LUCY FER WRITES...

 

Hi everyone,

My name is Lucy Fer. I am a Church of England parish priest with a lovely parish, St Cuthbert’s  on Tyneside. I love my work and the Geordie people, but sometimes life as a parish priest has it’s problems. Let me relate a recent incident which illustrates this.

A little background about myself first. I have always been interested in religion, and  yet I never imagined I could be a religious minister, specifically not in the C of E. As a child, I was obsessed not with growing up, but with becoming vaguely, romantically good in the sense of morally triumphant. My parents were scornful avowed atheists, so my path to goodness was education, and then the right career. Good was all the things religions weren’t: liberal, open-minded, tolerant, generous toward difference, educated, focused on practical ways to make our world better.

At Oxford University I joined a feminist group. You get the picture: strident harridans, lesbians in paratrooper boots, all sorts of weirdos and men-haters. To may shame I also campaigned with them on pro-abortion rallies. I remember one incident from this time that had a profound impact on me. One Saturday afternoon I set out on a pro-abortion March through Oxford. At the front of the march we had a banner reading: A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE. At one point on our march we were confronted by a young man – about nineteen/twenty – who heckled: ‘You bitches. No one has the right to choose murder’. One of the leaders of our march, a strident harridan with acne and halitosis, started to remonstrate with him. He flung a carton of strawberry yoghurt right into her face. Splat! How she yelled! A right melee ensued, but the young man disappeared before the police arrived. I remember thinking he was a handsome young man and his face somehow reminded me of Saint Padre Pio – not that Padre Pio was a saint in those days. That incident propelled me away from all the radical feminism  and pro-abortion evil.

I became a police officer—a bad idea, now that I understand how most people succeed in this profession.

Eventually I trained for the C of E priesthood. I love my work but it is not without its problems. A big issue is the LGBT and Gay Lobby faction who want their own way even when this clashes with the Christian faith. But I am solid as a rock on Church teaching. I know there are many C of E sodomite bishops and priests who are champing at the bit to have gay marriage recognised and to have gay marriages celebrated in C of E churches but that will never happen on my watch. I uphold doctrine and tradition.

The bishops of the Anglican Communion in 1998 upheld the traditional Christian teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman and that those who are not called to marriage so defined should remain celibate. A resolution was passed stating that "homosexual acts" are "incompatible with Scripture" by a vote of 526–70.

Anyhow to recent incident that I mentioned. About a week or so ago after the morning service here I went for a stroll through the meadows at the back of the vicarage. It was such a glorious morning – and I heard the first cuckoo. I was euphoric.

Back indoors I switched on Radio Three at low volume. Janacek. I find Janacek such a spiritual composer. I began work on my homily for the next Sunday. My text was the gospel passage where Jesus warns anyone that leads little children astray that it be better that they were cast into the ocean with a millstone around their neck. I had a flash of inspiration. I would mention the Paedophile Information Exchange, a notorious organisation from back in the Seventies which sought to legalise sex between children and adults. The political Left had supporters of this evil. Also, the C of E had done precisely nothing about this monstrous threat to children.

The doorbell went. I peeped out. It was Canting Detterlng a self-righteous, pompous bore and parishioner at St Cuthbert’s. “Botheration,” I said to myself, “What does the old so-and-so want?”

I opened the door and there he stood. Eighty years old, grossly overweight and bizarrely dressed in a Sixties blue denim jacket, lovat chinos and green woollen socks in open-toed sandals. What a sight!

“Good morning Lucy, can you spare a moment. I have something perhaps you could help me with,” he wheezed.

“Better come in then – I can’t spend too long as I am in the middle of writing next Sunday’s homily,” I replied.

“Very gracious of you Lucy,” he muttered as he came in and planked himself on my best settee which groaned under the unaccustomed weight.

“Lucy,” he continued, “I have got myself into a spat with a character named Swashbuckling Mulligan. I have published that we do not know what the views of Jesus would be on sodomy as he is not quoted in the gospels on this subject. Swashbuckling Mulligan disagrees…”

“You bastard!” I replied. “Let me stop you right there. Of course we know what the views of Jesus would be on this abomination. Jesus is not quoted in the gospels on the heinous sins of bestiality, abortion and paedophilia for example. Does that mean we do not know what the views of Jesus would be on these evils?

Out! Out! Out!”

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and the ass of his lovat chinos and propelled him out the door.

What we C of E priests have to put up with!