That’s Enough Flannel About Women Bishops

Though the author of this piece is Roman Catholic and therefore, as she says, doesn't believe in the validity of Anglican orders, I just had to quote her.  It is a delighfully wry comment on the feminists and infidels in the Church of England:

The Church of England has agonised for 12 years about whether to ordain women as bishops and at last has come to a decision, viz, to put the whole thing off until November. Or possibly February, so the new Archbishop of Canterbury can get to grips with the question. (And you wonder why there aren’t any outstanding candidates?)

The proponents of women bishops, you see, are hugely exercised by the opt-out clause in the deal. That allows opponents of women’s ordination to call on bishops for their parishes who are not only male but have been ordained by men.

There aren’t many of these parishes: think very camp Anglo-Catholics, or evangelicals with strong views about women ordering men about. But these harmless dissidents are enough for the would-be women bishops to refuse to play. Nope. If they’re not going to be ordained on their own terms, they won’t be ordained at all. There are so many occasions when life calls out for Trollope, and this is one of them.

I’ve got no business, myself, getting involved, given that I’m a Catholic and we don’t actually believe that any of them are properly ordained. But I do get a bit restive when I hear the likes of the Rev Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, one of the many media-friendly female clerics, declaring that “the whole point of having women bishops was to say that the Church of England believes that women and men are equal and made in the image of God. I do not want it enshrined in law that we officially do not believe that.” Hang on there. Our lot don’t have women bishops either but I’ve never had any problems on being made in the image of God, thanks all the same, Miranda.

The whole thing is preposterous, and not just for unbelievers who can’t quite get their heads around the notion that this is being debated at all. The point of the C of E is that it’s recklessly inclusive, a national church that seems incapable of turning anyone away. You can have ordained Anglican clergy who believe that God was made man and born of a virgin and those who can’t quite buy the Virgin Birth. You can have bishops who believe in the Resurrection and those who believe it is true in a very real sense, ie, not at all.

I would have said once that the only thing that actually unites the Anglican communion is a belief in God but that was before the Right Rev Richard Holloway came along, the former primus of the tiny Scottish Episcopal Church, who couldn’t make his mind up about it.

And with this extraordinary latitude on the things that actually count, the one thing they’re going to make a stand on is women bishops? Christ.