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Nuns and gay-rights groups make common cause.
Although it's not entirely surprising that progressive changes emerge precisely in difficult situations, because they force you to ask what's really essential to what you believe and how you express it. For instance, the first ordination of a woman as priest in the Anglican communion, that of Florence Li Tim-Oi in the diocese of Hong Kong in 1944 was a response to the very great difficulties with the faithful faced as a result of the Japanese invasion, which makes it even more irritating when conservatives talk about women's ordination in terms of a grab for something illicit because, in the selfish modern fashion, a wish to self-determination trumps tradition and principle.
This line of argument is, in itself, probably connected to the Madonna/ whore dichotomy, since I've heard it argued, more or less in so many words, that no woman could have a genuine sense of vocation to the priesthood, since campaigning for women's ordination involved being loud and pushy and rebelling against the ecclesiastical status quo, and good priests are not thus. Funnily enough, this does not seem to disqualify any of the male priests or thinkers of the Oxford Movement, who also got into a lot of trouble for promoting a vision of what it means to be a priest and do church that didn't fit the ecclesiastical principles of their day from that category. But of course, smells, bells and tat is a matter of high minded and important principle, whereas wishing to live out a vocation in the service of God's people in word, sacrament and the care of souls, is just ego-centric, ambitious feminism and/ or political correctness gone mad (™) I sometimes suspect that there's a certain type of man that doesn't believe that women are really people, ordinary human beings - devil or angel or a useful domestic animal, but never an equal of the average sensual sort of man (there are, doubtless, also women who share this view). A woman can't be a priest, by definition, because she's not fully human?†
DISCLAIMER: I am aware of the fact that there are other arguments against the ordination of women, though I don't agree with them. I am also fully aware that the Oxford Movement was not merely a campaign for ecclesiastical tat for all, even if I've met Anglo-Catholics who gave that impression, and even though I do have a slightly dubious enthusiasm for nose-bleedingly high Masses myself....
† Yes, I've been reading Sayers and 'The Human Not-quite Human'...
Although it's not entirely surprising that progressive changes emerge precisely in difficult situations, because they force you to ask what's really essential to what you believe and how you express it. For instance, the first ordination of a woman as priest in the Anglican communion, that of Florence Li Tim-Oi in the diocese of Hong Kong in 1944 was a response to the very great difficulties with the faithful faced as a result of the Japanese invasion, which makes it even more irritating when conservatives talk about women's ordination in terms of a grab for something illicit because, in the selfish modern fashion, a wish to self-determination trumps tradition and principle.
This line of argument is, in itself, probably connected to the Madonna/ whore dichotomy, since I've heard it argued, more or less in so many words, that no woman could have a genuine sense of vocation to the priesthood, since campaigning for women's ordination involved being loud and pushy and rebelling against the ecclesiastical status quo, and good priests are not thus. Funnily enough, this does not seem to disqualify any of the male priests or thinkers of the Oxford Movement, who also got into a lot of trouble for promoting a vision of what it means to be a priest and do church that didn't fit the ecclesiastical principles of their day from that category. But of course, smells, bells and tat is a matter of high minded and important principle, whereas wishing to live out a vocation in the service of God's people in word, sacrament and the care of souls, is just ego-centric, ambitious feminism and/ or political correctness gone mad (™) I sometimes suspect that there's a certain type of man that doesn't believe that women are really people, ordinary human beings - devil or angel or a useful domestic animal, but never an equal of the average sensual sort of man (there are, doubtless, also women who share this view). A woman can't be a priest, by definition, because she's not fully human?†
DISCLAIMER: I am aware of the fact that there are other arguments against the ordination of women, though I don't agree with them. I am also fully aware that the Oxford Movement was not merely a campaign for ecclesiastical tat for all, even if I've met Anglo-Catholics who gave that impression, and even though I do have a slightly dubious enthusiasm for nose-bleedingly high Masses myself....
† Yes, I've been reading Sayers and 'The Human Not-quite Human'...
