Friday 7 December 2007

Possibly the silliest statement ever.

"Wherever the ordination of women as presbyters has happened the results have been disastrous."

No, I have not made this up. Read it for yourself here if you don't believe me. It's part of a piece written by the Dean of Sydney in October 2006 called "History should be our teacher" - in his case I fear History will only be his teacher if History gets allocated the "special supervision" class for behaviourally-challenged students.


Is it just me, or does anyone else find this picture of our misogynist Dean Jensen kind of creepy?

Maybe it's the way one of his eyes seems to follow you around the room...

3 comments:

Brian R said...

When we were at University together, I told Phillip Jensen he should find somewhere other than the Anglican church to worship and I then considered myself an evangelical. How I wish he had taken my advice although who would wish him and his friends on any other church.

Wormwood's Doxy said...

Well...I can actually see his point. You see, I became an Episcopalian/Anglican BECAUSE my church ordains women. From his point of view, adding me---progressive, feminist, inclusive---to the church probably DOES seem like a disaster. ;-)

John D Bassett said...

Well, I actually took the time to read it. And I must admit I was perplexed.

First of all, there's the evangelical obsession with numbers. Their numbers are growing, the number of liberals is declining, so therefore their message must be true. Now, of course, if the sheer increase in the numbers of adherents indicates truth, we ought to conclude that Islam, the Catholic Church, and agnosticism are all true since all three groups internationally are large and growing. And if the Sydney diocese is so crammed with young male ordinands, why do they need lay presidency of the Eucharist (which it seems they would just as soon not celebrate anyhow).

I would like to admit that the acceptance of women as priests leads to an acceptance of gays in the church but both the bishops of Durham and Pittsburgh are conclusive proof of the failure of this theory. The argument did make me think of the old American joke that Baptists disapprove of sex because it might lead to dancing!