Women Bishops: boredom part (2)

(1) Over the years, as this toxic and tedious subject bores the wotsits off sensible Christians, what you, if you join the battle, are going to need is Logic. Because its proponents incessantly contradict themselves. They will cheerfully tell you that there were no women priests in the early church because of ‘societal norms’. Pretty well in the same breath, they will shower you with “new evidence” that there were women priests in the early days of the Church.

(2) What is actually being discussed? It is often two quite separate things. The proponents of Women’s Ordination are keen to shower you with evidence that women had strong leadership roles in early Christianity. They most certainly did. It is not news to me. But the point at issue for Catholics turns upon the Catholic Priesthood, in which, according to Catholic doctrine, the priest has power to transsubstantiate bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ and to offer them to the Father as a propitiatory Sacrifice. People who will quite candidly admit that they do not believe in any such priesthood at all, for men or women, will persist in rubbing your nose in Prisca and Chloe … as if those cases prove anything as far as Catholic Priesthood is concerned.

(3) When the C of E was capitulating to the ‘Modern World’ in this matter, it started with the Diaconate, moved on to the Presbyterate, and ended up with the Episcopate. During this period, an Orthodox theologian acutely observed that, were the Orthodox Church to consider the question, it would start off with the Episcopate. Exactly; because that order is the fundamental order upon which the other two depend. But if you with strategic good sense start off instead with deacons, you can get the laity used to seeing vested females buzzing around the Sanctuary and having “The Reverend” attached to their names. And such ladies will not be as divisive as women priests because the validity of no Sacrament depends upon the diaconate. Then you can move on to women priests, starting off by placing them carefully in churches where they will be ‘pastorally acceptable’. Only when you have successfully completed that phase will you move in for the final kill. You see how the trick is worked. Rather Bergoglian, really, in its ‘gradualism’. But it is a fundamentally dishonest trick. Crooks, the lot of them!

(4) It will be suggested that those opposing WO are people who “‘have problems” with female sexuality or just with women anyway. I remember actually once being told that I must have a phobia of menstrual blood. Quite a conversation-stopper … The problem with such accusations is, of course, that it is not terribly easy to disprove them … I will pause for a moment while you think about that one …
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…  OK? Back to the subject. When Vincent Nichols transferred his “Gay Masses” from Warwick Street to Farm Street and lent the former Church to the Ordinariate, one of our nastier public homosexuals made a crack to the effect that the presence of all those homosexual Ordinariate clergy on the edge of Soho would mean that the “gay” bars and clubs of Soho would still have lots and lots of custom. But the fact is that, quite early, “gay” Anglican clergy cottoned on to the idea that if ‘Development’ could be used to justify ordaining women, it could also be neatly deployed to permit homosexual couplings. (Hence, to the surprise of many, but not of me, such clergy, despite being ritually over-the-top, tended to avoid the Ordinariate like the plague.)

In other words, if you choose to fight this battle within the Catholic Church, you will need to be ready to have some immensely vile personal attacks made upon you. Our opponents, generally speaking, possess neither decency nor shame. Feminists of either sex are rarely Gentlemen! You will need a very thick skin.

There. No more on that. I just thought you might like some practical information from our Anglican experience. And I won’t enable comments, so there will be no risk of getting drawn into any discussions on the actual subject itself.