How sad. How sad? I can give you an idea. I met the new PB too. In about 1985, I think. On her mother's porch in Seattle. Her mother was a layman in the Orthodox Church, having converted when her kids were mostly grown. She was very ill, and when she died several years later, her daughter, by then a priestess, did the funeral. The Orthodox people who attended, including her parish priest, were treated with complete disdain. I can recall conversations with the bishop's mother where she expressed her contempt for the idea of ordaining women. If the new PB treats her flock with the same tender care she showed her own mother, who was denied a funeral in the Orthodox Church, things are looking pretty bleak for any christians left among the Episcopalians. Honor thy father and mother. Not a commandment one usually expects to be ignored, is it? How about if mom is an Orthodox Christian? Don't expect better tratment of small-o orthodox from Presiding Bishop Schori.

How will Canterbury react. I say they will be silent. The conservative jurisdictions , the African and Asian ones, will sever all ties. How can Rome or Constantinople deal with the CofE apart from the American jurisdiction where all the money comes from?
You are right-the Episcopalian conservatives will do nothing, They are too comfortable in their beautiful churches, padded pews with padded kneelers and are afraid to leave. I say give not only ECUSA but the whole Anglican Communion up to Satan as scripture says.
This is so sad. I never thought to see this day, and the convention isn't even over!

Wow, all at once I feel it so difficult to believe that I used to be Episcopalian!

Well, we're getting a real nice Western Rite parish ready here in Houston for any that decide that enough is enough.

If they sign up for aesthetic reasons only, they should at least, read last June (?)'s edition of The Word which makes it quite clear the same energies are at work w/in Antiochian America. There was also a clergy conference at Antiochian Village where such a presentation was made... Yes, Mtr P came out both times against it. But the energies are there.

(They are, of course, in Rome as well, and in the GOA, and perhaps in the OCA, although I don't know...)

For most Anglo-Catholics we shall have to prepare a defense for "Why not Rome?" as well... and "Why quasi-byzantinization?" And sundry others things...

I would suggest that no one here knows what conversations might have been had between a daughter and her mother in the older lady's last days. One person's hearing "comtempt" is not the only side of a story. Does one actually *know* from first hand knowledge that the mother did not want her daughter to conduct her funeral? What is "complete disdain"?

Such a report, if *true* would not show love for one's mother. But I would suggest that there could be many factors that non-family members are not privy to. I know little about the electee and I think it a bad choice on principle. But reporting unsubstantiated negative stories is a Good Thing in what way?

wow - and i just caught the fact that she's the presiding bishop

are these guys and gals trying to start a fight with the rest of the communion?

I first got the news from the Greek newssite. I thought "well, we all guessed they would make the choice of the gay bishop, so they took the lesser of the 2 bad solutions.
But I'm wrong.
A gay can repent of being gay, and problem is solved. A woman cannot "repent" of being woman. Ok, she can resign, that's another problem. Or solution.

all the news in French :
http://stmaterne.blogspot.com/2006/06/anglicans-une-prtresse-devient-vque.html

I translated the full text of Raphael & Eric

Kyrie eleison

JM

Two questions. When is it appropriate to say "bishopess", and when is it appropriate to say "bishsoprix"? I wondered the same thig when I heard the Theotokos call Mediatrix. Why not mediatress. It makes no sense to me. Suffixes can be confusing.

"Ix" is a Latin ending. "ess" is English. It is also related to the final "or" in the word.

Priestess
but
Dominatrix

But English is, of course, a very Orthodox (or Episcopalian) language - most of the rules are flexible:

Actress.

A question in return: Why would you use either word? How often is "ix" common in English? Do you distinguish other titles or positions according to the sex of the person hold it? Is there a "Doctoress" doing surgery? That was once an all male title (until Elizabeth Blackwell in 1848.) Was Margaret Thatcher a Prime Ministerix

Why would either "bishopess" nor "bishoprix" is appropriate. Why not woman or female bishop? or if one does not hold with that the use of the lady's name?

The use of the "ess" ending is in many forms demeaning. Even in earlier English usage a "poetess" or "authoress" was not taken as seriously as a poet or author.

The use of the word "priestess" by those who do not like the idea of ordained women is a put-down in the sense that the word carries connotations of pagan rituals and wild rites. It is assigning a label to another Human Being that the person themself does not use..

I am not trying to be in any form "politically correct". Words have meanings and connotations that can be subtle or not. One might ask what ones own motive for using certain words might be in any context.

By the way, thank you for the tone of your blog entry. It is a nice difference from too many "Oh *look* at what those awful/heretical/modernist/non-Christian Episcopalians have done NOW." or the occaisional tasteless or crude joke.

P.S. I don't know if it's because we're having thunderstorms in the area or something with your blog, but I keep getting a message about an invalid captcha value.

Exactly because of it's pagan context. That is exactly why I use it.

