Can you guess which of the three doesn’t belong?

In 2015 Paula Vennells listed her recreational activities as 1) cycling, 2) skiing and 3) attending church.

Call me a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, but I’ve never thought of attending church as recreation, although it’s hard to argue that cycling and skiing don’t qualify as such.

Yet Mrs Vennells clearly knows something I don’t, which is why 10 years before she listed Christian worship as entertainment she had become an Anglican priest. I wonder if she cycled to the altar or attempted to juggle the chalice and the Bible.

She even made the short list of candidates to replace Richard Chartres as Bishop of London, with Archbishop Welby giving her a glowing character reference. That was a godawful misjudgement if I ever saw one.

But I shouldn’t be beastly to Mrs Vennells. I should be grateful instead, for she confirmed one of my heartfelt convictions: any woman seeking Holy Orders is up to no good.

Any such woman invokes a purely secular fad, and a perverse one to boot, to defy scriptural authority and 2,000 years of church tradition. Both have chiselled in stone the rule that apostolic ministry is the business of men.

Contrary to what hysterical advocates of female priesthood claim, this doesn’t mean women should play no role in church life. No Christian would ever suggest anything like that – the examples of hundreds of great woman saints, starting with the Mother of God, speak for themselves.

It was women who, when the male disciples cowered out of sight, had the courage to witness the Crucifixion; women who attended Christ’s burial; women who found his tomb empty – women who kept the Christian tradition alive by running convents, monasteries, schools; women who inspired the Crusades, women who were martyred for Christian proselytism.

Women’s contribution to Christianity is equal to men’s, but that doesn’t mean women should be priests. Any woman who insists she has a right to ministry has little knowledge of Christian tradition and no respect for it. What she does respect and enforce is woke diktats, in this case feminism.

And any woke person is ipso facto wicked, which failing has to reveal itself somehow in any activity such a person undertakes. This is my a priori conviction, and so far it hasn’t been refuted. Mrs Vennells certainly hasn’t done so.

For in parallel with serving God and various corporations, she served the public as the chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019. According to Mrs Vennells, she brought to bear on the job her values that came “from the glory of God”, thereby establishing continuity between her two vocations. But let me tell you: if she served God the same way she served the Post Office, there must be much weeping and gnashing of teeth up there (or is it down there?).

The Post Office used the Horizon accounting system developed by a company owned by Fujitsu, and one would think we have enough domestic expertise to screw up royally. That’s what happened at the Post Office, where malfunctioning software led to over 900 sub-postmasters being prosecuted for theft, false accounting and fraud.

Now, English sub-postmasters tend to be local worthies of a certain age, meaning that they still preserve such outdated qualities as self-respect (not to be confused with self-esteem) and a sense of honour. Being falsely accused of heinous crimes must have hit them especially hard.

Hundreds ended up broken, bankrupt or in prison, with four among those convicted committing suicide and 33 dying before justice was done. However, Mrs Vennells ignored numerous warnings about Horizon and even dismissed an independent report showing that the system was faulty.

As far as she was concerned, the Post Office could do no wrong, not on her watch. She defended corporate honour with nothing short of Christian steadfastness, however misapplied it was in that case.

When the convictions began to be overturned (many, by the way, are still pending), all hell broke loose. Mrs Vennells had to give back her CBE, and there is a distinct possibility she may also have to give back the £4.5 million she earned by her selfless commitment to the postal cause.

She also said she was “truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system.” Also as a result of Mrs Vennells insisting against all evidence that there was nothing wrong with the system, but she left that minor point out.

“When we mess up, which we do every day,” she added, “my faith tells me that I can be forgiven, that shortfalls are a perfectly human thing to do and that I can always start again.”

Well, my faith says she should call it a day before she does more damage. She should also be unfrocked, but rest assured I mean this strictly in the clerical sense. Still, as I mentioned before, I’m grateful to Mrs Vennells for vindicating my cherished belief about female clergy. I’m sure she’s good at cycling and skiing though.