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| Farmer priest relaxes on the silage Source: Farmers Weekly |
From a St Davids Cathedral tweet: "Congratulations to Canon Eileen Davies, Archdeacon designate of Cardigan in succession to The Ven Dr Will Strange who retires in May. Canon Davies will be installed and collated here in June."
Diocesan Rural Life Adviser and 'farmer priest', Eileen Davies was interviewed for BBC News in 2013 as the Church in Wales prepared to vote on women bishops.
If God calls a woman to be a bishop she said, "therefore the Church in Wales should not actually put a stumbling block there and say sorry you cannot because of the various reasons that the Representative Body of the Church in Wales might put forward" !
It is not clear whether she thought Barry Morgan was God or his agent when he shoehorned Joanna Penberthy into St Davids to be the first woman bishop in the Church in Wales.
If God calls a woman to be a bishop she said, "therefore the Church in Wales should not actually put a stumbling block there and say sorry you cannot because of the various reasons that the Representative Body of the Church in Wales might put forward" !
It is not clear whether she thought Barry Morgan was God or his agent when he shoehorned Joanna Penberthy into St Davids to be the first woman bishop in the Church in Wales.
Claiming to have heard God's calling herself, Canon Davies said it was important that the Church in Wales was prepared to look forward.
"We have many new ideas upon our agenda now. As a Church in Wales we have various new strategies that are now being proposed to move the Church forward. And to be able to move the church forward also we should lead the way as a Church in Wales to offer the opportunity for women to become bishops."
"We have many new ideas upon our agenda now. As a Church in Wales we have various new strategies that are now being proposed to move the Church forward. And to be able to move the church forward also we should lead the way as a Church in Wales to offer the opportunity for women to become bishops."
Women bishops have proved to be an utter disaster. 'Moving the church forward' proved to be driving forward the LGBT agenda towards same sex marriage in church. New ideas have included misandry, deception and profligacy with a fixation on gender parity.
Being unable to distinguish between forwards and backwards are obvious assets in the eyes of 'the best person to be a bishop'. With such callings perhaps we are to assume that God has a sense of humour.
Today is 1st April but this is no joke.
What people think and say about Vocation is often deeply muddled. God does indeed call people to serve in the ordained ministry, but he does so THROUGH THE CHURCH, not by putting (often mistaken) ideas into people's heads. Let's hear less about people acting on their Infant Samuel impulses, and more about the Church identifying suitable individuals and putting them forward -- often to their own shock and surprise.
ReplyDeleteThe Welsh female Bishops seem to be exercising considerable vigour in making female appointments. Is this not a worse bias than was ever shown when, by tradition, the priesthood was exclusively male?
DeleteStoppit
JP believes she is merely beginning to put right hundreds of years of anti-women prejudice and discrimination. She believes she is 100% justified. I’m afraid it will be a long, long time before she considers the balance restored. In the meantime she thinks it is her duty to prioritise women over men. And woe betide anyone, male or female, who does not support this agenda.
DeleteStanding on a cliff-edge and these feminazis want to go forward. Diabolical. 'Literally'
ReplyDeleteMatthew, your comment on vocation was somewhat sweeping. The Church recognises and validates vocations: it does not give them, although occasionally it might suggest them.
ReplyDeleteRob
The church in wales does no such thing unless one bends to the will of the prevailing zeitgeist. If ones vocation does not accept priestesses, canonesses, archdeaconesses and bishopettes, ones vocation is neither recognised nor validated.
DeleteAs the great scholar-Bishop, Kenneth Stevenson used to say, 'the "mumsification" of the Church'! Or, as I say 'Welcome to the Diocese of St Davids Where Women of a Certain Age will Always Trump Genuine Talent and Ability.'
ReplyDeleteCareful! Eileen has plenty of talent and ability.
DeleteAgreed, Joanna's appointments are so predictable and altogether 'on message'. It's a pity, really, because there's something good hidden within her.
ReplyDeleteRob
Really?
DeleteWhat?
Sad times in Cardigan when the odour of sanctity is replaced by the odour of the farmyard. Mae yna waith carthu i'w wneud yn Ty Ddewi.
ReplyDeleteI was astonished to read in the press statement about the appointment:
ReplyDelete"One of Wales’ best-known – and best-loved – priests is to be the new Archdeacon of Cardigan"
How do you possibly measure being "known and loved" in order to make such a grand statement. It also insults the many excellent hard working Priests around our province.
Quite right, Danny. It has echoes of Richard Chartres's effusive adjectival circumlocution after he'd edged the banner-waving Lucy Winkett out of St Paul's Cathedral and into St James's, Piccadilly, describing her as 'one of the most gifted priests of her generation.' Other London clergy, rightly, asked what that made them?
