I was reading the barking bishes blog earlier when I came across this highly amusing piece of hypocrisy!
"It is illegal to impersonate a person of the clergy unless it is transparently obvious that it is intended as a fancy dress costume at a fancy dress party, or something of that kind, and the intention, wittingly or unwittingly, is not to deceive anyone into believing the fake cleric is actually an ordained clergyman in holy orders. Someone who has impersonated another person for many years, for example, might be clinically diagnosed as having a mental disorder for compulsive impostorising. Impostor syndrome, sometimes called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, however, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalise their accomplishments, and should not be confused with the kind of malicious impersonation being described here which is often accompanied by acts that are to the detriment of the impersonated. In many countries it is a crime to impersonate somebody on the internet, and it is certainly illegal to dress up as a priest if the person doing so could be confused with a real clergyman."
Aside from the fact he seems to have taken seriously what is obviously a blatant piece of mickey taking, he's also conveniently forgotten that his own claims of episcopalness are highly suspect to say the least. Even if, as he says, he was consecrated a bishop, he was then excommunicated. He can't have one without the other. If the consecration was valid it naturally follows that the excommunication was valid too. Particularly as both rites were performed by the same man. Either way, his claims of being a prelate are as fake as his usernames.
He has no church, no diocese and no congregation. When I asked him what services he performed he avoided the question with his old ploy of crying abuse.
I think maybe its time to hang up the silly hat and stop wearing purple, although it'll probably match his complexion when he reads this. :-)))
Well spoken, My Son (I am using Church talk, of course!).
ReplyDeleteIn fact, you are right. The whole charade was just one big publicity stunt - not to mention, of course, the main motivation to avoid paying council tax. The man has obviously cheated genuine tax payers out of thousands of pounds, not one penny of which has gone to charity but for his own benefits i.e. by buying himself new straps for his saxophone, BNP insignia or to finance his comparatively new toy trainset. There is a classic photograph on his blog of the individual he nicknames 'Br Keith' staring with glazed eyes at the childish contraption. You can almost hear him pleading ... "Oh please let me have a turn Sean! I want to decapitate one of the toy passengers who you have lined up by tieing them to the track."
You're right of course about his having no congregation or church, unless you count his small bungalow which he has filled up with pseudo-religious paraphernalia. But who am I to criticise his fantasy world? He is about as far removed from Christendom as the fictional vampires in whose world he apparently chooses to dwell.
David