Maybe They Should Douthat

Evan Derkacz on Ross Douthat's critique of The Episcopal Church:

[T]he following passage in particular inspired some untoward thoughts in this observer:

...today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians.

One is tempted to point out that yes, it is true that had it adopted reforms urged on it by liberal theologians and pundits the institutional Catholic Church would look different: it might see greater equality among women and LGBT members, have avoided or at least minimized a tragic and crippling (not to mention ongoing) pedophilia scandal, and most likely prevented God knows how many deaths associated with AIDS—to mention just a few.

Don't Douthat

Everyone seems to be on about The Episcopal Church's recent General Convention in Indianapolis (where it adopted a provisional rite for the blessing of same-gender unions and banned discrimination against transgender people in Holy Orders) and Ross Douthat's reflections on the decline of what he calls liberal Christianity, which concludes:

The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right.

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that perhaps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.

By equating religious with political liberalism, Douthat misses or avoids what really ails the body of Christ. Profoundly varying ideas about Imago Dei account for our greatest divisions. In the churches which Douthat doesn't think are on the verge of extinction, there are God, the angels, males, and the rest of creation. Almost all growing or stable churches ban women from the pulpit or ordained ministry. These include most megachurches, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches -- as a matter of fact, pretty much everybody. Look at it this way. There are a little over two billion Christians in the world. About two billion worship according to authorities, doctrines, and creeds that marginalize or silence women when it comes to leadership and ordained ministry.

For reasons known best to them, many, maybe even most, of the women in these denominations seem to be okay with being second-class ecclesiasticitizens. Only in a few isolated corners of Christendom -- the mainline denominations in the increasingly secular industrialized world -- have women insisted on the inerrancy of Holy Scripture insofar as Gen. 1:27b is concerned: "In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

Let's say for purposes of argument that, worldwide, 50 million Christians participate in non-gender oppressive church structures. That's probably optimistic. Even if it's true, then Douthat's liberal Christians comprise less than three percent of the faith. I suppose someone could write an op-ed demanding that churches overseeing the faith lives of the remaining 97% of the world's Christians should (to borrow Douthat's language) change or die. If they were excluding blacks, Latinos, or any ethnic group from leadership and ordained ministry, such a critic would probably get a ready hearing, while pious orations about the true faith coming from those in the oppressor churches would not be especially in vogue.

It does seem to be less of a scandal, compared to other forms of bias and discrimination, that almost every church in the world keeps women down. As it is, most critics of the so-called liberals rarely mention gender. You may think it's because they don't want to call attention to their greatest vulnerability, but they probably don't see it that way. They have scripture and tradition on their side, or so it may appear. Where's the gender equity in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the 12 disciples, or certain Pauline restrictions on the role of women in church?

There are satisfactory answers to all these questions. The narratives and doctrines of orthodox Christianity come from the first five centuries of the first millennium, whereas women's equality (in human eyes as opposed to God's and Christ's) is a modern concept. Fears and misunderstandings about women run deep in human culture. Even the land of the free and home of the brave practiced gender apartheid until 1920, when women got the vote. Oppressive church structures have proved far more resilient.

Christianity's real crisis is whether a wholly Christian sense of a creating, saving, supernatural divinity can transcend the global church's prevailing medievalism. The Episcopal Church took a giant step in that direction in the 1970s, when it began ordaining women as priests. It stands out among other mainline denominations which have taken the same step because it has taken the perilous next step of venturing a modern conception of how gay, lesbian, and transgender people fit into the Imago Dei. Radio talk show hosts will always yuck it up and take cheap shots about gay bishops and priests in drag. But it's exceedingly ironic to spend your Sunday morning in the pew next to women who are banned from the priesthood (not to mention girls who would make great priests when they grow up) and then write articles criticizing The Episcopal Church for its differing application of equality under God.

Again ironically, most of these critics are now on the political right. Laurie Goldstein reported last week that the church's choices about same-sex unions and transgender people meant it was moving further to the left. It's conservatives' shame that affording dignity to individuals in all their God-endowed diversity is now construed as leftist.

This is not to say that Douthat doesn't make some good points. We can make the pursuit of equality for ourselves and the groups of which we're members an end in itself. We justice-obsessed church people can all too easily adopt the language and cynical tactics of the politicians. Even worse, we may be tempted to abandon the language and even essence of orthodoxy.

