The World Needs Women Priests

[Albion]

I'm not sure it does. Any argument against women's ordination would only be true if the Church of England and the calling of every one of it's women priests are dismissed as phony.

All one has to do is say it was a mistake. Churches do make mistakes. End of argument.

Because if just one of these callings is from God then any argument against is false.

So the alternative is for the Church to have no standards whatsoever. If a man walks into the church offices and says he received a message from God that his cocker spaniel is supposed to be ordained, the Church has no choice but to do it?? That's not even worth debating.

But the Church of England, for one, can also point to Scripture and at least 25 years of history.

The scriptural evidence is almost entirely against women's ordination, and that record is nearly 2000 years old, not 25. As I've noted before, when The Episcopal Church was debating the issue and ultimately approved it, one of the the leading claims on the part of the proponents of women's ordination was "The Holy Spirit has changed his mind." The other was "But God loves everyone, so (insert non-sequitur here)."

 

[Hmm]

All one has to do is say it was a mistake. Churches do make mistakes. End of argument.

Churches do make mistakes of course but saying "end of argument" doesn't win the argument for either side.

So the alternative is for the Church to have no standards whatsoever. If a man walks into the church offices and says he received a message from God that his cocker spaniel is supposed to be ordained, the Church has no choice but to do it?? That's not even worth debating.

I agree, it's not worth debating bit that's because it's not a realistic scenario.

The scriptural evidence is almost entirely against women's ordination, and that record is nearly 2000 years old, not 25.

If that was true then you wouldn't have equally qualified and informed people holding the opposing view.

 

[Albion]

Churches do make mistakes of course but saying "end of argument" doesn't win the argument for either side.

Oh yes, the argument will go on because those people who want to change the church will persist. I of course know that, but for anyone who is sincerely in doubt about which way is right, there is no real issue remaining.

If that was true then you wouldn't have equally qualified and informed people holding the opposing view. Scripture is obviously not clear on this issue.

Neither of those is true.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Not sure what you're saying. Are you saying rhe church was wrong to (eventually) listen to Galileo?

I think the Galileo affair is misunderstood. He was arrested for insulting the Pope in satirical piece lampooning a person who was at one point his friend. I'm not going to justify Papal actions in putting Galileo in house arrest, but it's hardly like the Church had a vendetta against scientific progress. It was more about preserving an Aristotelian philosophy of Geocentrism which had been integrated into the Christian Church.

So you might want to answer my question. At what point does the Christian stop following society? Would you have recommended the Christians of the third century sacrifice to Caesar in order to preserve their life and property? I mean, it's only a bit of incense.

 

[Hmm]

think the Galileo affair is misunderstood.

Of course but I'm sure you understand the point I was making.

Would you have recommended the Christians of the third century sacrifice to Caesar in order to preserve their life and property? I mean, it's only a bit of incense.

If it was their lives at stake, I wouldn't make any recommendations. What would you recommend that they do? Your example doesn't seem relevant to the subject of women priests though.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

Honestly, I don't really see that female clergy are any worse than the men on any particular issue, and on some, measurably better. (The rate of sexual abuse of children by women clergy is almost non-existent compared to that of men, for example).

That said, I disagree. If it's a trajectory at all, it's the same trajectory that rejected slavery and apartheid and anti-semitism. It's a trajectory which embraces the worth and dignity of every single human being, without caveat or exception. That's a trajectory with which I'm very comfortable.

I was thinking the liberal trajectory is something has embraced abortion, same-sex relations and will embrace trans ideology in the future. Another trajectory I see it following is the left's globalism and attempt to mould people groups into a universal single entity by destroying individual nations.

I don't think we can say that any particular prediction is inevitable. Certainly something will need to shift, I think, but for the moment, those who are unhappy seem perfectly happy to be destructive from within rather than seeking formal schism. Perhaps there will come a time when the rest of us will no longer be willing to tolerate that.

