Earnestly Contend

Consider the fabulous Vank Cathedral in Isfahan, and the persistence of the Pilgrimage of Saint Thaddeus 700 miles away. Then contrast them with the fact that having destroyed, in Artsakh, one of the oldest Christian civilisations in the world, Azerbaijan is the main supplier of oil and gas to those who were actively trying to destroy the oldest of all, including the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, burning down churches and spitting on priests as a matter of religious obligation. In turn, Israel arms Azerbaijan to the teeth. But just as the Armenians are so entrenched in Iran that they have two reserved seats in Parliament and an observer on the Guardian Council, so there are far more Azeris in Iran than in Azerbaijan, and indeed Ali Khamenei’s father was Azeri.

Donald Trump wants to choose the next Supreme Leader, a choice that has probably already been made. We laugh at China’s desire to chose the next Dalai Lama, but this is even more ridiculous. Either Trump or Xi Jinping might hone the necessary skills by choosing a Primus of GAFCON, which would test anyone’s, since several of its African provinces do in fact ordain women all the way to the episcopate while maintaining an uncompromisingly conservative stance on homosexuality, yet Anglican clerical opposition to the ordination of women in the British Isles, North America, Australia and New Zealand is very largely homosexual and by no means uniformly celibate.

GAFCON seems to have pulled back in the way that we must hope and pray that the Society of Saint Pius X will. Its threat to consecrate more bishops is one of two great threats to the unity of the Catholic Church at this time. The other is the German Synodal Way. The bishops of Bangladesh have declined the Government’s new monthly honorarium and festival allowance for religious leaders, lest it subject the steadily growing Church there to undue influence in future. The rapidly declining Church in Germany needs to refuse the Kirchensteuer and call for its abolition, since it had given everyone who paid it the notion that they were entitled to a say on doctrine. Nothing is worth that.