ReplyDeleteWhat we do know, of course, after the St Teilo's debacle, is that no one can now call June Osborne 'the most transparent and candid bishop of her generation.' My sense is that she has rendered her 'leadership' null and void in one act of arrogant stupidity.
Just one act?!!!
ReplyDeleteCatnap
Can't think why Lucy isn't sporting a mitre by now? When she is elevated I do hope that she is given her own diocese for if she becomes a suffragan she will by far outshine any current diocesan. While I'm at it - when is the multi-talented Philip North to be given his own diocese?
ReplyDeleteYes, Fr David, Lucy would have outshone most of the pretty dreary bunch that make up the C of E's bishops by now. Why isn't she a bishop yet? Most obviously, because her face doesn't fit in Welby's superficial managerial culture, that suppresses free speech and independent thinkers who will challenge the status quo. Barry Morgan didn't have a monopoly in that department.
ReplyDeleteI think Lucy is probably regarded as a bit of a handful who will not toe the line, and will potentially derail the fantasy/strategy of appeasing those who are 'successful' in putting bums on seats and cash in the collection. There are also suggestions (which I have no way of verifying, so don't take my word for it) that she has decided to eschew the ecclesiastical greasy pole for personal happiness and stability; and this has, for the time being, rendered her ineligible for high office. Good for her, I say. Someone else of real ability who has discerned that God is not calling them to sacrifice their life on the altar of a flawed institution that is damaging so many other lives.
I couldn't agree more about Philip North. Just think of the difference he would be making in Llandaff right now compared to the entirely predictable dictatorship that is clinging on with gritted teeth. Another letter in the Church Times today, I see, questioning the so-called 'consultation' around St Teilo's in Cardiff.
Also in today's Church Times, I see a gifted and able priest from here in Manchester Diocese has withdrawn acceptance as 'Leader' (what a word - same as Kim Jong Un!) of a Misery Area in St Davids. Obviously, the message is finally getting through.
ReplyDeleteEileen is gifted and will help bring people along with her - something that the leadership has needed since the 'Great Election'. Rumours abound that the Archdeaconry of Cardigan isn't the only place subject to change in a once great diocese...
ReplyDeleteDewiResistance
Obscure: whatever do you mean?
DeleteRob
PP. The article in CT is spot on, let's hope it helps St Teilo's.
ReplyDeleteThe Monmouth situ goes on, the Llandaff pilgrimage is almost upon us, Bangor slides into the Menia, St Asaph buys the old Burton building near St Giles for a new expression of Church, St David's feminises and the province goes on infinitum what can one say?
One wonders why there is not more of rumpus around the misguided 'pilgrimage' to Spain and other llandaff discrepancies.
ReplyDeleteStoppit
I think Llandaff is finding out why June Osborne was overlooked for the episcopate in England despite having been a Dean of a major cathedral for 15 years and author of the Osborne report. Welby must have been cock-a-hoop when she was nominated by the Welsh bench for the See.
ReplyDeleteThe Osbourne report, gives the lie. How clearly has The Church been betreyed.
ReplyDeleteSnide remarks about Eileen are out of order. There is a real hope that she will at least try to protect small country churches from the juggernaut of the Local Ministry Areas. It would have been nice, however, to see a few words of tribute to Dr Will Strange. He is the great bishop we never had in the Church in Wales. And why not? Because he is a learned and orthodox theologian who was prepared to stand up to Barry Morgan.We will miss him when he goes.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Will Strange has put 'keeping the faith' above loyalty to CiW.
DeleteWill has been loyal to the Church in Wales - none more so. Loyalty to the church is too often confused with subservience to the clique who rule the church.But the Lord of the Church wasn't Barry and it isn't John. Keeping the faith is the only true loyalty to the church.
DeleteI notice that Joanna is reverting to left wing politics (her real vocation) in her Palm Sunday sermon 'Brexit was bought by lies and founded on fear and hatred of the other'...etc.
ReplyDeleteShe also has a down on spirituality and mysticism. Thanks for clarifying that after all these centuries.
She's just peddling more of Byzantine Barry's socialist liberal twaddle.
DeleteBrexit voters ignored Darth Insidious and 99.999% of the population of Wales will pay the wench the same compliment.
Her fear and hatred of the normal is manifest to all.
Rob
ReplyDeleteIn Joanna's sermon for tbe Monday in Holy Week she is again guilty of misandry: the crucifixion is entirely the fault of the male sex. She seems to have forgotten that the Lord chose to be born a man. It's of a piece with modern biblical translations that replace 'Son of Man' with 'Son of humanity'. Pathetic, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteRob again