Freely Have Ye Received

So long as there is suffering in the world, there is occasion for that uplifting Christian habit, conditional charity: eat, learn and be medicated, but leave your money in the plate, your mind in limbo and let your children not be spared the Father's rod. Doubtless in similar spirit, the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak has donated to the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham a quarter of a million dollars which he apparently found down the back of a sofa and which was too dusty for the purposes of disinterested charity. The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, you see, is the instrument of the Vatican's bigot-rustling project - the office whereby Anglicans disaffected with their church's painful struggle between doctrine and common decency can strike a resounding blow for doctrine without quite going over to the Enemy. The sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak decreed three years ago that a special, right-footers-only wing of the Church would be set up to accommodate the misogynists and gay-bashers, and a number of vicars have duly defected. Many of their congregations have gone with them, being themselves Anglicans, and hence for the most part not very well up on that whole "believing" lark.