Can you tell me you're Church won't embrace all those things in the future and that it's not moving in that direction? Can you be utterly confident that in the next hundred years the reality of the resurrection will still be proclaimed from Anglican pulpits? Assuming there will of course remain Anglican Pulpits. I'm not convinced, i doubt you are as well. Yours is a Church which has shown it's willingness to tolerate non-Christians within it's ranks like John Shelby Spong. That has an effect on the institution as a whole.

No, I think that's a terrible "test." The question is not, will my church change? The question is, is my church where God would have me be? As long as I am convinced that the answer to the second question is yes - and I am - then this is where I will commit myself in service. I do not know, in relation to the various forces for change, why God has me exactly where I am; I identify neither with the extreme progressive nor the extreme conservative edge of things. I can only seek, as best I am able, to be faithful where I am and trust God to work through that.

Change is inevitable, it's the nature of the change I'm concerned about. I see no safe-guards in Anglicanism to actually prevent serious doctrinal change. The allowance of two sides within Anglicanism of conservative and liberals is already a sign of it's lack of doctrinal unity. I suppose it's been that way since the beginning, but seems to me the extremes always leave Anglicanism and go to where they belong. Newman became a Catholic. The Methodists broke away and became their own Church.

I can compare this to my own Orthodox Church. I expect faithful adherence to Christian doctrine by my Church in the future. An insistence upon Orthodox dogma for any who wish to enter it. Will things change, yes they will. Will we abandon belief in the resurrection, in the supernatural? No. Will we embrace a female clergy? No. Will we embrace same sex marriage? No. That could happen to Orthodoxy, only if we became unwilling to enforce Church discipline and draw lines of distinction, like so many Mainline Protestant groups are.

Possibly. I will confess to not being up to date with all the most recent statements of the many denominations, and I need to leave some room open for diversity. (Also I note that for churches with a more congregational polity, there may well be far more breadth in practice than denominational statements might lead one to believe).

That said, for the ones of which I am aware, in broad terms the expectation would still be that sex belongs within marriage; and the churches which to any degree embrace same-sex marriage would be sharply in the minority.

I am convinced at least the White European Anglican Churches will embrace homosexuality and any sexuality the cultural left adopts. I hope there will be resistance from Anglican communities in the African and Asian world and they might be able to rescue you guys from your sin and heterodoxy. It would be poetic. Though I suspect they will be pressured into compliance by globalist cultural forces eventually. So it's a thin hope.

Well, I would certainly disagree with her, and I do not think that "global Anglicanism" (to the extent that there is such a thing; she is certainly correct that we do not have a governing body which dictates positions across the global communion) would consider this to be an acceptable opinion either. It would not be the position where I am.

Certainly we have mavericks and those who push the boundaries (in all sorts of directions). That is not a new feature of Anglicanism. But you cannot judge the whole by the mavericks or the boundary pushers (although they tend to get the headlines). Most of us are just ordinary, boring (in the sense of not generating sensationalist headlines), faithful, orthodox Christians who seek to love God and neighbour, in communities of word and sacrament. But those ordinary faithful Christian communities are not - what did you call us before? - limp and impotent. They are loci of God's transforming grace.

You might personally disagree with her, but if you are saying that it's within the Anglican's right to believe this and remain in accords with Anglicanism you allow for it's existence. The sexual revolution has gained a foothold on the beaches of Anglicanism and it can only but continue to advance unless there's brutal and harsh retaliation. All it would take is for one Bishop in Australia to state a similar opinion and there would be another foothold. Maybe that same Bishop has a teaching position in a Seminary from which they can influence young minds. Young minds growing up in a culture which has discarded a Christian sexual ethic as a standard.

You don't think this is going to have an effect or change the Anglican Church from where you see it today, in future? They will learn to relativize the scripture and rationalize what it actually teaches with what they actually believe. When I call Anglicanism limp wristed I mean it in exactly this way. It's so unwilling to stamp out any idea like this that it leaves itself to open to various avenues of attack within, be that conservative or liberal. I obviously hope the Conservatives of Anglicanism win out but that seems unlikely.

