See this is precisely why liberalism is a problem rather than a 'valid opinion'. Rules and regulations just don't exist for them, and they don't care. Liberals in the TEC simply ignore the canon law, and run what's left of the church as their own gay fiefdom.
I can't comment on TEC, but this is not what appears to be happening in the CoE. there are in fact procedures in Canon law that allow for an earlier tabling of the issue than the next Synod, and the memo here implies 'There was agreement that the Church of England had to resolve this matter through its own processes as a matter of urgency.' it will be these that will be pursued. Off the top of my head I think involves the consent of certain representatives of the different houses, tricky but not impossible to achieve, perhaps pushed a bit by the fact that plenty of critics of the church are using this as an opportunity to paint the church as having written itself off once and for all as a moral force and so sidelining its voice on SSM, Euthanasia, trade justice, abortion, domestic poverty, divorce, stem-cell research etc. etc. which is an unhappy place to be in really. Though I hope you're not advocating a letter of the law trumping the spirit here Stalwart. After all, (as I never tire of saying) 74% of Synod and 95% of the dioceses have already declared in favour of women bishops. It's not the principle being debated, just the formal structural details.
Nope: Patrick, What you don't seem to understand is that the world (or at least Europe) is going more and more atheist. That is the one challenge the Church hasn't been able to resolve successfully in the last 50 years. Gutting its own episcopacy, and destroying any hope of being related to the True Church, for a few more years of cultural relevance and prostitution to the wider secular atheist world which views its very existence, not it's male bishops, as a dark age institution, is the really unhappy place to be. Nice little rhetorical flourish but utterly empty Patrick, for this simple reason: most of the Anglican Communion rejects Womens Ordination. Plain and simple. You see, they keep to their own intrinsic and invaluable insitutions, and don't care to sell themselves out to appeal to public opinion like the whore of Babylon. And if you're speaking of CoE alone: as I never tire of saying, the 74% of the Church had once declared in favor of Arianism. So what? Why is what you said supposed to be important? It isn't. Your statistic is meaningless to me.
Well of course, but if we don't learn from examples before us, we are walking blindly, are we not? If the feminist liberal wing within the Church promises major changes, and tries to overhaul the Church in a way it hasn't been for 2,000 years since Jesus Christ himself, it is prudent to study where such people have led the Church before, is it not? Especially if that example is a church-destruction that has already taken place in our local Anglican Communion. God has given us a visible example for where the liberals are trying to drive the Church of England as well.
Europe certainly is becoming more secular (atheist is more debateable) but I would suggest you've missed two things in your analysis; first that most churches, liberal and conservative across Europe, catholic and protestant that are in decline. The second is that this isn't a problem of 50 years, it's closer to 200 maybe 250 odd years, dismissiveness of Christianity has been a respectable intellectual position for that long, and serious decline has really kicked in since WWI. And that clearly has nothing to do with women bishops. It would seem that the God we had been presenting no longer seemed to make sense in the face of such naked brutality. As I reread over your post, you seem to paint the church as flip-flopping, but actually, since we have women vicars, is this not a matter of consistency and integrity to that which we have already accepted? It is a total anomaly in all of Church history to have a whole group of priests entirely barred from promotion regardless of what they've done but simply because of what they are, as well as to have churches within churches that somehow manage to have their own parallel structures that bypass the threefold ministry that everyone else is using? Is the fact that we cannot decide one way or the other the real problem? I think you're right, it's the churches that have integrity and a real conviction of God's presence that do grow (and in truth I have visited and worshipped with both 'liberal' and 'conservative' churches that can boast of their growth, as well as those who have declined from both positions), but the more I ponder it, the more I realize that integrity happens regardless of whether one is conservative or liberal. Curiously, this has ignited some respect for oyu that has been sorely lacking from my posts recently. I think you're absolutely barking, but I have to hand it to you, you are consistently barking, and you do bark with passion. Why I don't agree with your views though is because in England 1.7 million people turn up at least once a month to a church. That leaves about 56 million who never darken the doors of a church. Even if there are some growing churches whatever they're doing is clearly not capturing the imagination of most or even many people when seen as a proportion of the whole. And I really do think part of the problem is that they have this (largely negative) expectation of us, of what we say and think, and all too often we conform to it. And truthfully, I think the kinds of opinions you espouse (and particularly the manner in which you often present them) conforms a little too closely to what people seem to really dislike about Christianity. Whereas really we should be living a life that attracts rather than repels, for we should be practicing things against which there is no law. Too often we've representatives of a 'backward, prejudiced' or else 'liberal, wooly' (another, but I would say not as equally damaging label, at as far as the persepective of indifferent outsiders to the faith goes) kind of believer. Slinging these labels at each other though is not going to solve our problems. The christ-like thing is to surely take human culture and to shock it with the life of the spirit- and actually, I'd say there's grounds for saying that both denying (since it is profoundly counter-cultural) and affirming (since it goes against the cultural stereotype of Christianity) conform to this 'shock of the spiritual', what gives it power is if it can be shown to be part of an integrated world outlook that is Christ-led. Because Faith, hope and Love (to pick three examples) are deeper values of Christianity that WO. Finally of course, that integrated values set includes the virtues of patience, sympathy, generosity, a desire for peace, a willingness to cling to what is good and to hate what is evil. We've been circling a drain for ages on this issue, and I'm bored of the argument, we're now just repeating ourselves. I'm not sure if I can ever persuade you that being pro-WO doesn't automatically mean conforming with the world's attitudes, but I'm pleased to have reminded myself that I'm not the judge, the arbiter of these matters, I just have to trust that God will vindicate or reprimand in his good time, and my job is to connect it to how I live the fully fleshed out gospel in my own being. I don't think I have anything else to add to the matter of women bishops. I think it's important we carry out what we intend to do, to stop wavering. I don't think it's bowing to any other culture than a christian one, I don't think they will rescue the Church from its problems, but I don't think it's going to collapse into diabolical chaos overnight either. I do think it's time the CoE started talking about something else after a decade. And that's it. With no short amount of ironic appreciation: Here I stand, I can do no other.