Many have abandoned the church completely because they can't abide or forgive its legacy of prejudice. Perhaps it's just my own privileged background that enables me to believe we can strip away prejudice while still proclaiming the forgiveness, salvation, and hope obtained for all people by the death and bodily resurrection of the Son of God. As long as Douthat's wondering what will save the church in the 21st century, I'd say it's an inclusive, muscular neoorthodoxy that is less concerned with gender and sexual identity and interfaith alignment, that unapologetically proclaims the unique teaching and saving power of the Incarnation and Resurrection.

And yet what's worse: Soft-pedaling orthodoxy to make the church more attractive to the skeptical, abused, and marginalized, or failing even to admit the unbridgeable contradiction between God's heart for justice and the unjust oppression of women and others still being practiced throughout his global church? Liberal Christianity's critics enjoy comparing attendance numbers and the size of the Sunday collection. And yet I seem to remember our LORD saying something about money and rendering unto Caesar. TEC's struggles are emblematic of a quest for an understanding of the mind of God and his transcendent love for all his people that most of Christ's church in all its prosperity refuses even to contemplate, much less venture. Its authorities and officials, including Benedict XVI, aren't even stuck in the 20th century. They're stuck in the post-Constantinian fourth -- because, frankly, once you let the women back into leadership, God knows what happens next.

My Sunday sermon on these subjects is here. Since people like to say that Anglicans and Episcopalians owe their churches to Henry VIII's divorce, it's important to remember that Jesus's public ministry was ignited by the killing of John the Baptist, which occurred because of Herod Antipas's divorce and marriage to his niece Herodias. That first-century Galilean homewrecker is shown above in Paul Delaroche's conception. Sometimes the church really does seem to be all about sex -- or at least the complexity of human relationship in contrast to the unity to which God calls all his people in Christ.

Unity And Alienation And Unity

If you go to a Roman Catholic church in Anaheim, but you're not a Roman Catholic, the priest might not want to serve you Holy Communion. While he's not allowed to refuse if you insist, it's technically against canon law. And yet on Saturday in Bethlehem, all we St. John's pilgrims, though most are Episcopalian, were communicated without any hesitation by an Italian priest during a solemn early-morning mass in the grotto associated with Christ's birth that is sheltered by the Church of the Nativity -- a moment of unity in Christ that felt, at least to me, every bit as powerful as the first Pentecost.

The church is one of three constructed in fourth-century Palestine under the direction of Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. You can still see her workers' beautiful mosaics preserved a meter or two beneath the church's modern floor. Today Roman Catholic and Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians share its care and administration. It's generally in the news when people are shooting at each other or on Christmas. We St. John's pilgrims celebrated our Christmas early by singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" in the St. Joseph Chapel near the grotto, where pilgrim Damian had a contemplative moment.

Then thanks to our friend Iyad Qumri's peerless contacts, the Franciscans, Rome's traditional stewards in the Holy Land, invited us to attend mass with some pilgrims from Italy. The priest (was he visiting, or based here? I don't know. I didn't ask. This is the Middle East) celebrated in Italian, but the forms of the Holy Eucharist liturgy are familiar enough that we could follow along and say the responses in English. We weren't sure about the gospel reading until the priest said, "Non vi preoccupat (don't be worried)," when we realized we were hearing Jesus's teaching in Matthew 6 about the lilies of the field. Pilgrim Mike, whose fluency in Spanish gives him a good feel for Italian, could tell the first reading, which a nun proclaimed as pilgrims Alexendra and Brenna looked on, was from 2 Corinthians. So we all understood God's saving word, each in our own language. Did the priest know we weren't Catholic? Did he care? What would Benedict XVI think? I don't know. I didn't ask. This is the Middle East!

