As the woman vicar said to the bishop!

For those who say the Church should get modern I suppose adultery and infidelity are not what they are thinking of. The real world has both in spadefuls it seems. It is therefore very sad when such things encroach on the lives of Church members and clergy. Not that those of us in the Church are less capable of falling short. Far from it.

In the Church in Wales, the Right Rev. Carl Cooper resigned as Bishop of St David's yesterday. He had apparently been having an affair with a married woman who was also the bishop's chaplain and communications officer. The Daily Mail erroneously described her as a vicar, but then all priests in the Anglican Church are vicars to the popular press, even if they are curates, chaplains, rectors, assistant priests or priests-in-charge.

This is a sad state of affairs, literally. What I find difficult is that both sides seem more attuned with the ways of the world rather than trying to reconcile their actions with their faith. With the modern approach to a more laissez faire version of Anglicanism, the "moving out" and "splitting up" comes before trying to maintain marriage vows.

The New Testament (1 Timothy 3:2, 12) says, "A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach. . . ." Not all live up to that and one should never judge, but giving in quite so easily seems to me to suggest a lack of willingness to try again.