The more things change...the more the bigots stay the same.
Over 30 years ago, I did an interview with one of the first women in the U.S. to become an Episcopalian priest. And she told me an absolutely chilling tale: the first time she officiated at a mass, as she doled out Communion wafers, one of the new male priests actually bit her hand.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
Sad, but believable.
Crablaw
· 1 year ago
Those who do not accept the basic teachings of the Anglican Church have no standing to object as to those teachings are applied or interpreted within the Church. How Anglicans conduct Anglican business is not the problem of non-Anglicans.
Indigo
· 1 year ago
Does that include the African Anglican practice of polygamy?
Crablaw
· 1 year ago
In my opinion, it's different only because polygamy can involve children and/or the threat of force in practice, negating consent (which are sometimes, but not always, part of religious polygamy in practice.) I don't know Anglican or African customs to comment in detail.
As an atheist, however, I have no moral standing to complain about what the Anglican church advocates or does to/which its membership or internal activities, absent fraud or force, any more than I have standing to complain about any other consensual activities that I may dislike. I don't like what most churches teach. But my right to complain about women's exclusion from the episcopate is the same as my right to complaint about the use of the Book of Common Prayer: zero. Or that's my take. Maybe you have thought about it more thoroughly or soundly, however.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
I am an Episcopalian, so I guess you'll allow me to comment.
ghosh
· 1 year ago
Does that mean that you feel that they should not have opinions or that should not SPEAK their opinions. "have no standing" means what exactly? That Anglicans are at the point of SCHISM because of the way they are conducting "Business" around the issue of appointing gay bishops would seem to be a concern of gay people of whatever religion and one on which all gay people should and do "have standing." Your attempt to make this an issue exclusive to Anglicans is futile since it's already brought the international gay community into the debate. The inevitable schism of the Episcopal church will be seen historically as justified and the alliances of the breakaway US churches with conservative African bishops will be seen as reactionary and will result in the eventual diminishing of importance of the Anglican communion throughout the Western world.
Crablaw
· 1 year ago
Well argued.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
The bigots will have no choice but to secede or shut up. The horse is way out of the barn, so to speak. Too many women priests and bishops exist--- many of them gay--- to return to the good old days.
paulbe
· 1 year ago
Why does anyone with half a brain give a shit what religious idiots think about anything? In fact, where is the evidence that any of them can even think?
jr
· 1 year ago
adding women would increase church attendence by women. These fossils aren't very business savvy
Nigel Elliott
· 1 year ago
Meh. Church. Smirch!
ClayPotts
· 1 year ago
Christian women have the religious right to be second class citizens.
OlderAndWiser
· 1 year ago
As an atheist, I don't encourage women to support or involve themselves with myths, or in the case of the military, with killing.
There are much, much, more important issues that women could advocate, such as peace, critical thinking, encouraging humane actions and the preservation of the planet, and the elimination of warlike behavior.
Women shouldn't have to act like men, follow their philosophies, or "obey" them, to make the world a much better place. Women's greatest instinct is to decide when, how and if to give life and to then protect it. Doing otherwise is not only counter-intuitive, but destructive. No wonder so many men want to control women--control them and you control life itself.
vkobaya
· 1 year ago
what should be done to appease the 1,300 clergy who are threatening to leave the Anglican Church over the issue
Send them nose bones, face paint, spears, loin cloths and tell them to dance naked around the bonfires under the full moon at midnight. Why should they appease the barbarian Neanderthals? These are the same cavemen who want to kick out all homosexuals and who demand that the Bible be taken literally ... ha ha, as if they literally obey the Bible themselves.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
This stuff sort of amuses me. I grew up Episcopalian and frankly, in New England anyway, the discussions were much more about whether sherry would be served at coffee hour, than much about the Jeebus crap anyway. The vestry was very concerned about the vestments being elegant high church, smells and bells, high faggotry artsy fartsy than any shit in Leviticus. I think the liturgy in fighting over which hymns would be used far outweighed any theological wingnuttery. Of course these were Ivy League Anglicans, not low life from third world neighborhoods. We used to joke about it being the "Republican Party at Pray"...that's OLD school GOP, not the new white trash GOP. Noses were always held high in the air at St Dunstans! And they had a woman priest and she was terrific.
