More comment on today's vote

Peter Hitchens has this perceptive reaction: 

"....I would stress once again that the supporters of women Bishops could have had their way *years* ago, had they been ready to be kinder to those who oppose the idea. the general impression given by media coverage, that the delay is caused by obdurate traditionalists, is misrepresentation...".

Damian Thompson, now at The Spectator, has another re-hashed, 'I don't like Anglo-Catholics' story - his antipathy is strange given the view that Catholics in the C of E were said to live in a culture of 'gin, lace and backbiting' ...
However there is a serious point buried under the catty, ad hominem comments - the situation will not be the same, and the Church of England has definitively opted for a non-Catholic and essentially secularist liberal future. These are questions which have to be addressed.  

The ever-inventive Eccles has the post 'Church of England votes to allow atheist bishops' - just give it time.

The Archbishops of Canterbury & York have issued these somewhat Panglossian statements on the Ab of C's website.

This before- the- event article by Andrew Brown in The Guardian looks into the future of a hierarchy 'slowly adjusting' to the heresies of the laity. Hmm ... I'm not sure the clergy are really in need of taking lessons from anyone in that regard  .....

This, by Jemima Thackray in The Telegraph illustrates the problem quite nicely :

"....The lazy part of me wishes that the liberal wing of the church could just bulldoze right over the evangelicals and Anglo Catholics who oppose women in leadership, offering no concessions and allowing the church to get on with its primary task of caring for the communities it serves. In my even wilder dreams, I imagine the church at the vanguard of every progressive cause, leading the way in the campaign for nuclear disarmament for example, or gay rights, rather than always being the slowest on the uptake of every social development.
Yet, perhaps the fact that the church always seems to lag behind the rest of society is a blessing in disguise. Perhaps the silver lining of the funereal pace at which it catches up is that change, when it finally comes, is taken up much more holistically - with hearts won rather than just minds beaten into submission...."

There's a dialectic at work here which doesn't seem to stem from the Gospel .... it is Bastille Day, after all.

Nothing yet, but WATCH this space ...

That's it for today; I'm off to open a bottle of  .... hemlock? Well, it clearly won't be champagne...