After the closing prayers, we each touched the star in the floor that stands for the Birth and Incarnation and creation's radical unity under God's perfect, evil-destroying love. This unforgettable moment of Christian unity happened in a town whose Christian population has dwindled to as little as 20% owing to falling birth rates, the second Palestinian intifada in 2000-04, and diminished economic opportunities. God's love may defy alienation, but the region's politics sometimes appear to defy God's love. Edward Tabash, an Arab Catholic merchant whose family have been Bethlehemites for centuries, told me that Israel's separation wall (shown here surrounding and cutting off a single Palestinian home) has devastated the local economy and driven thousands of Bethlehem's ablest, best-educated people to greener pastures, often abroad. So in one morning we experienced the chasm between what God wants and what we deliver. But that's okay, because after our meal in the grotto, we were invested with the power to move mountains and even walls.

Free Ticket To Rome, Double Berth (wink, wink)

The New York Times on the pope's shepherd-stealing.

Benedict Definitely Has His Priorities Straight

Padre Jeff left his episcopate
Deep in the heart of Texas
Rome wants 'em straight, not celibate
Deep in the heart of Texas

Jesus And The Other Jews

Benedict XVI is getting high marks for reinforcing the Roman Catholic Church's post-Holocaust and therefore all-too-recent corrective about Jews and the death of Jesus:

While the Catholic Church has for five decades taught that Jews weren't collectively responsible, Jewish scholars said Wednesday the argument laid out by the German-born pontiff, who has had his share of mishaps with Jews, was a landmark statement from a pope that would help fight anti-Semitism today.

"Holocaust survivors know only too well how the centuries-long charge of 'Christ killer' against the Jews created a poisonous climate of hate that was the foundation of anti-Semitic persecution whose ultimate expression was realized in the Holocaust," said Elan Steinberg of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

The pope's book, he said, not only confirms church teaching refuting the deicide charge "but seals it for a new generation of Catholics."

Anglileaks

Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that the British ambassador to the Vatican warned that the Pope's shepherd-stealing could lead to anti-Catholic discrimination and violence in England.

+Will.I.Ams Really Conflicted

Opportunistically and entrepreneurially, the Pope is reaching into the heart of the English Reformation -- a kind of ecclesiastical Tet Offensive -- to steal shepherds and sheep who can't abide a woman in a miter. By joining an outfit called the English Ordinariate, laity, priests, and bishops will be allowed to continue to preserve elements of Anglican worship. The body-of-Christ count so far, according to the London Telegraph:

About 30 groups from across the country are believed to have registered an interest in joining the Ordinariate. This would mean an estimated 500-600 Anglicans, including about 50 priests, will be in the first wave of converts to join the Ordinariate when it is established in the first half of next year.

Just so you can fully appreciate the irony of the positions being taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury (shown here during a visit to the Church of the Messiah in Santa Ana in the summer of 2009), he's gently harrumphing as Benedict XVI moves on his right flank and yet simultaneously supporting efforts to relegate U.S. Episcopalians to the second table of the Anglican Communion because of their insistence on the sacramental equality of gays and lesbians. So it's yes on women but no on homosexuals? Poor Archbishop Rowan: It's never been tougher to be stuck in the middle.

Spinning Tops

Lewis Whyld's pool photo of ecclesiastical half-brothers the Archbishop of Canterbury and Benedict XVI worshiping in London's Westminster Abbey during the Pope's recent visit. Half-sisters Elizabeth I (the originating Anglican) and Mary Tudor (Roman Catholic to the end) are buried nearby, and side by side (not their idea). Were one or both spinning? If so, it would possibly be because they were powerful and accomplished women who now abide in the light of truth. This New York Times article details the tensions, almost all over gender, between Rome and British Anglicans. Benedict says it's a crime to promote ordaining women as priests, whereas it's actually a crime not to. What do you really think the queens would say?

It's Not Fair. We're Reactionaries, Too!

Conservative British Anglican Peter Hitchens (Christopher's brother) covets the opprobrium being heaped on the pope by secularists he calls "68ers."

The Church Standing Pat

Pat Buchanan lauds U.S. bishops' and Rome's new militancy about abortion, homosexuality, and converting Anglicans who can't bear the idea of female bishops* and adds this distasteful fusillade to his recitation of the good news:

The Vatican has reaffirmed that Catholics in interfaith dialogues have a moral right if not a duty to convert Jews, and reaffirmed the doctrine that Christ's covenant with his church canceled out and supersedes the Old Testament covenant with the Jews.

