I am very grateful for the opportunity to attempt to formulate a response to this very challenging question.
Sea Bright asks, "Does anyone out there know what the likely consequences would be if a vicar was involved in a romantic relationship with a member of his congregation, and she got pregnant?"
We can consider the likely consequences, given, as stipulated, "they're both consenting adults who've freely chosen to enter into the relationship."
I've stripped away other aspects of the situation, as described by Sea Bright, to make a larger point about probabilities stemming simply from the specific premise, because this larger point can have a significant effect on how the story of the Vicar is told.
Modern physicists use a Feynman diagram to determine the probability of any given result stemming from a series of events.
According to quantum theory, virtually anything is possible, but certain events-- due to the nature of the seemingly random motion of subatomic particles-- are less likely than others. Consider a series of possible scenarios.
Scenario One.
It is possible that the Vicar could, after having his affair, appear on a distant planet, in another galaxy, wearing fish strapped to his wrists, as he is hanging upside down from a set of giant blue teeth, only to realize that this is the highest honor he could receive on said planet.
That, of course, is not at all likely, but it could happen. This event would be reflected in the Feynman diagram by a long and meandering line. (The straighter and more direct the line, the more probable the event, as you can see from the diagram at this link).
http://www.physics.ndsu.nodak.edu/people/pilling/feynman.jpg
A genuine Feynman diagram represents an infinite number of possible results stemming from a single event, and so contains a great many curvy and circuitous lines along with many straight and nearly straight lines.
Scenario Two
A more likely scenario would be the Vicar disappearing and suddenly finding himself in Beijing, China, during the Spring Festival, where a Japanese accountant, who worked for a British firm based in Tokyo, happened to be visiting. As it turns out, the Accountant's boss's sister could be married to an Australian woman (who has blue ink stained teeth) and whose aunt is living in England, next door to the landlord of the woman made pregnant by the vicar.
This is far more possible than the first scenario, for a number of reasons, first and foremost, because the distance from England to China is far less than the distance to the extra-galactic planet where the Vicar was hung upside down on giant blue teeth. So the Feynman diagram would show this possibility as a wandering line, but not so meandering as the first line.
I am going to address the original question in a moment. I beg your indulgence.
Third Scenario
A third scenario might be this: The Vicar is confronted one morning by a committee from his congregation. At first they appear angry with him for having had the affair. After several minutes discussion, the congregants come to believe that the Vicar was in love, that he had no ill intent, and they invite him out to dinner with his beloved. All the members of the congregation congratulate him, and publicly proclaim that marriage is simply a bourgeois institution, made by man, and not by God; and the plate is passed around so that money can be collected for the well-being of the baby, who is named "Fishy Blue-Tooth," after a cousin of the oldest matron of the congregation, who happens to be Japanese. The news story is covered by reporters from four different regional papers, reporters who happen to be quadruplets from Japan, separated from birth, and raised 200 meters from Anglican Churches in Sri Lanka, Zambia, Argentina, and Australia, respectively. Their coverage of the story, makes the Vicar an international 'cause célèbre,' which leads the Ecumenical Council to declare that all forms of Christianity are essentially the same, based on Jesus Christ's dictum, "Love one another, as I have loved you." So Anglicanism, as a separate sect of the faith, is dissolved. Meanwhile, Pope Tawanda, the first black female pontiff, realizes the Vicar's lover is, in fact, her own daughter, conceived by in vitro fertilization, twenty years previously. Pope Tawanda declares this publicly, and convenes a world wide conference, in which all Christians are invited to participate, so that a new universal church structure can be built with reference to base communities, liberation theology, and the democratic election of all church officials. A new age dawns, but its inception is marred by the fact that a protester throws blue ink at Tawanda, causing her teeth to be stained a dark shade of blue. One of her unstained teeth disappears and reappears three feet over her head, only to fall to the ground in front of a crowd where the quadruplet reporters are there to cover the story.
This third scenario is more likely than the second, because no one in this version of the story suddenly appears in another country as far away as China. Such an appearance, on the other side of the world, seems to be a serious violation of the known laws of physics (though it is a fact that subatomic particles can instantaneously jump small distances, for no apparent logical reason. Larger numbers of particles, in the shapes of atoms, molecules, or even entire living persons, could jump medium distances, or even longer distances, and the likelihood increases over time that such events will happen, though they remain fairly improbable.) The appearance and disappearance of the Pope's tooth, while improbable, is not as unlikely as the Vicar's disappearance and reappearance in China, in part because of the total mass involved in the transfer, and also because of distance.
Fourth Scenario
In a fourth scenario, the Vicar could be thrown out of his congregation for immorality. He could fall into despair, and then win the lottery, after which time he repudiates his error, and is invited back to the Anglican Church, on the tacit understanding that winning the lottery was God's will, if he repented, and that the money he won be used for the benefit of the Church. However, several thousands of molecules on the surface of the lottery ticket disappear. Unfortunately, for the Vicar, those molecules constituted one digit of the lottery number which was written on the ticket in blue ink. The number is still barely visible, but the Vicar accidentally spills some fish sauce on the ticket, making it totally illegible. The Vicar promises never to use blue ink or to eat fish, if only God will only restore his faith. His vow sparks a new religious revival in Worcestershire.
I will soon address the original question. I thank you for your patience. You can see that this version of the story (while its sequence of events is far more likely than those recounted in the first, second, and third scenarios) is still fairly incredible. It is true that only several thousand atoms act in a way which is difficult to explain, and the disappearance of the ink marking of one of the digits on the ticket is still in accord with the laws of quantum probability. But it is extremely unlikely the Vicar would win the lottery in the first place. (I will leave it for demographers and sociologists to judge how likely it would be for a religious revival to occur in Worcestershire at this juncture in history). On the Feynman diagram, in this case, the line drawn from event A (having the sexual affair with the congregant) to event B (the result), will be a wavy line, much closer to a straight line than any line we would have drawn earlier to describe the probability of scenarios 1, 2, and 3. The fact that this fourth version of the story now somewhat resembles the plot of Oliver Goldsmith's novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" (written in 1761 and 1762) should in no way affect our ability to evaluate its probability.
The answer to the original question-- "Does anyone out there know what the likely consequences would be if a vicar was involved in a romantic relationship with a member of his congregation, and she got pregnant?" -- is as follows. Yes, someone out there DOES know what the likely consequences would be if a vicar was involved in a romantic relationship with a member of his congregation, and she got pregnant. But how can we find out which person out there knows? And what is the probability that we can find such a person? That would involve drawing another Feynman diagram. We can describe that diagram in a future post. I apologize if this seems a roundabout way of dealing with the original query, but this is my way. It is perhaps overly technical, and overly philosophical, but if the playwright is strictly bound by conventional notions of what is likely or unlikely, I think the imaginative faculty will suffer. Luckily, modern physics has proven that our previous notions regarding the probability of physical events are outmoded. This is the most important point I wished to make.
|