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer nearly did the church in thirty years ago.
Maybe it's time for her to dissolve anyway.
Indigo
· 1 year ago
Those were the days when the only really important liturgical question was whether ladies of distinction should remove both white gloves to receive the communion wafer in their hand or just the white glove on the right hand. It was understood in those fine old days that nice people were never left-handed.
Bostonian_Queer_in_Dallas
· 1 year ago
So very true Indigo! So very true! Or the ten million dollar organ restoration fund drive that got over subscribed in three days vs the Heffer Project to feed kids in India which could barely eek out a coupla thousand over a year's drive. Nuthin spells lovin like sumpfin from the memorial plaque-ing of the sanctuary!!!!
lynchie
· 1 year ago
If women want to be priests why not start their own church. Drag all the women parishoners over to it and life moves on. I could actually care less what they do. It is the perpetuation of a cult that worships a book of collected stories which are thousands of years old. In 4012 if there is still an earth left we will be worshiping some long dead writer like Stephen King. What is going on here is the same as not wanting a black or a women as President in the U.S. It is preserving the status quo because of all the perks they receive and the men simply don't want to share their good fortune. Funny with all this faith they espouse God or Christ hasn't intervened one way or the other, course he didn't do shit in New Orleans or in Iraq or anywhere else people decided to kill each other. But we have to read the Bible and have some "expert" tell us what it really means like they were there when it was written. Totally horseshit with no relevance to anything.
Cynicor
· 1 year ago
Do you mean that they should drop dead or drop head? Two different meanings, both potentially humorous!
TampaZeke
· 1 year ago
What I find particularly infuriating are women bishops and priests in the Episcopal church who are loudly and publicly against consecrating gay bishops.
Some of the most impassioned speeches against V. Gene Robinson's enthronement were women both before and after the fact. I just sat watching with my jaw on the floor and my blood boiling.
It was like they were saying, "Come on girls, we're finally gonna be let into the boys' club. Last one in be sure and shut the church door behind you!"
It's disgusting when some people in one oppressed minority become the oppressors of people in another.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
Can you name the women priests and bishops who opposed Bishop Robinson's ordination?
Delia
· 1 year ago
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA is a woman, Katharine Jefferts Schori. She voted to confirm Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, which is one of the things that has made her controversial. What she is doing right now is traveling around trying to prevent things from getting more polarized. In some cases she will fail, but the burden will be on the ones who choose to leave. In my town of Eugene there are four Episcopal churches. Two, including mine, are officially welcoming communities, which means gays and lesbians are a full part of the church. Two others are less comfortable with the new views. But my rector's view is that we've all got to keep our lines of communication open and honor each other's views. None of the other parishes will split because we all keep talking. Gradually, as the members see that there's really no problem, I think the whole issue will die a natural death. This is what Jefferts Schori is hoping to do with the churches that stay in communion. The others will just do what they do.
ghosh
· 1 year ago
I value your opinion. I happen to think there will and should be a schism in which the Episcopal church splits with the Anglican Communion and the homophobic churches are seen as African affiliates, something which will sensitize them to their tendencies toward intolerance. This is also about properly. Who actually owns the church buildings? All these troubles caused by misogyny and homophobia. Sad.
Delia
· 1 year ago
Yes, it is about property, and a lot of these schismatic churches are trying to hand some very valuable and historical property over to some really appalling Nigerian bishops, like Peter Akinola (Cue jokes about email scams). FWIW, it's also about power. My parish has a retired bishop who sometimes preaches who is very perceptive. Last year we raised money to send him to Lambeth. He reported that the Nigerian bishops are actually making a power play and using the gay issue as justification. Also, that some bishops, in Asia or other parts of Africa, while they may be conservative on the issue of gay rights, but don't trust the Nigerians.
