Marquart on Ecclesiastical Bureaucracy

Blessed Kurt Marquart told the following story while serving as a professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Today's news made Prof. Marquart's story pop into my head (let him who has ears to hear...). Marquart didn't write this story, but he was fond of telling it.

A man takes his young son to see an episcopal consecration. At the solemn moment when the hands are being laid on the candidate's head, the boy asks what is happening. The father replies: "Well, son, this is where they remove his spine."

I am sad to say that as disappointed as I am, I am not surprised.