An Australian bishop has said he will reordain any Anglican priests who were ordained by a woman bishop before they can work in his diocese.
Ross Davies, Bishop of The Murray in South Australia, told his diocesan synod that a move for women bishops failed at the last Australian general synod in 2001 and would be put in a new form in Perth in October.
Women bishops have replaced homosexuality as the most corrosive issue within the Anglican Church in Australia today.
Bishop Davies said the new proposal, with a “minimalist” plan for alternative oversight for those who can’t accept women bishops, would create new difficulties.
“All I can do is put on the record that I would need to reordain any man purportedly ordained before a woman bishop before I could license him,” he said.
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Of course the irony is that if Bishop Davies were to convert to the Catholic Church and was allowed to become a priest, he also would be conditionally ordained. Now what I can’t understand is that if in 1992 the Anglicans said that women could be ordained priests then why wouldn’t they have automatically also said that they could be Bishops? It sounds like it must have been a political compromise vice a theological understanding.
In a post below called Spiritual Malpractice in the comment section JCECIL3 brought up women’s ordination. Elinor of Mommentary, who always leaves excellent comments, left one that had me rolling.
Look, jcecil, it’s OVER. This is an ex-parrot. (Pace Monty Python.) Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It is NOT GOING TO CHANGE. Go on gassing about it all you like, but if you think it’s going to have any effect on the Church’s teaching, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. This discussion is starting to remind me of an old New Yorker cartoon which pictures the never-say-die suitor, in an attitude of supplication to the girl of his heart, who is taking a walk with her husband, two young children, and a baby carriage. She tells him in exasperation, “HAROLD! I said NO and I meant NO!” Take this as final: “JCECIL! They said NO and they meant NO!”
5 comments
Anglican priests do not have valid orders. That’s been definitively determined. When Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism are ordained in the Catholic Church, aren’t they absolutely (not conditionally) ordained?
While Anglican orders are not valid. Some Anglicans have had themselves ordained by an Orthodox Bishop. This has muddied the waters a bit so that some Anglicans do indeed have valid orders.
This response by some Anglicans is interesting because of the fact they responded to what the Catholic Church had declared on this subject.
It’s a little schizophrenic, no? They went full bore with women’s ordination, in spite of every Catholic-Orthodox branch saying “Um, don’t go there.” Many seem surprised that we haven’t gone along with their leadership so far, but perhaps after this pope… I think soon enough they’ll give up caring about what Rome/Moscow/(Istanbul not) Constantinople thinks.
This is what I like about the Catholic Church. It isn’t a democracy so popular whim isn’t going to change it. Protestantism is crumbling under the “popular” social movements. They are making it up as they go along without any real consideration of God’s revelations to us. One day evangelicals will look around and the only church that hasn’t been compromised by secular humanism will be the Catholic Church.
Grant this, O Lord
Mark Shea is on his rock-star tour of Australia, itinerantly teaching about the Faith and meeting some dear Auzzies. He’s speaking at an Anglican conference this weekend, and got to meet Anglican bishop Ross Davies, who affirms the Catholic faith,…