11/01/2008

Never Figured, Did He. By Uncle Monty.

Never Figured, Did He.
Story By Uncle Monty.
Photos By Alex Albion.
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He plonked down his big flabby bottom on
the old iron and wooden bench at the Church’s
18th century cemetery garden. He began to
munch on his big bag of MacDonald’s take-
away junk food. Soon he was taking big gulps
of beer from his open beer can. He was about
age 30 and perhaps also on government un-
employment benefits. But now, he was as
happy as a little meadow lark. It was
Thursday afternoon at St. Paul’s Deptford
Parish at the Anglican Diocese of Southwark
with those short autumn days
now upon us all.
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But he was soon in for a rude awakening at the
unexpected arrival at the cemetery garden of
the parish’s Rev’d Father Paul Bulter (shown
above in my caption image of him) dressed in
his very traditional and rather quaint all-black
clerical vestments. The beer boozer never figured,
did he, on being politely but firmly escorted off
the parish grounds by the said Rev’d Father?
A rather imposing figure in his clerical robe and
by his Anglican-Catholic presence, The Church
of England priest was no pushover in dealing
with such common beer louts.
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Public drinking is strictly a "no no" at the
cemetery garden and the Rev’d Father has a
no nonsense approach to the problem of such
beer boozers who think they can drink and
spew out their guts at anywhere they want.
The parish has rightly imposed a ban on
all alcohol and beer drinking after it got so
bad at the cemetery garden it became instead
almost like a “Beer Garden” for many of the local
riff-raff and obnoxious characters that began to
take over the place at the expense and safety of
of its regular parishioners and church visitors.
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David John Diamond, Priest, Canon,
Rector of Deptford,
1969-1992.
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While certainly admiring the Rev’d Father’s
approach, the danger for such clergy is the
ever-potential for violence against them. British
clergymen are now quite frequently attacked and
robbed both inside and outside of their respect-
ive parishes all across the face of "Broken New
Britain." Being dressed as a cleric is no longer
any guarantee of personal safety. In fact,
quite the opposite is true thesedays in which
violent perpetrators assume such identifiable
clergy as easy prey in their perception that
they’ll not fight back or call the police or are
seen as just physical weaklings anyway. With
that prevalent view, the clergy then are seen
as passive targets by such criminal
and violent elements.
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Also, the major modern problem of theft
from, and vandalism of, churches won't go
away. Along with the sacrilege of stealing
sacred artefacts and religious furnishings
that continues to grow despite the Church's
concerted steps to safeguard such treasures.
The criminal hands of such thieves will never
be cleaned, even when they're sometimes
caught red-handedly doing their
church thievery.
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At St. Paul’s Deptford parish, the church is
now shut to the public after the conclusion of all
services of worship due entirely to such godless
and wicked people stealing whatever they can
inside the church itself during broad daylight.
The taking of church copper roof fixtures is
a common problem, too, with metal thieves
on the loose ready to strip such churches of
their valuable copper for big money at
scrapyards around the country.
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While still at St. Paul's, the reality soon hit home
for the imbiber dude. Never figured, did he, that
he would be so quickly escorted out of the parish's
cemetery garden to do his daytime beer boozing
and greasy food munching elsewhere. Good
riddance then to him and all his ignorant type.
Bravo, I say, to the good Rev’d Father …
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Faithfully, Uncle Monty.
+ALL SAINTS DAY, 2oo8.
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:: Please Note ::
The Rev'd Father Paul D. Butler is not
related to his own diocesan bishop The
Rt. Rev'd Thomas Butler of Southwark.
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