When Abe Foxman, screech owl of the Anti-Defamation League, railed that this marks a Catholic return to such "odious concepts as 'supercessionism,'" he was politely ignored.

Buchanan thinks U.S. Roman Catholics have been yearning for this kind of leadership. Not the ones I know, but we'll see. To me, Benedict XVI's revanchist papacy is beginning to look like a medieval nostalgia trip. You really want to see the Church Militant, as Buchanan now defines it? You want to see Christianity as mediator of righteousness, justice, and grace and agent of transformation and salvation? Then recognize women as full members of the body of Christ in all orders of ministry, in all denominations and sects, from the Roman Catholic Church to the Southern Baptists. Repent, and believe in the good news, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.

* I first wrote "misogynist Anglicans" and then repented of the name-calling, which was tantamount to saying that every conservative Anglican and indeed Roman Catholic priest wants to keep women down.

All About The Clothes, Even When It's Not

Instapundit spotted and featured this site, "Bad Vestments," which means that the political color for the moment is libertarian true blue. The site itself features photographs of lavish, odd, or, if I may, ugly liturgical clothing being worn by priests and bishops. The site's recurrent theme is "because Christian worship is not supposed to be about you." As far as I can see, its creator doesn't identify her- or himself, so one can only speculate about the coloration of their theological views. One hint is the persistent references to the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, as Mrs. Schori, a commonplace on theologically conservative blogs, where some find her views objectionable and others, her gender, at least insofar as its being fit for the episcopacy is concerned.

No question that the site is a hoot. Yet ridicule is a questionable activity for Christians (mea culpa, he quickly adds), anonymous ridicule* even more so. It's in the paradox of Christ that when we fault others for acting as though it's all about them, it can mean that it's all about us. If the authors of "Bad Vestments" have an idol, it's liturgical exactitude. Like two of the folksingers in "A Mighty Wind," we prayer book-thumping Christians are tempted to worship color -- purple for Lent and the impending season of Advent, white for Christmas and Easter (and weddings and funerals), red for Pentecost (think the tongues of fire as the Holy Spirit descended on the church).

Many of the priests and bishops depicted at "Bad Vestments" are thinking well outside the basic Crayola box. One smiling bishop is arrayed in cathedral stone gray, which doesn't show up on any of the liturgical calendars I've seen. As for ordinary time, or, as some say, "after Pentecost," the long season between Trinity Sunday and Advent, green is called for, but surely not lime green, Holy Father. And yet what's the matter with a little variety within the confines of those all-too-familiar basic color groups? Suggesting it has to be a certain green is akin to arguing that God prefers the King James Version of the Bible.

To be fair, "Bad Vestments" doesn't seem to be making such a restrictive point. Creative is one thing. Hideous is, of course, another. The site's other targets are we pastors whose raiment sometimes screams, "Please look at me, and get ready for a homily about where this bizarre rig came from." As a matter of fact, I have some stoles (the long strips of colored cloth, a vestige of Roman senators' garb, that priests wear around their necks) that people have given me or that are meaningful for some other reason. This especially applies to those I've brought home from two Holy Land pilgrimages. The red stole shown here, a treasured gift from the Altar Guild of the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in the Diocese of Los Angeles, prevented me from being the most inconspicuously dressed new priest in recent history at my ordination in January 2004, for which I'd neglected to order a custom-made chasuble as my beloved colleagues had.

It makes me feel good to wear these items, and sometimes I'm tempted to talk about them during sermons, but I rarely if ever do. I'm not sure why. And then's there's the issue of wearing our own vestments at all. Before almost every service, and especially on Sunday, I remember advice from my mentor, the Rev. Canon Mark Shier, now enjoying the first months of a well-earned retirement as rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. A priest of God for over a third of a century, he had a sacristy drawer full of personal vestments that he wore for weekday services but almost never on Sundays. He told me that that it gives the congregation pleasure and perhaps even some comfort to see their priest wearing a stole from the same set, as the Altar Guild would say, as what they see on the altar and the ambo (the liturgically correct term for lectern).

