I'm not keen to wade into the new Anglican Twitter Row (about whether a cathedral should have a memorial service for their beloved cathedral cat), but it does slightly remind me of the row about Worcester Cathedral's asparagus blessing, and that leads me to wonder whether... 1/7

... the internet allowing everything to go round the Communion instantly is always helpful, and I don't mean merely in a "Is social media making us more irritable?" way. It strikes me that both these cases are events that made sense to the local community, 2/7

but which look problematic to 'outsiders'. Sometimes you might have questions (I probably wouldn't have put a bloke in an asparagus suit prominently in the liturgical procession, even if he was the official festival mascot but the general concept seems absolutely fine), but 3/7

there are particular things that we want to do in the course of worshipping God or asking his blessing that are expressions of a particular community and its quirks that are authentic to that place and those people, but that would be weird elsewhere. And surely that's OK? 4/7

Historically, of course, the local church produced all sorts of quirky things which worried those who wanted to observe some sort of universal standard, and who waded in to tidy them up and reform them away. And sometimes that was right. But sometimes it's just centralisation 5/7

Meanwhile, the internet makes us very aware of what other people are doing, without any sort of knowledge of their community and why they might do that. The internet *feels* like a universal space, which encourages those of us who want there to be a universal right way. 6/7

It advertises the particular, without necessarily showing what produces that particularity. Which will lead some people to enjoy the particularity, some to be v confused, and some to get cross. But I'm not sure it's useful in helping us work out if the crossness is justified. 7/7

Sidenote: can see the concern that burying the cat in the churchyard might create an unhelpful precedent, although I'd have thought it only creates a precedent for burying *church* cats in churchyards, not random cats of the community. But that's a separate issue to the service.