Rowan Williams doesn’t have much use for capitalism and he is less than enamoured of the banking system that supports it.

That hasn’t stopped the Church of England from trying to amass profits from the system they enjoy excoriating; I think that is called hypocrisy. Now it has all gone horribly wrong:

The Church of England was accused today of squandering its clergy pensions through reckless betting on the stock market.

Its deepening crisis over how to pay the pensions for retired vicars is ‘largely self-inflicted’, a leading analyst said.

The criticism is an embarrassing new blow to the CofE at a time when it faces divisions over women bishops and homosexuality, a campaign by Roman Catholics to recruit disaffected Anglicans, and the need to ask churchgoers to put more into collection plates to ease its financial worries.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has been strongly critical of bankers and financiers over their behaviour during the recession.

According to ZuZu Bailey in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

Not exactly biblical, but everyone enjoys a sentimental film at Christmas and no-one takes it very seriously – although these days, perhaps some do.

Here is the contemporary equivalent from the Green Team at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Uxbridge; as is the case with much that is modern, twice as silly and four times as superstitious as the original.

The Green Team at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Uxbridge, Ont. rang their church bell 350 times as part of the 350.org climate change campaign on Oct. 24. The team was part of an international demonstration involving 182 nations. The goal: send a message to world leaders about the need for action on global warming. “CO2 in the atmosphere has to be reduced to less than 350 parts per million and quickly, if we are to save many life forms on this planet, including ourselves,” said the team in a press release issued today. “The holy spirit was working throughout the world this past weekend, we won’t fail.”

It seems that the Anglican Diocese of Trinidad and Tobago is a typical example of the Anglican church’s preferential treatment of the poor: conversation, dialogue, whining to the government and little else. A pensioner who spent 30 years scrubbing diocesan floors was dismissed with a $2000 pension [US$318]: the diocese is all heart:

A Couva pensioner is seeking redress from the Anglican Church for a retirement benefit which she claims she earned after working for more than 30 years as a cleaner at an Anglican school.

Cynthia James, 65, of Balmatte Street, Couva, was employed by the Anglican Diocese in 1977 to work as a cleaner at Anstey Memorial Girls’ Anglican School, Drayton Street, San Fernando. She retired on November 11, 2008.

James said she informed the school manager Canon Francis Caesar of her retirement one month before leaving, in a letter which she delivered to his office at the St Paul’s Rectory, Harris Promenade, San Fernando.

In December 2008, the diocese gave her a cheque for $2,000. She said she was informed the diocese withheld $3,000 as payment for a washing machine which the diocese bought for her before she retired.

“In a breakdown the diocese explained that I really received a $5,000 retirement benefit and after $3,000 was extracted for the washing machine, I was left with a sum of $2,000,” she said.

James said she subsequently contacted Caesar several times to ask why her retirement benefit was so small and was dissatisfied with his response.

“Caesar said $5,000 was the amount that the Anglican Board agreed upon and that I should be glad that I got it because I was not supposed to get any money,” she said.

Trinidad and Tobago is one of the wealthiest countries in the Caribbean with average monthly income of $4,417 [US$793].

Let’s hope she enjoys the washing machine.

Recently, a British MP “stormed out” of a Muslim wedding because the men and women were segregated; unsurprisingly, his action has resulted in heated debate on both sides of the issue. One of the more parochial opinions has come from a liberal Anglican priest:

First, would he have walked out of a Christian wedding, in a catholic or evangelical church that subscribes to scriptural injunctions regarding the inferiority of women? Before we get too smug about Muslim gender segregation, let’s remember that St Paul was no slouch when it came to apparent misogyny. Take a look at Ephesians 5:23 (”The man is the head of the woman”) or 1 Corinthians 14 (”Let the women keep silent in churches…For it is a disgrace for a woman to speak in church.”).

Paul was of course a Jew in a very patriarchal society and his social attitudes must be seen in that context. Some biblical scholars claim that the women of his age were not educated and couldn’t understand the Greek in which church services were conducted, so they sat together and chatted. Paul wanted them to keep quiet. So it wasn’t so much an issue of religious discrimination as lack of education. Or “education, education, education” as Mr Fitzpatrick’s Government would have it.

George Pitcher is an Anglican priest in the CofE and evidently has a very narrow, illiberal view of conservatives Christians. The bible does indeed prescribe different roles for men and women, but no Christian denomination, conservative or otherwise, thinks that the exhortation is a result of women’s “inferiority”.

Pitcher surely knows this but seems to be determined to use any opportunity to take poorly aimed pot-shots at Christians who believe what he is paid to believe, but apparently doesn’t.