Yesterday at St. John's, our church was dressed in white to help us remember Christ the King on the last Sunday in Pentecost. We don't get to wear white all that much, so I was tempted to reach for a white and gold stole from the heart of old Jerusalem, the handiwork of Sami Barsom, a Syriac Orthodox tailor I met in 2007. I've worn it often enough on Sundays that it's soaked in the water of a score of baptisms. But just before the first service began this week, for whatever reason I heard my teacher's voice, so I wore the beautiful white St. John's house stole instead. Yep. I matched. Even when it's not about the clothes, it is.

*Mea maxima culpa, because each post, I now see, is signed by Christopher Johnson. Sorry about that, brother.

Blunting The Islamification Of Christianity

The New York Times on Saturday's Vatican meeting between Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

[Williams]...questioned why the longstanding dialogue between the religions had foundered over the question of female clergy.

Here's why, your Grace. The pope's brazen move to convert British Anglican priests who oppose female bishops is an obvious sign that he considers the Roman Catholic Church's misogynist ecclesiology to be its leading missionary edge. Because it marginalizes women to say they shouldn't be bishops or priests (or pastors, as most U.S. evangelical Protestants still do). It devalues women to say that they aren't pure enough to do sacramental work. It insults women to claim that they are a lessor order of humanity, as Gen. 2 seems to teach, though Gen. 1:27 does not (which notion of creation have you been taught and do you prefer -- woman made as an afterthought from man's rib or male and female created simultaneously in God's image?). It cuts women off from the grace of God itself to say that God and our LORD Jesus Christ view them as less worthy to preach and teach and bless and absolve in their holy names.

Treating women that way in the church either makes sense to one, or it doesn't. It evidently still makes sense to Benedict, but my guess is that, deep down, it doesn't make complete sense even to young American Roman Catholics, both male and female. And it no longer makes sense to most in the Episcopal Church, which has had female priests since the 1970s and now has a female presiding bishop, nor to ++Rowan, who favors the British Anglican church eventually ordaining women as bishops.

So how long are we reportedly besieged, marginal, so-called progressive Christians -- especially those who believe that Jesus Christ's radical and reckless love extends to male and female followers, apostles, and priests in precisely equal, which is to say infinite, measure -- going to continue acting so defensive? How long are we going to let Christians whose view of women tends to mirror Islam's have the upper hand in the church and especially in the news media, which largely dictate how secular society views people of faith?

Precisely as long as we continue to let our critics get away with pretending the great debate is about something else entirely. So-called orthodox conservatives like to say the church is mainly having an argument about the authority of scripture and the role of gay and lesbian people. It behooves them to do so to distract the attention of the half of the human race about whom Christendom is truly convulsed. Will or will not the relatively small minority of Christians who are absolutely right on this issue finally be able to stand up for women and blunt the Islamification of Christianity?

Thanksgiving Anticipating Chaos

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, evidently reflecting on the possible consequences for the Church of England of the Pope's bid to persuade Anglican priests who don't like female bishops to defect to Rome:

The archbishop, in his [Sunday] sermon, said: “God knows what the future holds for any of us for any of our ecclesiastical institutions but we can at least begin with what we can be sure of: that God has graced us with the lives of saints; that God has been credible in this fellowship with these people.

“This church, with its very particular place in the history of the Church of England, is one small but significant facet of that great mystery and that great gift. And, at times when the future seems more than usually chaotic and uncertain, it doesn’t hurt simply to give thanks.”

Your Imamy

Ross Douthat says the aim of Benedict XVI's move on the Anglican church is to forge a united front against Islam. If so, it's a bumbling misstep of historic proportions. Islam's greatest weakness is its marginalization of half the population, namely women. Christendom puts its worst foot forward by proselytizing British Anglo-Catholics who agree with Rome that women shouldn't be bishops or even priests. Hearing that medieval proposition, imams in Malaysia, the Sudan, London, and Brooklyn would no doubt nod their heads in agreement. The infidel has at least got that bit right.

If we think the Christian way is better, then we should proudly rally round the proposition often attributed to that great Episcopal theologian, Robin Williams:

Male and female, God created them; male and female, we ordain them.

Main Line And Hardly Mainstream

A conservative, Anglo-Catholic Episcopal parish near Philadelphia hears Papa's call from Rome.

Politics And Religion

In the New York Times letters section, a range of reaction to the Pope's bid for conservative Anglicans.

