Abandoning what some speak of as the smoking ruins of the General Synod, I’m off for a week in a monastery. Reports and notes will follow, but I do turn off the Internet at St Wandrille, and won't be blogging again until next weekend.I’m not sure the ruins of the General Synod are smoking, even if the next steps remain to be discerned on ordaining women to the episcopate. The Archbishops had a right to do as they did and suggest another way forward, although I can understand some synod members feeling the procedure gazumped due process. The synod had the right to decide it didn't quite buy the deal. C’est la vie. The Holy Spirit is able to work through the human processes of the General Synod...
Howbeit, one doughty layman of a traditionally Conservative outlook suggested to me at a recent do, you can't really have a situation where the blacks are allowed on the bus but only because there's a whites only section at the front where, as long as the passengers don't look round, they can feel as though nothing’s changed. It’s for everyone to decide what their consciences will and won't wear, but we each and all have more or less tuned consciences, and therein lies the complexity. He thinks they all need a bit of moral courage, now. Further paralysis and funk is the worst option of all, surely, for everyone. Time for a bit of faith.
2 comments:
May you have a blessed and peaceful week at the monastery, Bishop Alan.
I am sure you will be praying for General Synod on your retreat, Bishop Alan. Your doughty layman was so right. Many of us are praying that the GS members will listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through people like him and trust each other enough to pass the legislation and make the Code of Practice work. The world outside the C of E really doesn't understand a church that doesn't accept women as equals, so all this is really bad PR at a time when we need to concentrate on mission.
Post a Comment