DID you know that the London Stock Exchange has its very own Ju-Ju man. Yep, this testerone-fuelled temple to rampant capitalism has a chaplain, the Rev Dr Peter Mullen – a man with a particular talent for elevating witlessness to hitherto unscaled heights. Or down to unplumbed depths, if you prefer.

This is what Mullen said in a Times comment piece at the weekend:

Far worse than the threat from international terrorism is the aggressive process of secularisation that has gripped our country, and most of Europe, and which is becoming ever more frenzied. For example, I guess not many people are aware that it is against the law for state schools to teach the Christian faith as true. Teachers are allowed only to teach about religions. This is atheism by decree, for the only perspective from which one can teach about all religions is the secular perspective. So our children are not brought to a sense of holiness and awe, but are merely taught the meanings of religious terms as sociological descriptions. This deprivation of the spiritual is a form of child abuse.

No, Dr Mullen, abuse occurs when children are subjected, without their consent, to religious indoctrination, and have their heads crammed with superstitious nonsense, often of the most scary kind.

Mullen, who is also rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, then engages in the favourite blood sport of the dedicated Christer:

And then there are the Sexual Orientation Regulations which make it illegal to discriminate on moral grounds between forms of sexual coupling. One might put this epigrammatically: what was once a mortal sin is now only a lifestyle choice. I supported the Homosexual Reform Act back in the 1960s on the grounds that it is not right to criminalise people on the grounds of their sexual orientation. But the many people who believed that homosexuality should be decriminalised never intended that this should create the proselytising Gay Liberation Movement … But now the love which once dare not speak its name, shrieks at us in high camp from decorated floats along the high street.

Lamenting what he sees as the breakdown of values in British society, Mullen says:

When it comes to the religious aspect of social issues, the devout Muslim reproaches the secularised for their valueless consumerism and reckless hedonism and urges us to accept Islamic values. What do we reply? “No, thank you. We’ve got our own values - and if you don’t like them we’ll fire a salvo of condoms at you.”

Condoms? Surely some confusion here? As far as we know, Muslims are not instructed to recoil with horror at the mere suggestion of a rubber johnnie. That’s a peculiarly Catholic paranoia.

We, of course, think that the Stock Exchange needs a chaplain like a motorbike needs an ashtray, but if they must have one, surely they could find an individual who does not churn out such arrant tosh.