Will St Paul's Harringay be not only Anglo-Catholic but Roman as well ??

'If I fart in Wittenburg,' complained Martin Luther before they excommunicated him in 1520, 'they smell it in Rome.' Half a millennium later, given a favourable transalpine breeze, it even works in reverse. Someone drops a divine afflatus in the Vatican a fortnight ago and already we get a distinct whiff of incense wafting along Wightman Road. Well maybe I'm imagining it. Let me explain.

St Paul's Harringay has since 1914 been a traditional Anglo-Catholic parish of the Church of England. Catholic in its liturgy and devotion rather than evangelical - even throughout Billy Graham's Revival meetings in the Arena. Certainly more 'Catholic in aspect' with bells and smells during Fr Martin's years as vicar than the Roman Catholic St Augustines'(Mattison), now closed. Add in that little touch of Orthodox iconography in the new St Paul's. There seems no reason why all that won't continue when Fr Martin's successor is appointed in the Spring. (Currently St Paul's is enjoying what's grandly called an interregnum - i.e. a vicar vacancy.)

Now, as The Times put it, 'Rome has parked its tanks on the Archbishop of Canterbury's lawn'. For a decade or more Josef Ratzinger, while still acting as the Vatican's Rottweiler, listened quietly to the occasional bunch of Romeward leaning Anglican clergy for whom women are fine as vicar's wives and flower arrangers but not as fellow priests and certainly not as bishops. With his 2005 transformation into a cuddly old German Shepherd as Rome's top dog Josef's now in a position to do something about their demands. Hence Rowan Williams' obvious discomfort two weeks ago when he was bounced into polite acceptance of a fait accompli - an exodus of Anglo-Catholics to Rome, with their own Anglican Rite. Pity that Rome seems no more sensitive to the English Church than when Cardinal Pole was Mary Tudor's eminence gris in the 1550's. Still we await the papal fine print.

Not the first German bombshell to hit Canterbury, I suppose, or even Wightman Road. We got Milverton Flats out of the wreckage from the last one. As a semi-detached Catholic of the Irish persuasion, may I hope for something more elegant from this one? Like a St Paul's to cater for the parish of Harringay, Anglo & Catholic. After all, the Greek Orthodox have made their home in the old St Peter's (and the woman I live with seems happy with the 'Gospel Centre' by Hampden). Now all St Paul's needs is a new Anglo-catholic vicar more Roman than the Romans. MetroBet could then open its new casino in St Augustine's on Mattison.

It may never happen, but if it does you read it here first. And it would be one less reason for a Wightman Bus, at least on Sundays.