My friend the retired bishop also comments that while Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a great scholar and a good man, he is not a strong leader. So you get all sorts of wheels within wheels.
But yes. The bottom line is the schismatics will just have to go their own way.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
Thanks for telling us this. I think "welcoming" is great, but until gays are given the right to be married at a nuptial mass, I'll stay away.
Delia
· 1 year ago
Well, it may depend on where you are. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080526/c... If you can make it to All Saints in Pasadena (the same one the IRS tried to audit for being too "political" a couple of years ago) it looks like you can be.
Institutions change slowly. I remember back in the late seventies there was an Episcopal church in Santa Monica whose priest was gay. That was long before it was accepted in any denomination. Everybody knew it. He was prominent and respected throughout the Westside. That's how change comes about. I once knew a woman priest who is retired by now who was absolutely convinced that eventually the RC Church will accept women into the priesthood
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
Thanks for the link, but I don't think they are actually talking about performing a nuptial mass. Blessing a union sounds more like what they have in mind. If they do a nuptial mass, please let me know.
mellowjohn
· 1 year ago
attributed to brendan behan: "Trust not the alien minister Nor his creed without reason or faith. For the foundation stone of his temple Is the bollocks of Henry VIII."
dal20402
· 1 year ago
This kind of conflict is inevitable in religious organizations.
When your first loyalty is not to living in the world or to your fellow people, but to principles that have no empirical basis, intractable conflict is the only possible result when those principles differ.
There's only one solution here: to put religion in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
El Rojo
· 1 year ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Anglican church was founded because Henry the Eighth couldn't get a divorce in the Catholic church. The entire church with all its ritual and wonderful music was founded because a king could not get a divorce. I don't see where the Anglicans have the right to get on their moral high horse about anything.
Delia
· 1 year ago
Well, yeah. Obviously. The thing is, in the following generation, especially with Elizabeth, the Anglican Church became a compromise between the radical Calvinists on the one hand and the radical Catholics like Philip II of Spain on the other, which helped England avoid the worst extremes of the religious wars which tore Europe apart in the 16th century. The English theologians did this largely by fuzzing over the key doctrinal issues which got everyone at the time so upset. It didn't please the extremists, but it sort of worked. Not to romanticize Elizabeth. The 16th century was not a tolerant age. But which age is? And it turned out England was better than France at the time.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
Actually, Henry asked for an annulment. The Pope had recently granted one on the same grounds as Henry's request. The Pope denied Henry because Philip of Aragon was outside the gates of the Vatican, looking for any excuse at all to invade and sack the place. Catherine, the woman Henry wished to cast aside, was the sister of Philip. That doesn't excuse Henry's awful behavior or the Pope's evil deeds. The schism actually happened under Elizabeth I whom the Pope paid to have assassinated ---without desired results. The Pope also supported the invasion of the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth was understandably annoyed about these events and she was also her father's Protestant daughter, although her use of the word Protestant meant something different than it does today. She and others denied the Apostolic Succession was lost when the schism occurred. This is all according to Anglican history of the events of that time. It differs sharply from Roman Catholic history.
lark83
· 1 year ago
When I see all these churches getting all bent out of shape over these "equality" issues, it makes me glad I'm a Unitarian.
hawkseye
· 1 year ago
Congratulations! My partner and I will have a Unitarian minister officiate at our wedding next month.
lark83
· 1 year ago
Congratulations to you! Well I hope you use us for more than just a wedding. Not being hassled about your moral beliefs can be a life long addiction - trust me.
All Comments
Over 30 years ago, I did an interview with one of the first women in the U.S. to become an Episcopalian priest. And she told me an absolutely chilling tale: the first time she officiated at a mass, as she doled out Communion wafers, one of the new male priests actually bit her hand.
and/or the threat of force in practice, negating consent (which are
sometimes, but not always, part of religious polygamy in practice.) I don't
know Anglican or African customs to comment in detail.