When I worked in the bookstore at the national offices of the Episcopal Church, we joked about carrying the book "Women Priests and Other Fantasies". We realised we couldn't, of course, because we'd be near-to-dead for doing so. In Western Theology the priest is "Alter Christus" - Christ at the Altar: there is an ontological argument for male as category of being.

I recognise the arguments for other categories would, likewise, reject "priestess" but she stands as, at least, "Alter Christa" and that, in and of itself, is enough to warrant a new title - or an honest use of the correct title. The topic is proved out in any organisation that ordains women - but moreso in ECUSA because she claims a modicum of sacramental theology. It's not a "label they don't use" it *is* what they are - they have incorrect language. Still, "Bishopess" is a lot easier to write, over and over, than "Lady Bishop" "female Bishop". It reminds me of the feminist neologism, "WomanPriest".

PS: I still use "Actress" as well.

PPS: disclaimer - I have many friends who are ordained women. When we get down to discussing it, I'm honest with them about my feelings. I even tried to get to a recent ordination of a very dear friend of mine and would have been honoured and overjoyed to have been there. But in polemics a different take is required.

Are you using AOL?

This PNCC Deacon also ties this to the altar

Is it my imagination, or are the only women interested in becoming priests/pastors those whose views differ significantly from orthodoxy - theological liberals, in shorthand? (That's excluding the ordination of women issue.)

Hi Alan - long time no read! I hope all is well. Welcome back.

It's an irony that you discuss. Back when ordained women were a novelty in ECUSA I felt that most ordained women were being hyper-orthodox. Many of my acquaintance were reading (and preaching) about the evils of the New Age, etc. It was scary at that time (the 80s) because what most gay male clergy knew was that for a conservative congregation an ordained women was better than an unmarried (and hence suspicious) male. Pardon the secularism, but "jobs were at stake". For that same reason, some of the staunchest opponents to women's ordination were gay clergy.

To be fair this orthodoxy-as-cloaking-device worked both ways: The number of quietly closeted gay priests and bishops in the early years of such organisations as the Evangelical and Catholic Mission and later the Episcopal Synod would shock folks to-day. This is the link I've wondered about in other contexts, between "gay" and "Anglo-Catholic."

Byrd: a thought came to me as I rode to work to-night (which probably means I think about these things too much). But a while ago there was linked (from these pages) an article by an Antiochian Priest debunking feminist scholarship. The target of the debunking was that feminists had discovered that at some point in the first 500 years of Church, some women were called "Presbytera" on their tombs. The feminists said, SEE! Women Clergy.

Now... I don't want to get into a debate about what that word might actually mean but let's assume for a moment they are right.

The translation would be "Priestess". So, assuming for one moment the feminist argument that there were women clergy in the Early Church, they were titled "Priestess".

IN a fit of full disclosure, I've waffled so much on women clergy over the last 20 years that the only real issue I'm willing to be emphatic about is the forcing of them (as a wedge) between Church camps. This goes for the feminists who demand women clergy - as over against the weaker brothers and sisters for whom they are a stumbling block - as much as it goes for conservatives who use the *idea* of priestesses as a wedge to cut themselves off from the rest of liberal Christendom.

Should I find that, tomorrow, Mtr Herman or Philip have oked women clergy, I'd just keep on going.

Alan makes a good point: those who press the attempted ordination of women aren't really interested in orthodoxy or anything else the priesthood really means but are in fact the biggest caricature clericalists who ever lived. It's to do with power.

I didn't know, Huw, that the first Episcopal lady ministers pretended to be squarely Christian. (Deceit?) Makes some sense.

As for the connexion between Anglo-Catholicism and homosexuality, I've been hip to that for 20 years. Part of the valuable life lesson of English tolerant conservatism (not the same as liberalism or libertinism). Officially compromising on moral teaching is inexcusable but orientation is of course a non-issue and even an unworthy gay priest (a notorious evil liver) doesn't affect Catholic order (the validity of holy orders) like a lady minister does.

If regarding morals they talked the talk, even if they didn't live up to it, the gay clergy in ECM/ESA/FiF weren't/aren't hypocrites in their church politics. (Chalk it up to honour, self-sacrifice, doing the right thing and other old-fashioned virtues.) Some of those 'quietly closeted' gay Anglo-Catholics, some of whom are now deceased, have my respect to this day.

The improbabilist position (we don't know yet if it could be done but the church thus far has said no) is of course more palatable to the liberal mainstream but in fact is one of two perfectly good Catholic opinions on the attempted ordination of women, the impossibilist position favoured by the late Pope being the other.

I have two dear friends who are modern Central Churchmen and thus accept lady clergy and the new American Prayer Book. Now they feel betrayed by the Gene Robinson consecration, because they have been. We don't pretend to be of the same faith but understand each other. But if one of them were ordained, no, I wouldn't celebrate.

The Assistant to the Archbishop for International Relations of the Anglican Church of Uganda is The Rev. Alison L. Barfoot, an evangelical charismatic priest. She participates regulary in SOMA (Sharing Our Ministries Abroad) conferences in various countries and is responsible for sending out and helping to fund various conservative Episcopal missionaries.