It’s a measure of the importance I attached to yesterday’s vote in the Synod that last night I tuned to BBC News, a programme I’m under medical orders not to watch for fear of apoplexy.
The screen lit to life just in time to be filled with images of weeping priestesses. ‘Why are they all so fat and ugly?’ asked my wife, much to my displeasure. Such cattiness, such lack of chivalry and Christian mercy are simply not on. How much kinder it would be to say that most of the ladies made the Vicar of Dibley look svelte. And in a film on Biblical themes, any of them could be cast in the role of the Sinai desert.
One is loath to draw interconfessional comparisons, but most Catholic and Orthodox nuns one sees look gaunt and emaciated, the colour of their cheeks bespeaking night vigils in the service of the God they love. The visages of our ruddy lasses bespeak nothing but an inordinate affection for post-service cakes.
Not being an academic theologian, I can’t say for sure that there’s no scriptural support for servants of God stuffing their faces. There must be – about as much as for the idea of women being either consecrated or ordained.
And speaking of weeping women, Dr Williams, the outgoing Archdruid, was inconsolable. He spoke of his “deep personal sadness” and warned ominously that “This vote of course isn’t the end of the story.” Not to worry, Your Grace, I’m sure the Druids allow female shamans. Most pagan cults do.
But Dr Williams’s warning must be heeded. After all, the atheistic, anti-Christian measure so dear to his bearded heart draws its inspiration from some of the most pernicious secular fads. It stands to reason that its champions should deploy the tactics of the same provenance. Specifically, they should appeal to the EU for guidance on how to reverse offensive votes.
What could be easier? If the vote goes against you, you tell the electorate they didn’t get it right and will have to vote it again until they do. Teachers do that sort of thing in school, or rather they used to until they were told that there is no such thing as right and wrong – it’s all down to personal choice, innit? But in the old days they’d say, “No Johnny, this isn’t how you spell ‘can’t’. I want you to stay after school and write ‘can’t’ a hundred times on the blackboard.”
The Times, which had been waging a hysterical campaign for female bishops, says this vote ‘does a disservice to half the population’. By inference, it then does a service to the other half, so, on purely arithmetic grounds, this should be all right, zero sum and all that. Yet anyone who thinks that is missing the point: the half that welcomes the vote is the wrong half, and the other one is right.
For those in the right half this is indeed ‘a sad and shameful day for the Church of England’, in the parlance of The Times. Leaving apart the lexicographic fact that ‘sad’ is a modifier usually attached to animate objects only, why is it such a disaster?
Oh yes, you see, this tragic failure “will be felt keenly too by those not involved with the Church but who nonetheless see it as a leader for reform and justice.” Now that’s something one can understand. Atheists hate this decision because it went against them. Fair enough. As to atheists seeing the Church “as a leader for reform and justice”, I’d like to see factual support for this assertion.
In the absence of such, one is tempted to observe that the Church hasn’t acted in this capacity for the best part of 500 years, and good job too. It’s not the Church’s role in life to lead, or indeed follow, every moronic idea extruded out of the bowels of atheist, nihilist modernity.
The amazing thing is that those who’ve never seen the inside of a church are so interested in its toing and froing. You don’t play the game, you don’t make the rules, I’d say. Rather than praying to God, they’re supposed to worship at the altar of democracy. If so, they are guilty of apostasy.
Just listen to The Times, that tireless supporter of democracy in every tribal backwater on earth. “This decision was not the one wanted by the majority of the Synod… It was blocked because there were just enough members of the laity to do the blocking. And these people were not representatives of those who line the pews on the Sabbath.”
Chaps, have you ever heard of democratic constitutions? In every halfway civilised country a profound constitutional change requires more than a simple majority to pass, usually two-thirds, as in our established Church. This motion was blocked democratically, constitutionally and fairly.
As to those opposed not representing “those who line the pews”, it’s just sour grapes. How would The Times hacks know this anyway? Do you think whoever wrote this malicious drivel gets up early every Sunday to partake in the Sacraments? I very much doubt that.
“The first thing to do is to bring back a simpler, clearer proposal and win,” advises the editorial. Ah, so that’s what the Archdruid had in mind. Changing a word or two would give these sore losers a pretext for reintroducing this abomination not in a few years but in a few weeks.
The title should be changed too. It has to be something like ‘Equality and Justice’ rather than ‘Female Episcopate’. You know, if ‘the EU Constitution’ doesn’t go through, rephrase, call it ‘the Lisbon Treaty’ and resubmit. If that doesn’t work, keep changing the punctuation, you never know your luck. Yes, that’s it, a perfect model to follow.
Nothing can be ‘simpler, clearer’ than yesterday’s vote. Do we want women bishops? The Church said no. And when no isn’t taken for an answer, it’s called rape. Which no doubt awaits the Church in the near future. Meanwhile, we can be excused a little Schadenfreude watching the bastards squirm.