If I'm going to make a prediction in the light of yesterday's General Synod vote - always a risky business but here goes anyway - then I fully expect in a few years time when the newly minted women bishops are settled firmly on their episcopal thrones (or in reality in the western Anglican set up these days, around their committtee tables) any legal exemptions under equality legislation currently applying to Anglican bodies in the U.K. will, at the request of the Church itself, be quietly dropped.
We have seen the future in the U.S. and in Sweden, and only by the kind of linguistic gymnastics which would make Dr Goebbels blush could it be described as "inclusive" or "consonant with the Christian tradition."
We know too that the "rights" agenda is indivisible; the essentialy secular philosophy (or secularised theology, take your pick) which has lead to the ordination of women will then inevitably, by its own internal logic, have to include the gay and "transgendered." - introduced little by little, of course, so as not to frighten too many parochial horses.
As the late Fr Richard John Neuhaus said, "Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed." That is clearly now for us only a matter of time. Five years, ten at the very most ?
Not 5 or 10 years. You need to leave now! If anything, this just shows that the CoE in NOT Catholic but Protestant, period!!
ReplyDeleteI hope that FiF have plans ready for implementation to issue "Authenticity of Orders" passports so that Orthodox Anglican clergy can prove the legitimacy of their Ordination. We need to be ahead of the game, not reacting after the rupture of Orders occurs with the 'consecration' of the first madam bishop. Such passports need to be clear and simple for the laity to understand. Clerics holding them must be encouraged to be proud (not in a sinful way) of proving their Orders. The system needs to be easy to explain to a confused laity .
ReplyDeleteVery fair comment, Father. No one so illiberal as a "liberal".
ReplyDeleteSimon Cotton
No, I wasn't suggesting that it will be feasible, practical or desirable for anyone whose theology is traditionally Catholic to survive in this new situation (a definitively and irreversibly Protestant ecclesial body) for anything like 5 - 10 years, only that long before the end of that time-scale it will be impossible for anyone, whether ordained or lay, to be able to jump through the kind of hoops which will be required of them. I still think the "non-juring option" is completely unrealistic.
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