Statement by House of Bishops on Women Bishops in the House of Bishops

Thanks to Ruth Gledhill for posting up the statement by the House of Bishops on Women as Bishops.

Now these kinds of statements are not always totally clear to the lay man or woman on the Cranfield omnibus. Or possibly even to lawyers in the Church of England. So I felt it was my duty to explain it in language as simple as possible.

Basically, I think it's in Swedish.

I'm not sure yet whom it will annoy but my guess is that, in the classic Anglican Via Media, it will be everybody.

A Thought on Women Bishops

Some are saying that the Church of England should consecrate women bishops because otherwise the World Outside will see the denomination as unequal, backwards and irrelevant.

Yet the Methodists, bless them, have had full equality for women for ages and are a tiny denomination - especially in the UK. The Episcopal Church in the States has full equality for people of all genders and several sexual inclinations, and is rapidly declining. Yet the Catholic Church, which has no female deacons even, and which in the West will only allow married men to be priests if they have been pre-approved by the Anglicans, is large and still growing. Most Pentacostal churches wouldn't dream of female headship and yet as an overall movement Pentecostalism is growing rapidly.

It seems to me the logic is wrong here. The Church of England should not consecrate women bishops because it's worried what the World thinks. It should consecrate women bishops because that is the right thing to do.

Flying Primates

Just musing over Andrew Brown's article in Comment is Free. Nice summary of the situation, I think. Although accompanied by the usual foaming at the mouth from the strangely intolerant liberals the Guardian seems to atttract.

It strikes me that this "code of practice", whereby people can pretend that they aren't under the authority of women bishops even though technically they are (and yet, strangely, people with objections to male leadership have no similar opt-in to a female bishop) is by its nature temporary. For one day, no doubt a while after that blessed day when the first bishop in the Church of England who is coincidentally in possession of a pair of X-chromosomes instead of the allegedly more godly X+Y combination is consecrated - one day someone will decide a woman is the right person to be Archbishop of Canterbury.

That woman may not be born yet. But one day - as day succeeds night - it will happen. And what will happen then? The appointment of an alternative scheme with a Flying Primate?

Female Priests in the Roman Catholic Church

Rita posts on a woman at her church "squirming and struggling" when the priest said the priesthood was for men.

Well, yes.

My money is on the Apocalypse occuring in HD and Surround-sound, in a carbon copy of Drayton Parslow's dreamiest dreams, before the Roman Catholic Church ordained a woman priest. The woman in the row in front of Rita will die frustrated if she continues in (a) her beliefs and (b) her church. My sympathy is with her, but it ain't gonna happen. This is not like the Church of England, where things are constantly under negotiation. Nor the Methodists, where they can't see what all the fuss is about - having had female ministers for decades, who are just as good at the job as men. Nor the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley, where it's male archdruids that will never happen - men being the unstable, emotionally-inarticulate creatures that they are, bless them.

I'd suggest the woman concerned needs to change her denomination, or her views, or just lump it. Squirming's no real way forward.

Faster than a speeding neutrino

Sadly I was still writing my own posting while Hnaef was posting his on women bishops moving faster than the speed of light. Which caused me momentarily to wonder whether this blog is also moving at the speed of light or possibly slightly faster.

But on reflection it's more likely the result of two people doing one thing each, at roughly the same time. A co-incidence. Or a "Moon-incidence", as we call it round here. I'd think it was spooky if it so clearly wasn't.

But I've given the matter some thought. The matter of speeding neutrinos, that is. Not the matter of women bishops. Which is, in my opinion, an open-and-shut case - possibly one of those cases that are larger on the inside, which bishops traditionally pack with a chasuble, mitre, alb, Bishop's Chaplain, Book of Ecclesiastical Misdemeanours and their crozier, and yet which fit in the glove compartment of a Fiat Panda. Anyway. Back to the case in point. Which is not the bishop's case. No. The speeding neutrinos.

So my first reaction is that the experimenters are almost certainly wrong. My old Chemistry tutor, a fine man and keen brain and good hockey player in his day, memorably put it like this - "Whenever somebody tells you Einstein was wrong, it's a good idea not to believe them."

And so how can I explain the problem? My first thought was that they just haven't allowed for the rotation of the earth - a bit like the time Marston Moretaine thought he'd time-travelled forward an hour, but he'd just gone to France on holiday. But the maths are a bit beyond me on this one, so my second theory is that CERN have put the story out to hide the Higgs Boson - or rather the lack of it, the Higgs Boson itself being very well hidden as it turns out. Need some kind of good-news story on fundamental physics, they may have thought. and breaking the speed of light is a bit more impressive than losing a fundamental particle. Then my third theory is that it's margin of error. Arrive 60 billionths of a second quicker than they expected - I reckon they're just not quick enough on the stopwatch.

Back on the subject of women bishops, however. I think the lack of women bishops in England today is proof of the non-existence of time-travelling neutrinos, or else proof that there will never be women bishops. As if in the future there are both women bishops and time travel, I reckon they'd time-travel the women bishops back to 1835 Oxford. That would put the cat among the pigeons for Forward in Faith. And might give John Henry Newman a whole new perspective on things.

Women's Ministry

Now that Marjorie is here to lead it, I'm pleased to announce that the Women's Group will be meeting at 12.00 every Thursday for two hours of godly worship and Bible study.

For those married women unable to attend because they work, there will be a Ministry of Repentance on Tuesday evenings at 8.30.