Having your Muddle and Eating It

MP Ben Bradshaw has accused the Church of England of wanting to have its same sex marriage cake and eat it. The Good Old C of E* is, he tells us, in a muddle.

Well, I think it's more ontological than that. A muddle is not so much what the C of E is in, as what it fundamentally is. Ever since the day Henry VIII redefined marriage as not being something that existed between him and Katharine of Aragon. In the world of Platonic Ideals, the essence of Muddle - the thing all concrete, physical-world muddles approximate to - is divided into two provinces and has a General Synod.

Will vicars married to members of the same genital group get the sack? Probably not. Let's face it, when Mary I came to power, all the married priests just hid their wives in the cellar until they got a more Protestant queen. I imagine that, should the Barchester Inquisition arrive at Mr Quiverfull's house, some similar arrangement will probably be reached. And should Mr Quiverfull's bloke eventually be discovered, the rules of incumbency being what they are, it could be years of wrangling through the courts before any resolution were reached. And since, somewhere down the line, Europe would be invoked on Mr Quiverfull's side, the church would probably think it better to keep out of vicarage affairs in the first place. 

Curates, on the other hand, might be better off keeping same-sex-spouses in the cellar. If nothing else, it will bring back happy memories of Tudor times.

* © The Church Mouse