SPECTATOR SHOES
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
-Epictetus
A man hasn't got a corner on virtue just because his shoes are shined.
-Anne Petry
The spectator shoe is also known as the "co-respondent."
-Wikipedia
Good morning, Toads and Toadettes,
You know, boy and girls, the Toad is all about style. After all, isn’t that what the church style aspires to? Whether it’s a fancy get up snared after heated E-bay combat, or that retro martini shaker in on the empire drinks cart in the rectory, flash says cash even when there might be no “there” there. As Tommy Carlyle once pointed out, “The first purpose of clothes... was not warmth or decency, but ornament.... Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration; as indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries.” And it looks like there are barbarians enough to go around.
You know what we are talking about—some of you out there reading the Toad are even living it. Whether it’s the fake sheepskin on the wall or the sumptuous vestments clothing the wolf, there are too many hanging on the trappings of the faith, and not building it up. Clothes, particularly clerical attire and vestments, can suggest, persuade, connote, insinuate, or, indeed, lie and apply subtle pressure. The result is written in the courthouse records or in Anson’s Bishops at Large or, in the event of the more outré cases, both.
It was in the course of this clothing-based reverie, the Toad pondered his spectator shoes-you know, two-tone beauties, a bit like saddle shoes. Mine are black and white, just like truth and falsehood, or the difference between fake and real clergy. Spectators are a theological and ecclesiological paradigm in footwear.
The Toad is reliably informed that other colors of spectators are not unheard of. One John Lobb, the famous English boot maker (and suspected seminary dean), claims to have designed the first spectator as a cricket shoe in 1868. They became popular as dressy sports shoes, after the Duke of Windsor adopted them. And, hey, if the Duke of Windsor is wearing them, well they have to be right.
Mind you, bunky, the Toad ain’t giving up his sense of aesthetics particularly on clothes. After all, it is a Dickensian axiom that, “Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he's well dressed.” And, the Toad, while never in good temper, is always in good spirits. In the Toad’s view, though, just like fake seminaries, the more covering one sees on one of these ecclesiastic swells, the more Toad wonders what or who or how many folks are lurking under them. Rawk, rawk, rawk!*
It is the difference between a spectator and a co-respondent—a light and darkness motif in shoe leather. Now, you remember, co-respondents, don’t you boys and girls? They were those oily guys with the pencil-thin moustaches, slicked hair and natty suits who were essential to the English divorce case. After all, ‘twas a time when you needed adultery to get unhitched, and, whether photographed climbing out the window or caught in flagrante, the co-respondent was a vital player in the drama. In fact, a cottage industry arose to deal with those divorce cases in which adultery wasn’t present. Specious adulterers would be commissioned to provide the necessary condition to get the parties unhitched, sometimes appearing in several cases a week, in sporting attire right down to the co-respondent shoes.
The point is that like the Toad’s spiffy spectators, which either can glide him across the dance floor or get put where the sun don’t shine, church aesthetics can be used for good or bad. A snazzy cope can clothe the devout priest or bishop, or it can camouflage the scoundrel. Just cruise on over to the links on Anglicans Online http://anglicansonline.org/ or one of the Independent Catholic Movement http://www.ind-movement.org/ (sort of free-range “catholics”) pages and check out the finery. There’s a lot of trimming on those ecclesiastic trees. The Toad particularly likes the onion dome miter for evening wear.
Maybe it’s just the case that, when you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.” Perhaps fashion is like the id: it makes you desire things you shouldn't, like pretending to be a fully-formed and trained deacon, priest, bishop, archbishop, archimandrite or cut-rate pope. Or, maybe, it is just a matter of spectators gone bad, and turned into co-respondents.
The Toad may be cynical, after all he has been around the ecclesiastical block once or twice. The Toad philosophy is not as cynical as good, old Hermie “Where’s me leg?” Melville, who noted, “Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden - what a sorry set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear!”
Nevertheless, we just have to bark about the folks who dress up like Spanish madrigals and construct internet “jurisdictions”, “communions” and “seminaries” clad with similar electronic finery, all sprinkled with the initials of hoked-up degrees and whole-cloth religious “orders”. (On this latter topic, if you are a married, 350-pounder with a day job at Wal-Mart and ESPN on the cable, you ain’t no monk, pally. so take off the faked-up Cistercian get-up already or the Toad’s gonna’ come for you!)
The co-respondents have gotten so bold as to trade on their trappings in the public arena. Just this week the toad learned of one skeezer who, in addition to having more e-Bay acquired religious accessories than Barbie® has outfits, has obtained a public office trading on a masters and doctorate obtained from a now closed diploma mill, and a purported undergraduate degree from an institution that never has offered a major in that discipline. Geez-don’t people do background checks any more? But, he looks marvelous!
If that weren’t bad enough, the Toad also received a noxious bit of e-mail reporting on an “Anglican continuing church priest” who really took it downtown. Seems that he was holding himself out as a physician and was writing scrips and giving injections. Guess he needed a “tentmaker” job to keep up on the Almy payments. Rawk, rawk, rawk!* (Left) R. Vilatte, Bishop Co-Respondent and Man About Town
Bottom line, gang, if you are wearing co-respondents, at best you are harming the faithful and putting your own soul at risk. Find a better hobby than playing church (or doctor), or at least pony up for the premium cable package to keep you off the street. Better that than getting found out, and, find you out we will, pally.
Meantime, the Toad is polishing up the spectators for a night of gin and skittles at the ballroom dance competition. At least unlike the co-respondent wearers of “independent catholic
land”, he knows that the 1940s are over and his zoot suit with the reet pleat and snap brim are fashion accessories to a fantasy.
As for you alleged clergy who are fakin’ it through, “Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.” (William Hazlitt, On the Clerical Character, 1819). Or, in the words of Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon, “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the pattern.”
Yr. Obed. Serv.,
R. Toad, DD-VS (Very Specious), LSMFT, TIAD**
*The sound of one Toad Barking
**Truth Is an Absolute Defense
