Proponents of women bishops now face a threat as serious as any ever faced before — from those opposed to females in mitres — according to a leading campaigner for their ordination.
The claim comes from Christina Rees who heads WATCH, the Women and the Church movement, and is a prominent member of the General Synod.
Ms Rees voices the claim in a letter sent to networks of clergy and laity, a copy of which has been seen by The Church of England Newspaper.
In the letter, which takes a swipe at traditionalist Anglicans opposed to women priests and bishops, she declares: “It is our opinion that we now face a threat as serious as any we have faced before in the long journey towards women’s full inclusion in the ordained ministries of the Church of England.”
And she claims: “Even at this eleventh hour, those who oppose ordaining women are summoning all their strength to delay, distort and subvert the will of the General Synod as expressed in the debates over the past few years.”
So, the politics continue. Those in the CofE who disagree with Ms. Rees should get busy with their own letter-writing campaign. Even those who might be able to accept women bishops themselves should be able to see the future if this is rammed down the throats of conservative evangelicals and high churchmen. Next up, active homosexuals. Be warned, and stop this train before it leaves the station.
When will these fools understand that it is NOT about rights. No one has a RIGHT to be ordained. God chose only men under the old covenant, and God again, in Jesus Christ chose only men under the New Covenant. If womens ordination were proper and right, don’t you think God would know that and would have done it to show us? I mean he had two chances to get it right, or do these folks think they know better than God?
What Rees is fulminating about is that she and her ilk want there to be no safe place for traditionalists in the Church of England. She wants a church where you WILL accept women bishops . . . or else.
How very inclusive.
What will Ms Rees do when she’s won and can no longer summon up the spectre of the vast right-wing conspiracy? I suspect she’ll find life rather empty.
Oh, no. The vacuum will be filled with all the thing done in the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC and the plans of the Chicago Consortium for polyamory. You have Louie Crew’s word for it.
http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/32Ang/Epis/Crisis.htm
3rd paragraph from the bottom of the above article:
“After a while it’s hard not to conclude that the push for gay marriage in the Episcopal Church is more a political quest than a religious one. Louie Crews, founder of the Episcopal gay group Integrity, doesn’t disagree. Getting the church to recognize homosexual marriages, he says, is just the first step on the long road to sexual emancipation. The next civil right to be established in the Episcopal Church, he predicts, will be the right to be married to more than one person simultaneously. “Threesomes and foursomes will have to push for their own agenda,†Crew says, sounding tired. “That’s not my battle. You can’t do all of it at once.â€
Is there any doubt what the future agenda will be? “
This line has to be one of the most irony-laden statements I’ve seen in a long time:
[blockquote]’Such arrangements would, she claims, “change the nature of the episcopacy”.'[/blockquote]
Say again?
Here is the gentle loving voice of those who would make my wife and child homeless, leave my congregation with no where to worship and me without a vocation or living….all becuase I prefer to side with Pope Benedict, S. Augustine, the ecumenical Patriarch, Mother Theresa, Oregan, S. John Vianney, S. Maximilian Kolbe, S. Cecilia, S Mary Magdalene, S Peter, S. Barnabas, S. Dominic, S. Frances, C.S Lewis, John Henry Newman, Martin Luther…(you get the drift) …as opposed to Katherine Schori, Gene Robinson, christina Rees and a handful of washed up ex- hippy Bishops in the Anglican Church.
You tell me who is on the side of reason?
http://www.sbarnabas.com/blog
[i] Comment deleted. It is inappropriate to prosyletize on this blog. [/i]
There is a fairly eloquent response to this letter of Rees’, here: http://frjeffreysteel.blogspot.com/2008/11/ecclesiological-marcionism-and.html
As the first commenter to that response-post points out, Rees is in fact an American liberal secularist, who somehow has made her way deep into the General Synod of the CofE. It would be very interesting to see an account of just how that happened. How could anyone doubt that once made bishops, her sort of cleric would (also) become wolves in shepherds’ clothing?
And thank you to #5 for quoting the aim of her fellow liberals on the west side of the Pond – it’s annoying to have to follow what these people say and I always appreciate finding the information in this way.
What about Female Muslim Bishops…or a Janist, or a Zoroastrionist?
Or how about…well never mind. Thanks for the rhetoric not cluttered up by God et al Mz. Rees.
Cheerio,
Intercessor