So I'm not judging you personally, I am however making a judgement of the institution and where I see it going in the future. Part of the reason for that change is related to the ordination of women. Yet my original question has not been answered, at least not in it's original form. So I'll ask it in another way, is there a Church which has ordained women that has become more conservative as a result, in both theology and politics.

 

[Ignatius the Kiwi]

If it was their lives at stake, I wouldn't make any recommendations. What would you recommend that they do? Your example doesn't seem relevant to the subject of women priests though.

You're the one who said we ought follow teh culture in regards to women priests. That they are leading example that the Church should bend it's knee to and submit to. So I'll ask the natural question, at which point does the Church not follow the culture?

I use the example of Valerian persecution because all the Emperor wanted was for Christians to bend the knee. Worship him, sacrifice a little incense to him and his genius. What's the harm of it? Should a Christian have to die simply because they refuse to give right and proper honour to the Emperor?

Evidently many Christians did think it necessary to die, to suffer, that to give in to the demands of Rome in this case would entail the abandonment of faith. Christians who did sacrifice to Caesar or got a writ from the local magistrate were viewed as having betrayed the faith and penance was required of them before they could enter the Church.

So I'm not impressed with appealing to the culture of secular world when discussing what Christians ought or ought not to do. What did Paul say about us? That we will judge angels, and we can't even judge between ourselves? That we let unbelievers preside over us?

 

[Love365]

If a woman became a priest, bishop, or cardinal.
She would become a powerful symbol for the Pro-Life movement.

If you want to stop abortions.
You need to win hearts and minds.

 

[pescador]

If a woman became a priest, bishop, or cardinal.
She would become a powerful symbol for the Pro-Life movement.

If you want to stop abortions.
You need to win hearts and minds.

This makes no sense. a) What is your basis for saying that if a woman became a member of the clergy she would automatically be pro-life? b) your statement about stopping abortions has nothing to do with the thread's topic.

 

[Albion]

If a woman became a priest, bishop, or cardinal.
She would become a powerful symbol for the Pro-Life movement.

If you want to stop abortions.
You need to win hearts and minds.

This matter of ordaining women isn't really about fashioning an effective advertising campaign.

 

[Albion]

This makes no sense. a) What is your basis for saying that if a woman became a member of the clergy she would automatically be pro-life? .

Hmmm. That would seem to be so.

There have been women bishops in The Episcopal Church, and it doesn't seem to have made anyone think that a powerful step forward for the pro-life cause has been taken because of it.

And there have been women priests (also mentioned in that post) for over a generation, with the same lack of effect.

 

[bekkilyn]

I think one of the biggest problems with the church today (and I'm talking about the universal church, not any particular denomination) is that it is largely made of many people who are terrified of change of any sort. The church *should* be enacting positive change all the time. Without change, there is no life in it. Some people would like to have the church sit around completely unchanged as if we were all still living in the 3rd century.

We are part of a LIVING faith with a LIVING God but we would never know it from looking at the church.

 

[Philip_B]

I think one of the biggest problems with the church today (and I'm talking about the universal church, not any particular denomination) is that it is largely made of many people who are terrified of change of any sort. The church *should* be enacting positive change all the time. Without change, there is no life in it. Some people would like to have the church sit around completely unchanged as if we were all still living in the 3rd century.

We are part of a LIVING faith with a LIVING God but we would never know it from looking at the church.

The heart of the Gospel calls us to change our direction. For most of the Christian centuries the Church has been at the forefront of change, but of late we often seem more like the brake.

 

[Paidiske]

So the alternative is for the Church to have no standards whatsoever. If a man walks into the church offices and says he received a message from God that his cocker spaniel is supposed to be ordained, the Church has no choice but to do it?? That's not even worth debating.

Oh, come on, Albion, you know this comparison is unrealistic, unfair, and offensive. Firstly, women - even ordained women - are fully human, not analogous to dogs. Secondly, the vocation of women is tested and discerned just as vigorously as the vocations of men have always been. Opening the discernment process - to anyone - is not ordination on demand.

Such openly contemptuous remarks only cheapen your argument.

I was thinking the liberal trajectory is something has embraced abortion, same-sex relations and will embrace trans ideology in the future.

