And it’s little wonder.

Michael Coren points out that:

Just as it’s usually only beautiful people who pretend that good looks don’t matter, it’s generally the rich who tell us that money isn’t particularly important. Well, it is if you don’t have any. And those drowning or swimming for their lives in the current economic storm know that unemployment, pay cuts and evaporating savings are more than mere dents in their hobbies. So when, for example, various Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders in Britain said recently that there were in fact “positive aspects to the recession” they were dismissed as religious clowns and out-of-touch dreamers.

And goes on to say:

The sudden realization that material wealth is transitory and that earning, spending and saving are as much symptoms as they are solutions should lead us to grapple for the greater and grander things in life. Such as God, faith, family, community, the spiritual and the knowledge that this is the land of shadows and that real life hasn’t begun yet.

Bishop of London impersonating Jack Nicholson

This is entirely true; such worldly enticements as wealth and power are a distraction from life’s important questions: why are we here and what happens when we die? Once the distractions are removed, we are often forced to confront that which we have been assiduously avoiding. Regrettably, the buffoons in charge of the Anglican Church are ensnared in the very net from whose clutches the vulgar masses have been freed – accompanied by a chorus of clerical rejoicing.  The bishop of London, Richard Chartres

is paid a stipend of £57,040 a year. However, he and his family live for free in the Old Deanery, a Grade I-listed Wren house next to St Paul’s Cathedral. The apartment was refurbished for him at a cost of £300,000 in 1995. At the time, Dr. Chartres, a father of four, said the accommodation used by his bachelor predecessor was inadequate and that he needed a larger residence fit for “a public person involved in public life”, rather than a “suburban villa” for an “office wallah”.

And with nary a blush had these words of comfort to offer the “office wallas”:

he suggested that some of those who lost their jobs “seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill” and to consider the other things in life. Dr Chartres suggested that the credit crunch could give Britons a chance to “reboot our sense of what a truly flourishing human life consists of”. The bishop, the third most senior figure in the Church, added: “It is difficult to know whether to sympathise more with those who have lost their jobs or those who are left carrying even greater loads with higher targets and fewer colleagues.”

The sooner the bishop of London is relieved of his ecclesiastical treadmill, the better. Perhaps he would gain some perspective.