The scene is a very busy bookshop. A bepigtailed elderwoman protagonist approaches the information desk. She pauses for a moment and then asks…
“Excuse me, Religion is…?”
Her bearded interlocutor pauses for a moment and then replies….
“Religion is in the gold room, just up the stairs.”
He pauses once again, and then asks, “Or were you looking for a more esoteric answer?”
No, Kimberley – he ISN’T a Primate. He is merely first among equals and has no powers as a primate or metropolitan.
So what would you use as the collective noun for Archbishops, Presiding Bishops, Primi (Primuses??), etc?
I have always heard ‘primates’ as a simple short hand and have not assumed that it tells us anything about the form of governance in any particular province.
Ah! But it does! +Idris is Primus (inter pares), but he’s no more a Primate than you or I. This is a delightful distinguishing feature of our Scottish Church. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were various suggestions and attempts to restore some kind of Metropolitan Bishop, but they came to nothing.
As for a collective noun, I don’t know. I prefer not to think about such meetings!
A colleague in the diocese has died. He was a young priest. I knew him as someone who was generous and kind. He was a year older than me and died very suddenly on Friday. Another funeral I suppose.
As we gather to read the word this morning, there is one thing that is inescapable ? it is all about sheep. Sheep and shepherds everywhere.
One of the most extraordinary services I've taken here in Bridge of Allan was the week that a pipe band turned up, in full kit, for the 8 am Sunday Service. The eight o'clock is usually half a dozen of us, most more than 20 years older than me, enjoying the first, quiet light of…
The horror in Iraq grows ever deeper. The photographs of Americans torturing Iraqis have sickened me to the core. That they were doing this in one of Saddam Hussain's old torture palaces has managed to lower the moral status of the continued conflict even further.Not only that, but each horror like this makes it harder…
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