Five hundred years on, and still there's not enough theses being nailed to the door of the Sydney Anglicans ...

(Above: an artist's impression of the pond nailing the Monty Python scripts to the door of the Sydney Anglican cathedral).

The pond is a firm believer in maintaining the rage.

Where would the world be without entrenched opinions and long-standing disagreements, firmly held? Preferably over centuries and centuries ...

As always, we have to turn to the unholy team of Python for guidance:

REG: ... Listen. The only people we hate more than the
Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah...
JUDITH: Splitters.
P.F.J.: Splitters...
FRANCIS: And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA: And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...

Speaking of splitters and maintaining the rage, no finer example can be found than the Sydney Anglicans, and Michael Jensen furiously scribbling 20 Theses on why the Reformation is not over.

It could be suggested that this is a moderate stance - after all Martin Luther managed to find ninety-five theses back in 1517 explaining why the Catholic church was the corrupt whore of Babylon (or politer words to that effect). On the other hand, the Lollards kept their disagreements down to Twelve Conclusions, so perhaps Jensen could be charged with being prolix.

Even worse, Jensen wastes his first ten theses on praise of the enemy. It seems the enemy of your enemy is your friend:

9. We have common cause with Roman Catholics against the New Atheism and the other forms of intellectual secularism ...

Never mind if the Catholics are in grievous error and certainly going to hell, and never mind if the Anglicans are at best 'separated brethren', not admitted to the Lord's Table, and are in grievous error and certainly going to hell ... because if you see an angry new atheist or secularist in the vicinity, the destined to hell tribes must join together and smite him or her mightily. It's the spiritual, cathartic, catholic (in the other sense of the word) thing to do ... (it also comes in hand if you want to bash gays, not gays personally of course, but the sin of gayness).

Jensen produces another nine theses explaining inter alia, why continued division amongst Christians is deplorable and regrettable, and the Anglicans should work to heal it. And then produces ten fine theses which explain why the Catholic church is full of squawking theological geese, from which the sane part of the world must, without regret, split, so that their theological fripperies and follies can be fully deplored. In particular:

13. The Roman Catholic Church, despite lengthy and peaceful deliberations with Lutherans and Anglicans on the matter, still holds a semi-Pelagian view on the doctrine of justification – that is, the believer in whatever small way, still is able to co-operate with the grace of God and earn the rewards of heaven ...

Oh dear, not Pelagianism and its deplorable sinful, evil view that original sin didn't taint human nature, and the peculiar notion that people might be able to choose between good and evil without special divine aid.

Why as any decent Calvinist knows, we're all afflicted, cursed by original sin, we're all as guilty as hell because Eve ruined Adam and men in general and She led to the fall, and we were tossed out of the garden of eden to writhe in an eternity of bitterness and suffering and wicked sinfulness, enjoying pop music and dancing, and indulging in the arts, and favouring colourful clothes over black (except for Phillip Adams - case closed), and high heels over flats, and scarlet wanton sluttish make-up and ...

Phew, that felt good, there's nothing like a little Elmer Gantry on a Sunday morning to take the pond away from the world of the commentariat hair splitting and finger pointing about the world of politics ...

But back to Jensen as he keeps on explaining how it's simply impossible to achieve any understanding or shared outlook with the difficult, obfuscatory ways of the Catholic church:

14. Roman Catholics still determine to define faith as ‘assenting to doctrines’ rather than ‘personal trust’, and therefore put the emphasis on love ...

Put an emphasis on love? How wicked, how shocking ...

15. Justification by grace alone is in practice denied by a view of the sacraments as the operative vehicles of God’s grace ...

Oh dear, the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, which is to say the standing and falling of the church, which is to say that the Catholic church is full of heretics and they're all going to fall, and go to hell.

Not to some feeble, equivocal half way house, mind you, where you can serve out your time, do a little penance, so to speak, in some cloudy realm, before heading off to paradise:

16. Despite modifications to Roman Catholic teaching on the afterlife in recent years, purgatory is still an official teaching of the Church ...

Yep, it's heaven or hell, and no soft cock theological posturing about purgatory suggesting there might be a 'get out of jail and collect two hundred bucks' locale in the afterlife please.

Well there's more in the Jensen rant - most notably the elevation by Catholics of the Pope, who is after all merely the Bishop of Rome, unless of course he be mistaken for Satan or the anti-Christ, and even more to the point, how disagreeable it is to see the Catholics keep asserting - in however a nuanced way - the infallibility of said Bishop, when any protestant knows that protestantism is infallibly infallible on such matters ...

Naturally, the moment couldn't pass without a jibe at the trinket-loving ways of the Catholics and their primitive superstitions, which exceed even the pagans or the secularists:

18. Devotion to and prayer to the saints is still very much part of Roman Catholic spirituality and teaching

Eek. Quick, smash those plaster cast statues ...

And then - did we mention it before, not that we have a chip on our shoulder - there's the cruel way the Catholics keep excluding the rabble from the front door, and sending them around to the servant's entrance, if they give them any entrance at all:

19. The Roman Catholic Church maintains that Christians who are not members of the Church of Rome are at best ‘separated brethren’ and are not admitted to the Lord’s Table ...

It's just not fair, here we are bleating away, moaning and groaning about how wrong they are, and next thing you know they take a view about the splitters ...

Well it all builds to a big rhetorical finale, a literary flourish in the finest Martin Luther style:

And thus:
20. There is still need to maintain a separation between the Church of Rome and the churches of the Reformation.

Put it another way, a pox on your house, and don't pass purgatory on your way to hell ...

All in all a fine read, and a reminder - especially if you grew up in a house divided, with mother Protestant and father Catholic - that there's nothing like the sight of bickering, divided, cantankerous, disputatious priests and theologians to guide a child towards the secular light ... with all the arguments sounding like so many people carrying on in a Monty Python movie.

Unless of course you can also treasure the sight of Phillip Jensen carrying on about the Muslims and their advertising campaign, in Jesus: The Prophet for Muslims?

Many products are sold using completely irrelevant soft pornography, and many products, such as alcohol and gambling, have clear harmful effects in our society. But even more harmful is the constant materialistic hedonism, which assures us of life’s meaning being found in purchasing things which are new, bigger, brighter and better.

Unless of course it's the sight of Sydney Anglicans braying on about the demeaning world of crass commercialism and then boasting about the brand new promos to be found in their monthly magazine ...

Promoting the harmful product of religion, and assuring us that the purchase of said product will result in a new and improved lifestyle ...

(Below: new and improved? Is this the same as the new and improved washing powder that was guaranteed to wash the last trace of Catholicism out of the brain, leaving it brighter and softer and cleaner?)