• The Past Tense

    Sometimes museums are terribly annoying. I found myself getting all worked up about this thurible.

    image

    Well, It wasn’t exactly the thurible that got me worked up but the card next to it.

    image

    The caption uses the past tense. “Censors were used…”

    Censors are used. It somehow felt so frustrating to look at an object that I could pick up and use in my daily work and which seemed to me to be in as good a state as when it was first made and yet see the caption speaking about the use as being something in the past.

    As I looked around the same gallery, all the references to anything liturgical were expressed in the same way:

    “Music was important in the Christian liturgy…”

    There’s no was about it.

One response to “Sunday Trading and the Churches”

  1. John O'Leary Avatar
    John O’Leary

    In Brisbane there has been Sunday trading for many years. Similar fears were expressed by churches here when the idea was proposed, but these proved to be nonsense, just as they will be in England. Those who wish to attend church on Sundays will be no less likely to do so once Sunday trading is allowed. Of course the numbers of those attending church continue to fall, but no one with any common sense would suggest that Sunday trading has anything to do with it. As you say. Kelvin, church representatives should pick the battles they can win. In this case, not only are they bound to lose, but they will look like idiots as well.

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