Tablet Forum article - to Anglicans - don't come in! (Main Forum)

In making women’s ordination into a dogma, one is theologically putting sexism inside God himself – making God a sexist being. But God is not racist, ideologist, fundamentalist or sexist. He is the mystery we try to explain, the horizon of our thinking.

Although God is not male of course - I do know what the writer is referring too - and of course he is right!!!

I have just attended a fanatastic Retreat Day given by a lay woman extremely well versed in history and theology. The subject was 'Prophets For Today' and of course this idea of God being a male puppet master who rules with an iron rod , favors males above females was knocked on the head big time. God uses all sorts of 'odd people' as prophets whether male or female- both speak to make one sit up and take notice.

So this article just adds the icing to the cake for me.

Thanks Mary

Helen

Let us light a candle and say to the dark, we beg to differ

Thanks Mary

I hadn't noticed this new section on the Tablet site before -seems limited to contributions of 200-250 words

PaulW

Another recent contribution

"Catholic Church needs a new Martin Luther

The Archbishop of Canterbury need not have apologised when he said in April that the Catholic Church – or at any rate its leadership – had lost its credibility. He was speaking the truth. But it was not only diplomatic courtesy that made him regret his words. You do not expose the nakedness of someone you love, and certainly not when your own apparel is almost as threadbare.

The Catholic Church’s institutional defects are blatant, but like Dr Williams I stand in awe of the immense spiritual and cultural riches of Catholic Christendom. I look with gratitude and admiration to Catholic Christians, past and present, some my personal friends, who tread in the footsteps of Jesus. These have lost none of their credibility but, as at the time of the Reformation, the power structures of what has become a spiritually corrupted bureaucracy cry out to be cleansed.

The rehabilitation of the largest part of the Christian family matters desperately to its faithful members and to many outside its high walls who treasure all that, at its best, Catholicism stands for.

Without the acceptance of responsibility at the top – in Christian-speak, visible repentance – rehabilitation is impossible. If that is true in politics and in business, however rare, it is truer still in the realm of religion, which is meaningless without ethical integrity. That is doubly true in an institution that is strictly hierarchical. In a word: it can only begin with Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. That simple, radical step would be liberating and could initiate a profound process of renewal. It would restore to Joseph Ratzinger a credibility that no tears, no words of regret could ever do.

Might a German Lutheran Bishop, and a woman at that, be an example to a Roman pontiff? Bishop Margot Kässmann, chairwoman of the German Protestant Council, immediately resigned all her offices after one alcohol-related driving offence. It brought her huge respect. The institutional tolerance of paedophilia is a far graver matter.

While this long-standing world-wide cover-up of priestly paedophilia has triggered the tsunami enveloping the Roman Church, the Church’s moral collapse extends far beyond the realm of criminality. The Church’s wider problem lies with the enforced celibacy that many priests singularly fail to observe. It may be that only a very small proportion are paedophiles, but a high proportion feel forced to live double lives. They have – and are known by many of the faithful to have – sexual partners, female or male. The institution throws a huge blanket over this, forcing the priests concerned and their more or less secret partners to live lives of deception. In consequence the Church’s credibility in the realm of personal and sexual relationships in particular, and moral leadership more generally, lies in tatters.

A good many of the Church’s best priests are not willing to connive at such double standards. They have left their ministry (though not their priesthood) and live deprived of their vocation but with integrity. The spiritual and practical loss to the Church is immense. These priests are victims of an indefensible discipline, for there is no principle in Catholic teaching that demands priestly celibacy. The Eastern Rite of the same Church has never known it. There are already other exceptions. All it takes is a leadership with the courage to do the obvious. To concede equal rights to women would, of course, take more courage still, but why not another Martin Luther? Maybe it takes a crisis on this scale to herald a new Reformation. "

Dr Paul Oestreicher is a political scientist, an honorary Quaker chaplain at the University of Sussex and a Canon Emeritus of Coventry Cathedral.