The new Wellington bishop is named Justin, wears long deadlocks and trots about barefooted, wielding the ultimate cliche of a Maori-motif carved staff. He was plucked from a commune in which his forte was kindness to derelicts.
What next, one wonders - flagellation, self-immolation? Time will tell.
Rejected by heaven and state on this occasion, in time-honoured Anglican clergy fashion, there will inevitably be a new stunt, perhaps unicycling to Auckland for a fresh cause. There's a circumcellion whiff about Justin and one suspects in another age he would crave the martyr's stake or perhaps a beheading, as with his original namesake.
Anglican clerics have always been a source of fun for cartoonists with their regular mini-scandals involving parishioners' wives or other embarrassments ... taking up line dancing and such like.
Cartoonist Tom Scott has often portrayed them chained to a wall clad only in saggy underpants and a dog collar, being flogged by leatherclad dominatrices - for which activity in Britain they certainly have form. Given polls in Britain show most of them don't believe in God, an afterlife and all the other absurdities of their trade, these diversions are explicable. They even extend to their wives.
A former Australian cricket captain told me of a 1970s tradition when playing in a certain major UK city.
They would welcome in their midst a gullible local Anglican parson of the tweed jacket, ale-quaffing, pipe-smoking, one-of-the-chaps ilk. Meanwhile, unknown to him, his wife would service the team during the duration of the test - an excellent example of applied Christian charity.
Talking of Australia reminds me of the 2003 Rugby World Cup and an ABC radio discussion (as occurred here prior to hosting it) on the over-hyped economic benefits that would flow.
One commentator, the president of the Victorian Brothel Owners' organisation was sceptical, claiming conferences and other such events saw no boost in trade. But suddenly he became excited saying there was an outstanding exception, namely when the city hosted the Anglican Synod, following which they had to close for a time to allow the girls to recover.
But back to Justin's protest about prison reform. Most people in prison are decent and useful citizens who had a single lapse. They do their time and resume useful lives.
Others waste their lives in and out of prison for which the bishop blames the prisons, saying this shows they don't work. In fact, they work superbly in keeping recidivists out of action in their unrelenting war on society.
It's no secret current Justice Minister Collins is probably the toughest we've had when it comes to criminals, for which I commend her. Nevertheless, as corrections minister she increased prison work programmes and introduced alcohol and drug treatments - she's certainly a damn sight more knowledgeable than the bishop about the nature of recidivist criminals.
A friend of mine was a prison doctor for years. He acknowledges the presence there of single-lapsing, good people but is realistic about the hardened psychopathic recidivists who, he says, are simply through-and-through bad.
God certainly got this one right when he gave Justin the finger.
