I APOLOGISE if I suggested last week that the post of “Chaplain to the Queen” was a bit of a sinecure (Press, 19 January). You have to work to keep your name in the newspapers. After the attempted usurpation of the title last week by Canon Jeremy Haselock (for obviously there can be only one Queen’s chaplain in any headline), a nation waited for a riposte from another former holder of the post, Dr Gavin Ashenden, who is now a Roman Catholic.

It did not disappoint. Fr Haselock had called for the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign. How to top that? Dr Ashenden, the old pro, knew. He would demand the abdication of the King. Not just any King, but — to avoid pre-emption — the man who will be our next King, Prince William. He should abdicate, Dr Ashenden wrote in the Express, if he did not want to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The traditional Roman Catholic position was, of course, the opposite.

After the King, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who can next be anathematised by a former Queen’s Chaplain? To recapture the post will take some act of real imagination. May I suggest Pope Francis?

IN QUITE another corner of the forest, Kaya Burgess, at The Times, perpetrated an act of journalism which deserves to be noticed. He, or some gopher, rang round all the cathedrals in England to find out how their attendance figures were looking. It was a reminder of how far this part of the process has been offloaded on to the organisations being scrutinised that the immediate reaction of most journalists seeing that would be “I didn’t know they had put the figures out.” They hadn’t, though. Burgess had pulled them out.

The story itself was interesting, too. It suggests that cathedral attendance has risen even as parish-church attendance has fallen. It can’t all be because of the bouncy castles. I suspect it’s some combination of inspiring architecture, liturgical professionalism, and central heating. If you want to worship in medieval splendour, the ancient cathedrals will be the least-cold buildings — at least, outside the Lady chapel in Ely.

IT WAS not just a former “Chaplain to the Queen” who reacted to the (anonymously sourced) story about Prince William’s distancing himself from the Church of England. Two holders of another ancient office of dignified rather than efficient status — Guardian columnists — performed their ancient rituals as the occasion demanded.

Simon Jenkins wrote his traditional column demanding disestablishment: “To anyone who takes the British monarchy with an ounce of seriousness, the ritual of coronation was a shocker. It presented Britain’s head of state as serving God rather than the British people. Priests splashed him secretly with [holy oil] like a Crusader king. Nothing indicated that King Charles was the embodiment of a democracy, more of an episcopal hierarchy .”

Reading this, I felt a surge of reactionary sentiment. The point about the King’s serving God is that it is supposed to give him a purpose — and a superior — in common with the people themselves. You can, of course, do this in other ways. You can sacralise the nation, as the French do, or even the constitution, as the Americans have done. But God works at least as well as either of those concepts. And who, in England, really believes in democracy at the moment?

Polly Toynbee, in her column, performed an interesting liturgical dance around the row over Muslim prayer at Michaela Community School in north-west London. On the one hand, the head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, wants “religion” out of schools; on the other, all Guardian readers know, for they have often been told, that Ms Birbalsingh is a Bad Person Who Is Wrong. Toynbee, for example, explains that she runs “a notorious free school, regimented to her direction”.

So, although Toynbee writes that “My gut instinct was to back Birbalsingh. If proven true, it’s appalling for children to be bullied into religious observance,” she really doesn’t want to think that bit through, and soon enough finds the answer: let’s blame the Christians. “In this most atheist country, pews are empty except when parents get on their knees at admissions time for a vicar’s letter. Why? Because religious schools can select 100% of their pupils, causing social segregation by class and race, as well as faith. They escape other schools’ obligation to prioritise children in care. It’s hard to see what’s ‘Christian’ about that.”

Toynbee is, in fact, a really hard-working and factually scrupulous journalist. She puts the phone calls in. Alone among The Guardian’s senior opinion-havers, she foresaw the result of the Brexit referendum, and warned us all a week before. But I really don’t understand why she thinks it is the schools, and not the parents, who drive segregation by class and race.

JUST time to notice a curious moment in The Daily Telegraph, where an interview with Canon Rachel Mann opened with a quote: “‘Every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven,’ Jesus tells his disciples in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas.” How many readers will realise that “gnostic” in this context does not qualify the following noun, but negates it? A good thing, too: it’s a thoroughly patriarchal sentiment.