Thi6s has nothing to do with women's ordination. These issues are much less related to that issue than the ones I identified (the end of slavery, apartheid, etc). That said, if - and it's a big if - embracing abortion etc. is part of the same overall trajectory that rejected slavery, then it's part of the task of the church to be discerning in how it engages with that trajectory.

Another trajectory I see it following is the left's globalism and attempt to mould people groups into a universal single entity by destroying individual nations.

Even less to do with women's ordination than the other issues you raised. I see no attempt to "destroy nations" going on. There are positive aspects to globalism; for example, when it enables us to deal with issues which exist at a global level. Being fearful of that seems to me to be fairly counterproductive.

Can you tell me you're Church won't embrace all those things in the future and that it's not moving in that direction?

I don't know what it will be in the future. There's more than one possibility. I live in hope.

Can you be utterly confident that in the next hundred years the reality of the resurrection will still be proclaimed from Anglican pulpits? Assuming there will of course remain Anglican Pulpits. I'm not convinced, i doubt you are as well. Yours is a Church which has shown it's willingness to tolerate non-Christians within it's ranks like John Shelby Spong. That has an effect on the institution as a whole.

Certainly Bishop Spong - and a few others like him - have been a problem. It bothers me that someone like Spong couldn't tell when it was time to resign, and that his governing authorities couldn't tell when it was time to address his statements. That is a problem of discipline, and I will agree with you that Anglicans can have a problem with discipline.

(There is an oft-repeated joke that at the consecration of a bishop, all his or her fellow bishops gather around and lay hands on... to assist in removing the spine).

That said, I maintain that someone like Spong is the rare exception. The rare exception - however ill-disciplined - doesn't define the rest of us.

I am convinced at least the White European Anglican Churches will embrace homosexuality and any sexuality the cultural left adopts.

I think you've misjudged the landscape. Some of the white culturally western Anglican churches are the most fierce opponents of the issues that seem to most concern you. This is not as neat and tidy a matter of cultural division as you seem to suggest.

You might personally disagree with her, but if you are saying that it's within the Anglican's right to believe this and remain in accords with Anglicanism you allow for it's existence.

Look, this comes back to my comments about discipline. The person to address these statements is the relevant bishop, not some random priest in another diocese, in another country. I would hope that the relevant bishop did address them, but I don't know, and in reality, nor should I. (After all, I would not appreciate any such conversation my bishop might, theoretically, have with me, becoming a matter of international discussion, either).

You don't think this is going to have an effect or change the Anglican Church from where you see it today, in future? They will learn to relativize the scripture and rationalize what it actually teaches with what they actually believe.

When you've had some actual experience of an Anglican seminary, get back to me with the scare-mongering. Certainly the robustness of the formation I've received leaves me feeling comfortable that our future clergy are being well equipped to reflect on these issues.

 

[Love365]

The stone rejected by the builders will become the cornerstone.

Women are the stone rejected by the builders.

Make women priests, bishops, and cardinals.

 

[Love365]

This matter of ordaining women isn't really about fashioning an effective advertising campaign.

What can women priests do for you?

 

[Albion]

I have a thought. Having read the same appeal from you several times, I wonder why don't you turn your attention towards getting your own church to change instead of speaking your mind to us in a very general, almost theoretical way? Or have you done that already?

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

The stone rejected by the builders will become the cornerstone.

Women are the stone rejected by the builders.

Make women priests, bishops, and cardinals.

That verse was a reference to Christ. That you twisted it and made it about women does not speak well of your position.

 

[Love365]

I have a thought. Having read the same appeal from you several times, I wonder why don't you turn your attention towards getting your own church to change instead of speaking your mind to us in a very general, almost theoretical way? Or have you done that already?

I have written to many people.
Including the Catholic Church and a major newspaper.

 

[Love365]

That verse was a reference to Christ. That you twisted it and made it about women does not speak well of your position.

If Jesus was speaking about Himself,
Why speak in riddles?

What is your view on Mary of Bethany?
Was she a priest?