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| The new female Bishop of London Sarah Mulally - it is just a matter of time before a woman is ordained as an Archbishop of Canterbury |
I asked this question of the priest as I was leaving church recently. I am an occasional church goer and find spending an hour a week there worthwhile even if I am not a strong believer and find the idea of an afterlife pretty unconvincing - pretty dull even. Others were waiting to say their goodbyes so there was not much time to deal with the issue properly but his one sentence response
was: “Because it mucks up our relationship with other churches.” This is fair enough as far as it goes but it
does make it seem that it is more important to be popular than to be right. It also makes the pace of change very slow.
Churches were excluded from the legislation which the UK enacted to outlaw discrimination on
the grounds of gender - and presumably sexuality. The CofE (Church of England) has adapted very slowly to the idea of
having women priests and, although plenty of its vicars are known to be gay,
they are not officially allowed to live in a homosexual relationship with
another man, only a platonic one. I
wonder if many of them actually obey the rule not to have sex with their
live-in partners for the sake of obeying the letter of the law. If so, they have more self-control than most
of us. It is probably more a case of ‘Don’t ask,
Don’t tell’.
There is certainly nothing
in the Bible which definitively prohibits women from becoming priests, although
there are texts which, as usual, can be interpreted differently. (For more on women in the bible go to http://www.philosopherkings.co.uk/Womeninthebible.html) Your
interpretation usually reflects rather than decides your view. In sport video technology is now used increasingly to decide
issues which the on-field referee may not have seen clearly. Has this stopped the arguments and led to peace breaking out? Of course not.
One of the attractions of
church, of course, is its unchanging nature. It is reassuring to go to a
familiar building and join in the same type of service every week
wherever you are in the world. Indeed,
in the relentless competition between churches, it is often the ones that
change the least which attract the most loyal devotees, while the ones which
always try to be up to the minute and relevant soon lose their appeal.
So, if it ain’t broke, don’t
fix it. The trouble is that the Catholic
church is increasingly broken. It is all
very well Saint Paul telling the followers of Christ to refrain from sex, but
the kind of dedication needed to achieve that has worn off in two thousand
years. The pressures on men to find some
form of sexual gratification led to so many Catholic priests being accused of
sexual abuse and a whole lot of trouble for their church.
While the Catholics cling to
an increasingly untenable insistence on an undeliverable level of abstinence,
the good old CofE wins gold medals at fudging the issue. When we stand up to say the creed together
after the sermon we refer to ‘the holy catholic and apostolic church” with a small ‘c’. This makes it seem
that the English church is an offshoot of the Roman one which conducts the
same service but allows the priests to marry.
Once you let the wives in to become ordained as well as the husbands,
you have torpedoed any hope of the two churches coming together in one
body. For many traditionalists, it is
better to do without women priests than to make that final break with their
capital ‘c’ Catholic cousins.
So, we have effectively two
Anglican churches, one which allows women to offer the bread and blood of
Christ, the other which will only allow them to read the lessons from the
Bible. I am not being cynical here. No Archbishop of Canterbury wants to lose
half his flock over the issue of female ordination (or gay priests) so both
sides are accommodated within one large tent, even if they live on opposite
sides of it and only occasionally nod to each other. I cannot blame him (not
her yet) for keeping a lid on this particular pressure cooker.
After we have said our
prayers, sung the hymns, listened to the sermon and recited the creed (which
I do with a large pinch of salt nearby) we extend to each other the sign of
peace, which is just a handshake with strangers. It may not seem much but it is a way of
saying that we are all equal in the eyes of God, that the size of your bank
balance (or your ego) means nothing when you stand before the Almighty. I may not believe in Him (or Her) very much
but I have always felt this was worth doing on at least one day of the week,
which I still set aside for thinking about things besides my personal ambitions
and desires.
Then we go to the altar and
kneel for communion. I was slow on the uptake and did not realise for a long time that it was always a man who handed over the wafer and tipped the communion cup
towards the communicants at this particular church because they had decided to stay out of the women priests' club. Most of them are elderly
white men: pale, male and stale is the less flattering way to put it. In time I suppose, they will die off and be replaced by younger
priests who do not share the view that you have to be male to bring people to God. I would
have no problem if this were to happen tomorrow but I will not boycott the
church just because it has a purely male priesthood. Sometimes it is better to agree to differ
than to pick a fight.
Edwin Lerner
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