THE LAND OF MAKE BELIEVE..

Once again, I step gingerly into the make believe world of religion as once again the antics of His representatives on Earth leave me baffled.

The Church of England has just gone through agonies about having women bishops and there is now the prospect that women priests might progress to the higher echelons of its ranks. Quite right too and it might just be a matter of time before a woman is Archbishop of Canterbury. After all, if we can have a woman Prime Minister and a Queen on the throne, why not a woman in charge of the established church?

We now learn that the Catholic church has decreed it to be a `high crime` to appoint women as priests in the catholic faith, putting the `crime` on a par with priestly paedophilia. Now, of course, people are free to believe what they want and to follow whatever `religion` (mine is football) appeals to them. But I`m afraid my deep-seated scepticism about earthly religions is only confirmed when I witness the kind of misguided nonsense that has just come out of Rome. The Vatican`s beef with women appears to be based on the assumption that not one of Christ`s disciples was a woman. Now, assumptions like that can be dangerously misleading because, of course, it might well be that whilst the disciples were going about their discipling business, their other halves were making it possible for them to do so by seeing that their beards were neatly trimmed, their cassocks nicely washed and ironed and that there would be a square meal on the table when they got home after a hard day`s discipling. A real and equal partnership of endeavour.

Before long, we will have His Popeness visiting these shores. I`m told the visit will cost us £12million excluding the cost of security. It`s also suggested that Ann Widdecombe is in line to become the UK`s ambassador to the Vatican. I`m not sure which of the two is the more depressing, but here`s the thing. At the top of this rant, I mentioned `His representatives on Earth.` What if `His` turns out in the end to be `Her?` I guess there will be some egg on faces in most religious quarters but as things stand the result could well be Canterbury 1 - Vatican 0 (after extra time.)