John Venlet, cultured and well read as he is, thought of John Dewey and a particular passage from a 1934 book, A Common Faith, which I’ve never read, but appears as a call for a sort of ecumenical spiritualism replacing the existing murderous dogma that dominates religion even today.

THE Vatican has described the Protestant and Orthodox faiths as "not
proper churches" in a document issued with the full authority of the
Pope. …

It was "difficult to see how the title of ‘Church’ could possibly be
attributed to them", said the statement from the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith. Roman Catholicism was "the one true Church of
Christ".

Being neither as cultured, nor well read as John, I think I thought of the story where you can clean up a pig and put perfume and ribbons on him, but he’s still a pig — which you’ll soon discover the moment he gets near a mud puddle. I think there’s one about whores and whorehouses too, but details escape me.

It really is a laugh: supposedly smart people; who take children’s fairy tales and imaginary friends so seriously. What stupids, from top to bottom: "my imaginary friend is the one true® imaginary friend and the only one that’s not imaginary, but real. And your imaginary friend is not real, but imaginary. And we have the one true® instruction manual for all dealings with imaginary friends."

My contempt for such primitive stupidity is virtually boundless. I make my peace with all the dummy Jebus believers in the world, from time-to-time, but then I see something like this and wish I’d been born in a less primitive, less superstitious age.

The worst part is that Anglicans and Protestants will look at this and condemn it. But not because of why it ought to be condemned, which is that it clearly demonstrates the core reason why they are all totally full of shit. No. They’ll condemn it because they‘re really the one true Church of Christ®.