The Anglican Pastor Blog and Women's Ordination

An Anglican Pastor blog article published today, If Women Can Be Saved, Then Women Can Be Priests, is representative of why I removed this blog from my list of reputable Anglican online sources. "If women can be saved, then women can be priests." Talk about a whopping non sequitur of an article title, and when you dig into the content of the article you'll encounter a shameful piece of theological legerdemain as well. Her argument only mimicks that of the small but vocal nest of feminists I encountered when I was in the Orthodox Church. The fact of the matter is that there is zero, zilch, nada support in the Fathers for women's ordination. It's why they never ordained one.

The article is written by one Emily McGowin, a deacon in the oddly-named "Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others", one of the virtual dioceses of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).  Her bio there, as elsewhere around the Web, reports that she "is a teacher and scholar of religious studies and a theologian in the Anglican tradition."

Well, first of all, the "Anglican tradition" knows nothing of the ordination of women to the ranks of clergy, deacon, priest or bishop.  The ordination of women in Anglican churches is a late uncatholic monstrosity, dating back only to the 1970s. 

The blog's founder, Fr. Greg Goebel, is apparently pro-WO, though this disclaimer is given at the head of the article:

Editor’s Note: Anglican Pastor does not take a site-wide position on women’s ordination. We do, however, require both clarity and charity. The piece below meets our standards. We ask that your responses to it do so as well.

The fact, however, that Anglian Pastor has chosen to give her a forum is damning enough. It doesn't matter that he allegedly allows opposing views.  If you put some uncatholic thing out there as something to be seriously considered, your disclaimer is meaningless from a Catholic point of view, and Anglicans claim to be Catholic, something that is evident not only from Anglicanism's theological history but also from the fact that Anglicans pledge this when they recite the Creed every Sunday: "I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church."  The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church does not ordain women and never will.  The issue simply is not up for discussion, the protestations of Neo-Anglicans notwithstanding.

With respect to their protestations, Mrs. McGowin's Neo-Anglican view is representative of the theologically and ecclesially troubled movement known as Protestantism.  One of the pathologies of the Protestant Reformation is that it eventually came to embrace pluralistic theologies, quite in accordance with its principle that well-meaning scholars could arrive at differing stances in their quest to discover "new light breaking forth from Scripture" and hence could posit new understandings that should be classed as adiaphora. The Protestant theological academy thus supplanted the authority of the Fathers and the Church's bishops.  That this is so is evidenced in the article, where the author cites the pro-WO ACNA theologian Will Witt, who warmly speaks of "PhD Anglicanism".

However, as Newman remarked, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." There is nothing truly traditionally Anglican or Catholic in this article.  Those who are interested in becoming authentically Anglican should steer clear of Realignment Neo-Anglicanism, and should look to Continuing Anglicanism instead, where the Catholic faith is held and where, accordingly, we recite the Creed with integrity.