Dear Sir: I was recently cold shouldered at a supermarket by members of my parish, and I think it is sad that a former housekeeper to the parish where I live in the northern climes of England should be treated in this way, do you concur?

It is always a tragedy when christians find they are cold shouldered in their local supermarket by fellow christians from church as if life were a vignette from a movie called Cinderfella with the lead role going to the housekeeper as another Cinders, where of course this kind of incident or non-event is truly, madly, deeply intentional. A sad business if the story is true and if the poor lady in question were recognised by the said couple at large in the supermarket. But spare a thought for our assumptions to this Question for Answer, because it is funny how we automatically assume one or two of the following:

a) that the parish is a speakeasy for gangsters from 1920s Chicago, or

b) that it is often and should be an extension of the DSS, or

c) that individuals are primary realities in the parish, or

d) that old people are the number one commodity in the activity of a christian parish, or

e) that parishes really are glorified nursing homes, or

f) that the parishioners are psychological support groups, or

g) that most parishes in sum should be providing occupational therapy each day at the local supermarket and the local presbytery.

But helas helas, they simply are not. What is a parish intended to be in this time-frame? A good and deep question, and for one thing, they can be all things to all men, so variegated are they. But in the northern climes of modern parish theory another hypothesis is slowly emerging - They are training camps for gladiatorial combat on the electronic highways of the world, and so are essentially for the fit and the healthy and the young primarily. Not that other groups are excluded, God forbid, but what are they primarily for, that is the question. So our assumptions need to be thought about for some time when we are responding automatically to a cold shoulder incident.

But cold shoulders too can happen for innocent reasons - it is possible that the housekeeper was so inconspicuous that she was not noticed as such especially is he is travelling at a lower than normal altitude. The other couple may not have seen the good lady herself, or may not even expected to have seen her, or maybe not known her outside of a church context. So there can be many reasons for cold shoulders - many of these innocent. So charity should obtain all round before we all jump to our preferred conclusions, or even to our pre-judgements, since let us be honest about ourselves, as the Dalai Lama sometimes says it - "we often only judge others on the standards of our own comportment."