Not On This Rock

As the Church of the Holy Sepulchre reopens in time for Orthodox Easter, humiliating the Epstein Class that had already lost the Iran War, those of you who have been in touch with suggestions for Donald Trump's Antipope are all very naughty, and one of the three most popular names, remarkably two of them English, is in any case perfectly sound on Iran. Is he still some sort of Old Catholic? Claiming to be the Latin Church as She existed until 1870 is a long way from the Free Church of England or the Reformed Episcopal Church. The fashionable talk of an age-old Special Relationship between Anglicans and Rome is like the 250-year-old Special Relationship between Britain and the United States. 250 years since what, exactly? But Calvin Robinson is sound on Iran. Alas, then, he can never be Antipope.

Not so the other Englishman on the terna. As we approach the centenary of the birth of the late Queen Elizabeth II, complete with an exhibition of her clothes for those with more class than Margaret Thatcher's knicker-sniffers at last year's Conservative Party Conference, at least some of Gavin Ashenden's gigs must be paid, so there is something almost fraudulent about his trading on his former status as an Honorary Chaplain to the monarch. There are always dozens of those. He may have met the Queen, as a lot of people did, and he may even have preached in her presence. But he no more ministered to her personally than your local Monsignor, who is probably a Chaplain of His Holiness extra urbem, hears the Pope's Confession.

Surreptitiously for the last four of his nine years as an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen and as a paid and housed incumbent in the Church of England, and then openly for a further two years thereafter, Ashenden was also the Bishop of Nowhere, or at least of the Bishop of No One, since he was the Christian Episcopal Church's Missionary Bishop in the United Kingdom and Europe, where it had no congregations when he was appointed and where it still had none when he resigned. Produce anyone whom he ever confirmed or ordained. It is possible that even Ceirion Dewar exercises more ἐπισκοπή than that.

But the smart money is of course on Bishop Robert Barron. Between him, the Society of Saint Pius X, and the German Synodal Way, the three great threats to the unity of the Catholic Church cover the full range of Epstein Class opinion and taste. With Douglas Wilson, Brooks Potteiger, Paula White, Franklin Graham and so forth, Bishop Barron is one of the Mad Mullahs who already have nuclear weapons, but who do not have doctorates on Kant, preferring a Board of Peace with the man who elbowed aside Gordon Brown before routing William Hague and Michael Howard. To Stalin's intentionally rhetorical "How many divisions has the Pope?", Christopher Hitchens is said to have replied, "More than you think." But how many nukes will the Antipope have?