What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • 10 questions arising from the misogyny of a “headship” bishop

    Plans were announced last night to appoint a new bishop in the Church of England who will specifically believe that women are subordinate to men to minister to, encourage and represent those in the Church of England who believe this, ie that men have been given headship over women by God, to be true.  (This isn’t a joke, this is real).

    This had been planned for some time and was part of the deal whereby that church agreed to open the Episcopate to candidates who happen to be female.

    It rather neatly proves some of the terrible things I was saying about the Church of England earlier in the week to be true.

    On this occasion, I take no pleasure in being right.

    The following questions arising from the misogyny of a “headship” bishop should now be raised:

    1. To Members of Parliament: Are you really comfortable with 1 million children being educated every day by an organisation with these values?
    2. To candidates in the next election: Will you support the disestablishment of the Church of England because organisations which behave in this way should have no privileged place in parliament?
    3. To the Archbishop of Canterbury: Do you realise that this makes you personally look like a misogynist too as suffragan appointments are always personal to the bishop involved?
    4. In the General Synod of the Church of England: …. and if people ask for a bishop with racist views to represent them, will we do that too?
    5. To the BBC: Why are you not covering this story as a major news item?
    6. To those who serve in Church House, Westminster: Why do progressive changes to the Church of England have to go through years of debate at General Synod and regressive ones don’t?
    7. To Primates around the communion: Why is this novelty and abuse of the episcopate acceptable when the appointment of a man who happened to be gay was so unacceptable?
    8. To the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time: Does the Prime Minister share the concerns of many in this country that the Church of England is institutionalising misogyny.
    9. To the silent Church of England Bishops who believe themselves to be liberal: How do you sleep?
    10. To the first woman to be consecrated as bishop in the Church of England: Was it worth it on these terms?

     

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14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

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