This week from the Rev Kevin Logan, of Christ Church, Accrington

THE day I was nearly defrocked came to mind recently.

Just between you and me, it happened during the 'potty training for baby vicars' - Post Ordination Training, to be posh.

We lowly first-year deacons were required to write two essays to prove it was safe for us to be revved-up to full priesthood.

At the time, it was the diocese's golden jubilee, so one essay had to mark the celebration by suggesting ways that the diocese might best survive to score its century.

The powers-that-be, on reading my offering, promptly found me guilty of the worst crime a minister could commit in those days - intolerance!

You could be a doubting bishop. You could be an atheist vicar telling your congregation there was no God. What you couldn't suggest in my nave innocence was that the church should bring back excommunication. Stop paying heretics to steal people's faith. But in the hey day of liberals the most heinous crime was to be non-liberal.

Unless I came up with another more acceptable essay... The dots were not filled in, but they were definitely eyeing my frock!

The reason for this flashback was the recent news that our bishops have now proposed the setting up of a heresy court and, yes, you've guessed it, they want to bring back excommunication.

Today, 26 years after my attempt, there's no way you can get away with murder in the Church of England, either of God nor other people's beliefs. The moral of this week's Saturday Message?

Patience!