The rediscovery of a medieval statue which used to stand on the old London Bridge before the Reformation has caused the art historians to remind us of just how much religious art was lost at this time. One commentator said: "It was a fantastic act of vandalism. They didn’t have football in those days."

Vandalism and hooliganism in all their forms have one common root: a failure to respect history. If we know nothing of our history, life can seem pointless. Hence the football hooligan’s "two fingers to the world".

Christianity is a memory religion ("Do this in memory of me") and thus we, above all, should be safe from this kind of mindlessness, this forgetting of our context.

Unfortunately some would say that the very insensitive ‘reordering’ of our churches in recent years, riding roughshod over all sorts of historical sensibilities, is an act of vandalism in its own right. Let us be warned…

Film buffs (there are at least 2 in the parish) will remember "Whistle Down the Wind" starring Alan Bates and Hayley Mills, based on the novel in which a 12-year-old country girl stumbles across a murderer on the run and thinks he is Jesus Christ.

It is now about to appear in London as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. However, it has been ‘relocated’ from England to the Louisiana of the 1950’s. Justifying this alteration, the director says: "For Whistle to work, it was vital to find a landscape in which religion had an almost fanatical hold on the community, a landscape in which it is credible that a little girl will believe a stranger is Jesus. I don’t think modern England is that place ..."

If we are thought not to be a religious-fanatical country, well and good. But didn’t Jesus say something about finding him in every stranger? "I was sick amid you visited me.…"

I belong (for therapeutic reasons) to a club [perfectly respectable] which has nothing to do with religion. Last week I was introduced to another member. "David is a priest." After the traditional pause for mental realignment, my new acquaintance said: "You know, if I had been asked to say what you do, that’s what I would have said." "Why?" said I, alarmed at possibly exhibiting signs of improbable piety. "It’s your calm," was the answer.

Now who would have believed that !!