Sunday meanderings.

It seems a characteristic of some Anglo-Catholic priests that they feel the need to flay their congregations alive, perhaps for 'sins of omission' concerning the use of appropriate prayers and meditations for the day, or their disinclination to turn up for Mass. You can't really blame them, can you. The priesthood might do well to remember that every time "hamartia" (= "sin") is used in Luke's gospel, it is with "apheimi" (= "forgiveness").
My own views on such silly nonsense are well known to those who are misguided enough to allow me room to express them . I don't think I could have gone as far as John Bunyan, born an itinerant tinker, whose statue stands proudly in Bedford and who spent twelve years in Bedford jail for his outspokenness. Apart from early propensities to command puddles to 'be ye dry', subsequently he wrote in scathing terms against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those who have most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in jail, and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the alehouse. H'm.