangelical patronage society is now requiring candidates to affirm explicitly that they will teach the traditional view of human sexuality, having been caught out on more than one occasion by appointees who subsequently did not.)
Meanwhile, it is also certain that at some stage in the near future the church will have women bishops, and although this is supported by some within even the traditionalist evangelical camp, it is strongly advocated by the liberals, from whose ranks many of the women bishops will undoubtedly be drawn.
In the face of this, I have been advocating that traditionalists should orientate not around a redefined evangelicalism or a renewed catholicism, but around a reasserted Anglicanism, which takes full advantage of the ‘privileging’ in the Canons and in law of the doctrines of Scripture expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. (This is not, incidentally, to ignore the teachings of the ancient Fathers and the Councils of the Church, to which reference is also made in Canon A5. But those sources are complex and require a considerable breadth of reading, as well as discernment as to what is, indeed, a teaching agreeable to the scriptures, whereas the Articles, Prayer Book and Ordinal are succinct and readily available, not least in many of our parish churches. It is, moreover, the Articles, Prayer Book and Ordinal which give the Church of England its uniqueness, through those things which, as the Prayer Book itself says, apply “to our own people only”.)
This strategy, however, admits of a certain risk. It would involved, for example, acknowledging that as per the spirit of Article XXXVI, those women who are ordained as deacons and priests or consecrated as bishops are to be deemed “rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated or ordered.”
The ‘trade off’ is that all the Church’s deacons, priests and bishops abide by the spirit and letter of Canon A5. And if their knowledge of the fathers and the councils is not all it might be, they at least be committed to the positions on the teachings of Scripture expressed in the Articles, Prayer Book and Ordinal.
For that to happen, however, questions must be asked, and satisfactory answers must be given according to this standard. And this is where the bishops come in —or ought to, for I am left wondering just who is taking on this responsibility.
Personally, I have never, ever, been examined as to what I believe by any bishop. Nor is it clear to me what standards, if any, our bishops apply via their supervision of theological education, other than a broad-brush belief in ‘God and Jesus’. Certainly when one looks at the teaching programmes of the various colleges and courses, both for clergy and for laity, the one thing that becomes clear is that nothing is clear when it comes to what the Church of England expects people to believe.
If the bishops are acting as the gatekeepers, it seems that the gate is very wide and the path very broad that leads to Anglican orders.
When I look at the Church of England today, I am reminded of the classic line by Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski: “Smokey, this is not ’Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.” The trouble is, the rules are being freely ignored on all sides. The catholics, and to some extent the evangelicals, ignore the liturgical rules; the evangelicals want to, and in some cases do, ignore the boundary rules; the liberals ignore the doctrinal rules. And the inevitable result is that what finally matters is power, and the power to enforce the rules upheld by those in power.
Thus we have a situation where many who are liberal in their convictions nevertheless want bishops to be thoroughly ‘catholic’ in their orders, appealing to the church Fathers regarding the nature and function of episcopacy, but entirely ignoring the Fathers when it comes to what bishops should believe, or require of their clergy that they should believe.
If there is to be some regaining of Anglican coherence, there needs to be some quid pro quo on those things which Anglicanism says defines Anglicanism. This does not need to be a rigid ‘work to rule’ approach. Indeed, those with any memory of this particular concept know that it was used precisely to stop any work being done. There needs to be a recognition of the difference between ‘core’ concepts and ‘peripheral’ matters —something which cannot be left to the lawyers. The problem is that, in terms of present discipline, it is the peripherals (namely ‘administrative’ rules) which are often treated as ‘core’ what should be at the core (namely faith and morals) which is treated as peripheral.
Addressing this is the challenge which I would argue faces the Church of England generally, and the ‘traditionalists’ within it particularly, since we are the ones who have lost most, and who have most further to lose, under the present arrangements.
Meanwhile, I would be interested to hear from contributors of their experiences of episcopal ‘gatekeeping’, where they themselves have been required to give an account of their beliefs to their bishop, and to show that they are abiding in doctrinal orthodoxy within the boundaries established by the Anglican formularies. Feel free to name names that should be on the episcopal wall of fame!
John Richardson
17 November 2009
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Monday, 16 November 2009

The fourth sermon on Ruth

My fourth sermon on the book of Ruth can be downloaded here or listened to inline here.


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Sunday, 15 November 2009

Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution

One you may have missed ...
... it is not unusual for homicidal maniacs to cite great writers when seeking to justify their crimes. The Chicago spree-killers Leopold and Loeb (the models for Hitchcock’s 1948 film, Rope) claimed Friedrich Nietzsche as their muse, as did the Moors murderer Ian Brady. Other deranged misfits have nominated Albert Camus, Jean Genet and André Gide. But it may take a keener intellect than was possessed by Harris, Klebold or Auvinen to negotiate such a reading list. The basics of evolution are much more accessible and are taught in every high school, so it should not be surprising that Darwin seems to be emerging as the inspiration for the more dim-witted schoolboy sociopath.

Read more

It does, of course, also pick up on the ideas I explored in my talk Darwin, Dawkins and Dictatorship.

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Women Bishops: here’s the (new) deal

The news is that the Revision Committee of General Synod, after sparking some hoo-hah, and even a debate in Westminster, earlier by suggesting it might go for some statutory provision for those opposed to women bishops, has now announced there will be no such provision.
This is widely, and rightly, being hailed as a ‘triumph’ by the supporters of women bishops and will no doubt prompt some Anglo-Catholics to take up Rome’s offer.
But what about other Anglican Traditionalists who are not Anglo-Catholics able to go to Rome?
Well, life is about give and take, so here’s what I suggest should be the new deal. Anglican Traditionalists like myself accept the non-statutory transfer of powers from the bishops, provided all the bishops believe and, as they promise to at their consecration, work to preserve in all other respects the Anglican Tradition — the Creeds, the Articles and the other formularies.
I think I could live with that.
Revd John P Richardson
15 November 2009
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mail: j.p.richardson@btinternet.com