THE Bishop of Blackburn has slammed soap operas for failing to depict lasting, faithful marriages (LET, September 27).

In the long-running daily saga of 'errant clergy,' newspaper reports, on the same day as the Rt Rev Alan Chesters condemnation, ran a true-life scenario, about a female curate, one of the first women in Britain to be made a priest, married for 30 years and mother of two, and that she had entered into an adulterous affair and set up a love nest with a male vicar, also married for more than 30 years and a father of four.

In the next day's episode, we were treated to the sensational storyline that the Bishop of Hull's wife has left her husband and is living in sin with a married country vicar. Both have families.

The local evening edition of 'Errant Clergy' entertained us with a happier yarn: a curate and father of three who left his post in Accrington some time ago because of alleged marital problems and has now returned from the wilderness to unofficial pastoral work in Burnley.

The following morning's nationwide instalment re-visited the Bishop of Durham plot, him having written a candid letter in true TV drama style to his parishioners, telling of his heartbreak and devastation at losing his spouse of 24 years to another 'man of the cloth'.

It is a dim reflection on the obvious shallowness of these individuals' religious convictions and of the shortcomings of the teachings of the Bible in modern times to generate long-term marital stability and harmony and more a shining example of the awesome evangelical power of television, its scriptwriters and characters that many of the Church's 'servants of god,' eventually take their inspiration, lead and moral strength from, 'The Gospel According To Soaps.'

DAVID FORTUNE, Queen's Road, Blackburn.

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