Lukewarm Orange

Some intimate spiritual associates of the Cuppy-Duppy Congregation, or at least of its ten most expensive little choirbeings, have invoked a crusade against the initials RIP. The acronym for rest in peace or requiescat in pace ("may s/he rest in peace") has managed the difficult feat of exciting the ire of the Orange Order, which has instructed true believers to the effect that use of the term is un-Biblical and un-Protestant. Since a dead person is either damned forever or else at bliss in the bosom of Ian Paisley, it stands to reason that any prayer for the peace of such a person is at best a sign of spiritual confusion, and at worst a direct contradiction of the ineffable wishes of Christianity's favourite celestial torturer.

Nevertheless, in its zeal to extirpate this despicable orthographic heresy, the Orange Order displays a disturbing tepidity. No doubt much spiritual laxness has resulted from decades of proximity to the forces of worldly Papist moderation. There does not, for example, appear to be any prohibition against the decidedly un-Protestant phrase Give us this day our daily bread, which appears in the whiny catalogue of fawning and begging once recommended by a friend of the first Pope. Unless the Protestant reformation has been irredeemably tainted by Roman decadence, it surely remains an article of faith that one's daily bread should be earned, whether by the sweat of one's brow or by the casting of one's votes. Certainly it must be blasphemous to imply that the sky-daddy of Martin Luther and Arlene Foster might wish to reconsider His mysterious distribution of sustenance to those He considers deserving.