At the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in New Zealand, she wanted to add a sixth: “to advance peace, eliminate violence and reconcile all.”

You can always count on a Canadian bishop to come up with something sufficiently nebulously utopian that no-one can openly disagree with it. And why would they? Everyone is secretly convinced that, being manifestly unattainable, it will make few demands, yet it will distract from the more tangible woes of the Anglican Communion; and that’s what the meeting is all about, after all.  The motion was defeated, but the substance was tacked on to number four which now reads:

To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.

Now, to paraphrase Ps 46:9, we can expect wars to cease to the ends of the earth, the bow will be broken, the spear shattered and the oceans will stop rising. Oh, hang on, that last bit has already been done.

Still, I’m very glad we are left with only five marks of mission; mainly because I think Fatuous Five has a better ring to it than Scelestious Six.