OF ALL the convolutions the Church of England has gone through in order to adjust dogma so that it falls in line with the times, the latest -- equating the collapse of someone's first marriage with a death so that they may wed someone else in church -- really is ludicrous.

But, of course, we know why the church goes through such pantomimes.

It is so that the pick-and-mix confection of what the church now stands for may appeal to all sorts -- homosexuals, adulterers, feminists, ravers, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all. And as a result of these popularity-seeking accommodations and vacillations, the churches are full to bursting, are they not?

Just when are its leaders going to get the message that this sort of watering-down of its beliefs and rules -- this latest one ditching the centuries-old refusal to remarry divorcees that used to uphold the sanctity of marriage -- only does the opposite because it highlights the devaluation of its beliefs and its authority. Yet, here we go again -- this time the rule book is being rewritten so that clergy are recommended to allow church weddings where the first marriage of one of the partners is deemed to have "died."

Say what they like, the upshot is that the church is junking what it used to believe in.

And if this may accommodate a society which, if it has any regard left at all for matrimony these days, has a divorce rate to supply the church with sufficient re-tread brides or grooms to take advantage of this move, one wonders if it is also inspired by something else -- to make it possible that the church's future supreme governor, at present the Prince of Wales, can marry his divorced friend, Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, in church.

I only ask. For given the trendy flexibility of the church on so many other things, it would be no surprise if it did bend over backwards as far as this in order to please.

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