The curse of the multicoloured stole

Now one thing you can’t accuse me of being is a tat queen. The vestments at STE are simple and functional and, quite frankly, right for a small church with a moderate amount of ritual and a handful of servers, whom we are slowly moving out of albs from the 1950s and into cassocks and cottas.

However, the one thing we most definitely are is correct: the altar frontal and the legillium and the vestments (gothic chasuble for the celebrant – there might be a couple of latins in the vestry, but never worn by a priest of my (ahem) shape; no manuple just to annoy my colleague in the next parish and her cats who appear to like that sort of thing; alb and stole for the concelebrant) are the same colour and right for the season or the celebration.

There is no place therefore on God’s good earth for the multicoloured stole.

These ones, ironically come from the new pseudo-schismatics from AMiA, via the wonderfully perverse Fr. Christian Troll, a blog so worth reading. One of this readers suggested this must comemmorate “Extraordinary Time”, or rather in my view, “lack of liturgical knowledge” time. These are the people who purport to tell us what Anglicanism means, what a Covenant must include (and hence why I will be outside whatever that Covenant promises – I in’t signing nuttin – as they say down Gosport way) and who can be a part of God’s grace, and they can’t even find the right stole in the vestry!

Never will I accept criticism from people who tell me that my inclusivism is contrary to the nature of the Church when these wearers-of-two-different-kinds-of-fabric put on tat like that. There are those who frequently use the word “liberal” as a term of abuse, and yet this is the worst kind of liberality with liturgy and lectionary.

There must be a special circle of hell devoted to the multicoloured stole and the “I don’t know whether it is Christmas or Easter” brigade, although that wouldn’t be so bad as both Christmas and Easter are White/Gold.

The liturgical colours are there to paint a picture for the illiterate, a signpost for the unable, and so what does the multicoloured stole suggest (apart from the sort of sexuality which would put them outside the Gafcon tribe)? That the message is confused and messed.

No, no, no, no, no.

Spare me Lord from the curse of the multicoloured (ok, for you across the pond: multicolored) stole. Spare me now!