Androgyny is not the answer

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is apologising for past comments, because, you know, women's feelings were hurt. Women have informed him that (despite his previous mis-statement) they are indeed the saviours of the Anglican Church, so he cannot go about pretending otherwise. And just because you've come in at the 11th hour and saved an entire institution from crumbling, it doesn't mean that you're not above pouting when it's not acknowledged, because to ignore heroic action is just plain mean.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has apologised over recent comments he made about the role of women priests in the wake of new research which claims that they will "save the Church from sinking" in the future.

Analysis conducted by the University of Manchester shows that almost half of all priests to have been ordained in recent years have been women and with almost a quarter of male priests currently over the age of 60, researchers claim that without women, church pulpits would become "depopulated".

Unfortunately, one can populate all the pulpits in the world, but that doesn't translate into maintaining a robust population the pews, which is the real problem in the Church of England. One could speculate that the sterile, same-sex union (female priest in conjugal relationship with Holy Mother Church) might also have something bearing on the decline of congregants, since it flows so merrily with their abandonment of all Church teaching touching on the male-female thing. The birds and the bees (as fore-runners to making babies) have been rejected as hopelessly passe (and ecologically unsustainable) and yet soon buzzing and chirping may be all that's left.

Comments

[Seraphic Single]

Great blog and great post. It occurs to me that one reason why Anglican men aren't seeking positions in ministry is that it has become a "girl thing". My mom once vaguely said that if women became priests, men would stop taking religion seriously. I don't know if that was shocking cynicism or a shrewd judgment of fact!

[gsk]

Just your mother's "feminine genius" on display!

[Donna Marie Lewis]

Ah, but you are still assuming that men are necessary. Once the technology gets there, women will be able to have children without even the token male contribution of sperm donation. Then we could get rid of them. Hey, it works for the whip-tailed lizard !
(BTW, in case you missed it, I'm being sarcastic !)

[gsk]

So what's up with the whip-tailed lizard? Do they reproduce asexually? Or have they rejected motherhood by simply throwing the little males whip-tails out of the nest at the first sign of masculinity?

(BTW, in case you missed it, I'm being sincere !)

[Dennis]

Just because there are now lots and lots of women priests and fewer and fewer male priests does not mean that women are saving the Anglican priesthood from disappearing. There are lots of ways to parse that data.

It could be, for example, that Anglican men are not responding to vocations to priesthood because they don't want to join the old girls club. It could be that if women had not insisted on being ordained, the Anglican priesthood would be filled to capacity with men, and the churches would be full, too.

Or, maybe there would be a decline, but it would be lessened. Maybe the overwhelmingly female priesthood has simply increased an invetible decline.

Of course, they could be right about their analysis, but that's just not the only way to read the data.

[Dennis]

By the way, I have a couple of friends - women - who are Anglican priests, and they're both smart and know their theology and excellent with caring for people who are going through tough times, and I in no way wish to publicly suggest their ministry is not valuable to the people they serve. They're good people with good hearts doing good work.

I was just commenting on the University of Manchester analysis.

[Mark Richardson]

In Australia, the Sydney diocese of the Anglican church has not allowed women priests. It is the only Anglican diocese in Australia which is growing in numbers.

[Donna Marie Lewis]

There are no living male whip-tailed lizards.
However, the fossil record indicates that there used to be male whip-tailed lizards, which indicates that they have died out. How, we don't know.
Current whip-tailed lizards do pair up, in female-female couples, and go through a mock mating ritual, which stimulates both females to produce fertile eggs. The embryos are, of course, clones of the mothers, since no genetic material is exchanged.
As one commentator put it, "Forget the battle of the sexes. The female whip-tailed lizard has won the war. "
Of course, technology has not gotten to the point that such things are possible in humans- but I fear it's only a matter of time. It sounded unlikely,at first, even to me, but then I remember a book I read when I was in high school, which assured the reader that 'cloning is highly unlikely to ever be successful in producing an animal more complex than a frog.....'

[gsk]

Dennis said:

By the way, I have a couple of friends - women - who are Anglican priests, and they're both smart and know their theology and excellent with caring for people who are going through tough times, and I in no way wish to publicly suggest their ministry is not valuable to the people they serve.

gsk says: Dennis, I would never impugned the good will of these fine women, but what is inherent in the ordained priesthood that changes what they are able to do? Are they exhibiting generous motherhood or fatherhood? That's the key question. It's either one, or the other, or you have given in to androgyny. One does not need to be a priest to know theology and care for people. There are no limits to love.