Quo Vadimus?

We spent the weekend in a Religious Retreat with our church collegues, considering our own and each other's navels. As a Retreat it seemed longer than Napoleon's from Moscow and featured only slightly less blood-letting. Still, we all survived and remain friends.

Sister Antiphilia began by expressing a frank and earnest concern that we were not stuffy enough - although that's not the term she used, hers was far more genteel and polysyllabic - nevertheless, the gist of her argument was that proper Religious Authorities never exhibit a sense of humor- and if Our church was to be taken seriously we shouldn't be so amusing.

We thanked her for her for recognizing (though not perhaps fully appreciating) our Great Wit, but went on to point out that VIRTUALLY ALL of the evil in the world is done by people without a sense of humor - and religious folks with no sense of humor were inevitably the most destructive of all. We were forced to direct her attention to the Middle West as well as the Middle East - and, we hated to do this, to the sad spectacle of The Twin Towers and all that followed therefrom. We cannot but wonder if the world couldn't have been spared much suffering had Osama bin Laden had been raised to appreciate the simple, deeply spiritual joys of a properly effectuated whoopie cushion.

We also pointed out that Laughter is one of the few things that distinguish the higher from the lower forms of fauna. Is not the giddy giggle of the chimpanzee far more spiritually ennobling than the grim determination of, say, a slug?

Brother Saturnillus noted archly that it wasn't true that Religious Authorities didn't have a sense of humor. Which allowed him to launch forth on the various official skimmers and sombreros of the world's sundry religious denominations, a particular hobbyhorse of his. This proved to be his way of leading up to raising the question of what sort of headgear ought be adopted for Official Church Use. Brother Saturnillus, not surprisingly, was hot to require tiaras, papal-ish, purplish or otherwise, all around. Sister Antiphilia was, equally not surprisingly, utter death on the idea.

Dr. Hall, our esteemed Rector of the College of Simple Divinity, who had just arrived - finally - obliquely observed that people do not like their Royals wearing funny hats - except perhaps at Ascot, but even so HM's chapeaux are always a restrained lot. "Frankly," she declared, "the HRHs ought pay closer attention to her successes and less to their fashionable milliners." Dr. Hall had been held up on the minutiae of college business and was more than usually flustered on that account.

We brought her up to speed on the discussion and she opined that she personally saw no use for hats other than the occasional baseball cap in the summer and an aviator cap with earflaps for the winter.

Whereupon We quickly moved that Official Headwear be tabled for further discussion at a later date. This was enthusiastically seconded by Sister Antiphilia and passed three to one.

Sic transit Gloria Retreat-i. . .

Yes, although many opinions were tossed about over the weekend, very few Opinions landed. Which is as it should be. We have found it is wise not to pull the Ex Cathedra card until absolutely necessary.