Why is Microsoft offended by ‘Mrs Thatcher’?

The interregnum between incumbents is a well-known and often elongated process in the Church of England. I have recently witnessed this one because my wife is churchwarden of one of the three churches (we Catholics operate under a different system) in the benefice. Interregnums are arduous for all church volunteers and tend to erode parish life. It is remarkable how much there is for churchwardens to do. Dioceses tend to demand and obstruct rather than ease and encourage. Luckily, we are blessed with an excellent archdeacon who cherishes parish life and has declared there will be no more closures of churches in the district; but the bureaucratic flow of dos and don’ts (mainly don’ts) is considerable. For example, there are exemptions from the general need for a parish church to get a ‘faculty’ from the diocese to make some small change (to down a branch, say, or install a lightning conductor), but even these require permission in their own right and the spending of a three-figure sum on the formalities. There are constant demands for more money and ever larger amounts of it go on legal and administrative costs unrelated to parish life. In our diocese of Chichester, in particular, I think of the sums spent on the pursuit of the late Bishop George Bell for child abuse when, as the Archbishop of Canterbury recently admitted, he was innocent. Parishes are also quizzed about their work, as well as money. They have to report their ‘outreach’ and produce annual ‘mission statements’. But surely the best outreach is parish ministry, and the best mission statement is the New Testament. There is no shame, for any Christian, in doing mundane tasks. As the greatest poet of Anglicanism, George Herbert, put it: ‘Who sweeps the room as for thy Laws/ Makes that, and th’action, fine.’