A reply from the Bishop...except that, it's not

It all started with a polite request from me to Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth.

I asked why one of his parishes was organising a visit to a Hindu Temple; it seemed a pretty pointless exercise to me and ecumaniacal initiatives such as this never seem to have a reciprocation aspect to them.
We tend to go forth and join rather than to go forth and teach.

Now this is where it gets boring (yawn) it's a bit anecdotal so please bear with me.
I received a nice reply from the Bishop suggesting that I take the matter up with my Parish Priest - alack!
 I am a pikey Catholic, I have no parish, no place to lay my head or kneel in prayer except several 'adopted' churches where the PP is a kind and forbearing person.

Mantra for customer satisfaction -
 "Delegation is good but it must be followed through"

In haste I responded with an apology for giving the impression that I was a parishioner of St James's Church, Reading.

And then.......the response comes back.....except that, whilst it purports to come from the Bishop it obviously comes from one of his priests charged with admin duties filed under "Nuisance enquiries from awkward b*****s" (that stands for bloggers, by the way).

You see, as any fule kno, as Molesworth would say, you never, ever, send an email that has been forwarded or cc'd.

Because the chances are that there will be one or two earlier emails on the tab that may carry info that you would not wish the final recipient to see.

Now, my reply carried nothing nasty as such but it had not, I believe, been sent by the Bishop because there was a forward note from the Bish's PA stating: "Father, for you"

And the reply itself was.....a bit (I'm trying to be charitable) -  pompous and twittish, and I am sure that the Bishop would never have made such remarks.

Here is the response, verbatim, you may judge for yourselves (my comments in red):

Dear Robert (Um, just plain Richard would do, it is my name after all)

The nature of interreligious dialogue and proclamation is of course a complex one. (Well, it certainly sounds it) You might do well to look at the article by Mgr. Billy Steele on the Diocese of Leeds website (It really gets up my nose when people say things like "You have to understand" or "You might do well" and, anyway, I would never read anything from a Catholic priest with the Christian name 'Billy').

Some Christians veer towards syncretism, others to fundamentalism (err....there is a whole world between those two words and just because I may object to syncretism it doesn't make me a fundamentalist) and the rejection of any possible ‘conversation.’ (But is a visit to a Hindu temple a 'conversation'? What is the actual purpose of such a visit?)

The Catholic position is directed by recent Church teaching (Such as?). 
In this particular case, I still think it would be best to discuss the precise nature of the proposed visit with the Parish Priest (but, as I have stated before, I am not a member of this bleeping parish!) before making your judgment.(Ah...judgements are wrong, that's the innuendo here).

With prayers and best wishes

In Corde Iesu

+ Philip

What an awful, ignorant letter. I am confident that Bishop Philip did not write it, what do you think?

If I was the Bishop I'd give whoever it was that wrote it, a week's course on customer service and relationships at Marks and Spencer.