Incense-Filled Rooms

Benedict XVI has the body of Christ thinking about tactics and power politics once again. In this "Economist" article about the Pope's move to attract married, conservative Anglican priests to join in a new category of Roman Catholic priesthood, "liberal Anglicanism" means reformed, liturgically-minded Christians in England who can't for the life of them figure out where the Bible says that God and Jesus Christ don't want women to say mass, pronounce God's absolution, and serve as bishops:

Hitherto, an uneasy alliance of low-church evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics has struggled to resist liberal Anglicanism. “This will change the balance in the Church of England in favour of the liberals,” says Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia, a think-tank. “The evangelicals won’t go to Rome and they may now be abandoned by their Anglo-Catholic allies.” Some think (or fear) that as many as one in seven Church of England priests could convert.

Hat tip to Mike Cheever

Quick In His Red Slippers

Andrew Sullivan on the Pope's bid for Anglicans:

[I]t seems an almost baldly political move, made at a pace more reminiscent of modern politics and public relations than the traditional ecclesiastical creaking of the wheels. That is troubling to me. Churches are supposed to be about eternal truths and freedom of conscience, not what amounts to an unfriendly take-over bid for a franchise.

And it does not seem to have occurred because of some deep resolution of the theological disputes between Anglicans and Catholics, but merely by a shared abhorrence of women priests and openly gay ones. If you want to switch churches, prejudice seems a pretty poor reason for doing so.

The Islamification Of Christianity

In an audacious act of shepherd stealing, the Pope has just made it easier for Anglicans, including married priests, to join the Roman Catholic church without having to abandon their beloved liturgical practices. Predictably, in their coverage of Benedict XVI's startling move the media are focusing on the rifts in the Anglican Communion over the role of gay and lesbian people in the church. But the Pope's not exploiting angst about the status of homosexuals as much as he's wooing those who still can't accept the absolute equality of women in Christ, which as far as I'm concerned is really at the root of the church's sexuality crisis. As the New York Times reports:

The move could have the deepest impact in England, where large numbers of traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England’s embrace of liberal theological reforms like consecrating female bishops.

And:

[T]he Rev. Rod Thomas, the chairman of Reform, a traditionalist Anglican group [in England], said, “I think it will be a trickle of people, not a flood.”

But he said that a flood could in fact develop if the Church of England did not allow traditionalists to opt out of a recent church decision that women could be consecrated as bishops.

There's even more evidence that the Pope's initial play, at least, is to redeem wayward Christians whose 16th century forebears committed the original sin of breaking away from Rome under Henry VIII and Elizabeth the Great. Many U.S. schismatics have already aligned with the "Anglican Church in North America," which prohibits female bishops just as the Catholics do. So while its leaders applauded the Vatican's announcement as evidence of the depth of the Anglican Communion's crisis, there's no immediate evidence that they're planning to run home to Papa themselves. Says one former Episcopal bishop, Martyn Minns:

I don’t want to be a Roman Catholic...There was a Reformation, you remember.

I don't know enough about Bishop Minns to speculate about his attitude toward the Roman Catholic church. But many American Protestants retain an almost visceral anti-Catholicism. Growing up in the Episcopal church in Detroit, I never even heard the word "priest" used to describe ordained people. We always called them "ministers." Besides, with the Catholic church you get all that stuff about birth control, abortion, banning the death penalty, and world peace, about which at least some conservative Anglicans are as divided as everyone else. So for the time being, it appears the action in this latest episode in the English Reformation will unfold where it all started, with the Vatican hoping to swell its ranks with those who just can't abide a woman in a miter.

As for women in the rectory, for eight centuries the Catholic church insisted that priestly celibacy was a salvation issue, but evidently no longer, since the new rules are expected to increase the number of married Catholic priests (aka married former Anglicans). It doesn't seem fair that the priests who played by the rules all along will be the last to get somebody to cuddle up with on a cold winter's night. At least they may not have to wait for long. Knowledgeable Catholic friends have told me for years that in the teeth of the priest shortage, the celibacy requirement wouldn't last more than a decade into the 21st century.

What the mother church will never abide, my friends say, is Mothers instead of Fathers behind the altar. So here's Benedict's vision: Straight, sexually active male clerics, with women and gays continuing as second-class citizens. Call it the Islamification of Christianity.