The Shills of God Grind Slow

With the chances of a West European return to mediaeval levels of poverty, ignorance and social stratification looking better by the day, the leaders of the Anglican Communion have called upon the faithful to repent the unfortunate misunderstandings of the Reformation, the legacy of which has been largely to keep Christians from "unity in love". In Standard English, this means that Christians have spent the last five hundred years failing to hate non-Christians properly because they have been too preoccupied with hating each other. The Reformation sprang from Luther's rebellion against the corruption of Rome, and resulted in much persecution of Christians by other Christians, which obviously had never happened before; and there is, of course, no talk of anything so merely moral as repenting the fourth-century devil's pact with the Roman Empire. Still, if the priests of Christendom are to take due advantage of the present turbulence and bring back the good old days of loving their enemies onto a bonfire, some agreement over such burning issues as whether and under what biological endowments they can marry one another might make for a promising start.