As an atheist, however, I have no moral standing to complain about what the
Anglican church advocates or does to/which its membership or internal
activities, absent fraud or force, any more than I have standing to complain
about any other consensual activities that I may dislike. I don't like what
most churches teach. But my right to complain about women's exclusion from
the episcopate is the same as my right to complaint about the use of the
Book of Common Prayer: zero. Or that's my take. Maybe you have thought
about it more thoroughly or soundly, however.
The inevitable schism of the Episcopal church will be seen historically as justified and the alliances of the breakaway US churches with conservative African bishops will be seen as reactionary and will result in the eventual diminishing of importance of the Anglican communion throughout the Western world.
There are much, much, more important issues that women could advocate, such as peace, critical thinking, encouraging humane actions and the preservation of the planet, and the elimination of warlike behavior.
Women shouldn't have to act like men, follow their philosophies, or "obey" them, to make the world a much better place. Women's greatest instinct is to decide when, how and if to give life and to then protect it. Doing otherwise is not only counter-intuitive, but destructive. No wonder so many men want to control women--control them and you control life itself.
Send them nose bones, face paint, spears, loin cloths and tell them to dance naked around the bonfires under the full moon at midnight. Why should they appease the barbarian Neanderthals? These are the same cavemen who want to kick out all homosexuals and who demand that the Bible be taken literally ... ha ha, as if they literally obey the Bible themselves.
The 1979 Book of Common Prayer nearly did the church in thirty years ago.
Maybe it's time for her to dissolve anyway.
restoration fund drive that got over subscribed in three days vs the Heffer
Project to feed kids in India which could barely eek out a coupla thousand
over a year's drive. Nuthin spells lovin like sumpfin from the memorial
plaque-ing of the sanctuary!!!!
What is going on here is the same as not wanting a black or a women as President in the U.S. It is preserving the status quo because of all the perks they receive and the men simply don't want to share their good fortune. Funny with all this faith they espouse God or Christ hasn't intervened one way or the other, course he didn't do shit in New Orleans or in Iraq or anywhere else people decided to kill each other. But we have to read the Bible and have some "expert" tell us what it really means like they were there when it was written. Totally horseshit with no relevance to anything.
Some of the most impassioned speeches against V. Gene Robinson's enthronement were women both before and after the fact. I just sat watching with my jaw on the floor and my blood boiling.
It was like they were saying, "Come on girls, we're finally gonna be let into the boys' club. Last one in be sure and shut the church door behind you!"
It's disgusting when some people in one oppressed minority become the oppressors of people in another.
My friend the retired bishop also comments that while Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a great scholar and a good man, he is not a strong leader. So you get all sorts of wheels within wheels.
But yes. The bottom line is the schismatics will just have to go their own way.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080526/c...
If you can make it to All Saints in Pasadena (the same one the IRS tried to audit for being too "political" a couple of years ago) it looks like you can be.
Institutions change slowly. I remember back in the late seventies there was an Episcopal church in Santa Monica whose priest was gay. That was long before it was accepted in any denomination. Everybody knew it. He was prominent and respected throughout the Westside. That's how change comes about. I once knew a woman priest who is retired by now who was absolutely convinced that eventually the RC Church will accept women into the priesthood
If they do a nuptial mass, please let me know.
"Trust not the alien minister
Nor his creed without reason or faith.
For the foundation stone of his temple
Is the bollocks of Henry VIII."
When your first loyalty is not to living in the world or to your fellow people, but to principles that have no empirical basis, intractable conflict is the only possible result when those principles differ.
There's only one solution here: to put religion in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
That doesn't excuse Henry's awful behavior or the Pope's evil deeds.
The schism actually happened under Elizabeth I whom the Pope paid to have assassinated ---without desired results. The Pope also supported the invasion of the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth was understandably annoyed about these events and she was also her father's Protestant daughter, although her use of the word Protestant meant something different than it does today.
She and others denied the Apostolic Succession was lost when the schism occurred.
This is all according to Anglican history of the events of that time. It differs sharply from Roman Catholic history.
My partner and I will have a Unitarian minister officiate at our wedding next month.