Geographics

22 Jan 22

Fr dear Fr: Why do ecclesiastical boundaries follow state boundaries so nearly and dearly? Is there a reason for such blind guides leading blindly or whichever? Is it state provision that is the leader or is it church custom that is the leader? Which is it?

This is one of the big questions for diocesan planners but even also for general philosophers of geography too, about which one of the more saintly geographers of the old diocese in the Midlands, Canon Mike, used to adumbrate some points as he sat in his studium and expatiated at length about the boundaries, this was when he was fresh, returned from his missionary journeys to the South Atlantic in those days, when such clergy volunteered for VSO duties, but it was there when a friendly distant fisherman dropped in from a morning's trout fishing on the Eyebrook that the friend called into  his presbytery for breakfast with this regimental tea bag and a bottle of milk, and sat patiently while the saintly geographer explained the issues behind borders and boundaries. According to the dear saint of Corby, it was not state provision that was followed slavishly by the diocesan planners like Mgr Burditt in modern times, nor was it ancient ecclesial custom either rather like the old title there of the Abbot of Pipewell; it was rather the movement of populations and the motions of the building trade in general - there is where new churches and new religious schools were to be built. And that was the case for many church geographers of the new more distant kind.