Women in the English Episcopate, May 2014

Dear seagull, I respect your position, but I would hope that you would recognize that what the mainstream provinces have been doing is to radically change things that have been the standard for the past 2000 years. WO is a major change, and is only a few decades old compared to the history of the Church. Not even taking into account the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, it is hard to imagine that Cranmer, Latimer, Laud, Fisher, Cosin, etc. would have accepted WO, so the question should be "did they get it wrong?"

 

The world has now moved on since then. In the Church of England we are no longer creationists, nor do we believe that the sun moves round the earth. We no longer persecute Roman Catholics, anabaptists or atheists either.

 

seagull, these are scientific advances you are referencing, and even the Catholic and Orthodox Churches recognize that evolution could be a valid way in which God created the world. Cranmer and the others I mentioned would have accepted the scientific knowledge we have today if they had been privy to it. The issue of WO is a theological matter unrelated to science. As for persecution, it is shameful that the various churches engaged in such behavior, but they could not use the Gospel to justify such actions (they had to fall back in many cases on the OT). Nothing in the NT allows for burning people at the stake, while on the other hand, there is quite a bit of material in the NT that can be used to reject WO.

 

Well, you have a problem then don't you, if you feel that the mother church has gone off the rails.

 

how is it Peteprint's problem?what is it to us if the C of E falls victim to modernism? how would the errors of Canterbury's bishop affect my bishop or even my parish? We're not dealing with the Roman Curia here. Our church derives its authority from the faith and order of scripture not on the theological opinions of the current occupant of the ABC's chair at any given moment.

 

I don't think anybody wants to see their mother church go off the rails. Now do you get the anguish you're causing everyone? We don't need your approval to exist, but it IS heartbreaking to see you go. As I wrote above this what saddens me.

 

Well, I think we've benefitted from modernism. But if you're happy, I'm happy.

 

i) We haven't;

ii) No. And certainly not to "everyone".

iii) & iv) We haven't "gone". But I'm sorry you've left our Communion.

 

I still can't seem to get a straight answer as to why women Bishops are a problem, other than the fact that they seem to cause friction. The answer seems to be we never had them in the past so we should never have them in the future, ie the N.T never mentions women Bishops, but it never mentions archbishops either, so presumably they aren't kosher as well.

 

Anglican Agnostic, there are many arguments against WO, including St.Paul's words regarding how women should conduct themselves in church. Here is what I think is a good article that addresses these statements of the Apostle:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/paul-women-and-the-church-27969/

Here is C.S. Lewis' well-known work on WO:

http://www.episcopalnet.org/TRACTS/priestesses.html

 

This is a postscript to Spherelink. My memory is that you've managed not to leave our communion, and I'm pleased about it. It's good how tolerant, flexible and accommodating the Anglican Communion can be.

 

See Cardinal Kasper's address to the meeting of CofE Bishops in June 2006:

http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2006/06/pr6006b.aspx


Here is the reply to Cardinal Kasper by +Wright of Durham and +Stancliffe of Salisbury:

http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/articles/women-bishops-a-response-to-cardinal-kasper/

 

how so?

 

The church today is worse and weaker than it was fifty years ago. Your benefit from it is ephemeral.

 

Wrong. We would be in a worse state because of a shortage of priests. Half the ordinands in our diocese are women.

 

See my reply to Spherelink.

 

your reply to sherelink was about women's ordination as an alleged cure for an alleged shortage of priests, neither of which is proven in your statement. Do you think that's what modernism is ?

 

What efforts have you done to again make the church more appealing to men?
If the women will lose interest as well, will you need to start to ordain children?

 

I have read this article and it seems to me women having positions in the church is a least debatable. So I don't know why you lot beat yourselves up so much about it. Do you get so het (spelling?) up about infant Baptism or whether you can be unsaved from a saved position or any of the great eschatalogical controversies.
The women not speaking in church edict seems to be an issue peculiar to the church at Corinth.

Can I ask those against women Bishops, do they agree with the underlined part of a quote (shown below) from the above link?

The last passage where Paul deals with women’s role in church is I Tim. 2:11-15. Once again, the context of the teaching is crucial. I Timothy 3:15, which states that chapters two and three are to instruct the people how they “ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God,” provides the context of the passage: Within the church, women are not to assume authority over men, just as a wife is to put herself under the authority of her own husband in her marriage. This teaching does not say that all women are to be under the authority of all men or in all institutions, but rather that women are to be in submission to their own husbands and are not to be in an authoritative position in the local church.

 

Women's ordination was not brought in as a "cure for an alleged shortage of priests". But to quote an elderly male fellow parishioner, "we'd be lost without them".