Ordination of women, the package

"July 16, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – There has been much concern among faithful Catholics about the upcoming Amazon Synod. Progressive Cardinals from Germany and the Vatican have already held a private meeting strategizing about how to get the Synod to approve a female diaconate. Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the two remaining dubia cardinals, issued a strong critique of the working document of the synod saying its real intent is 'the abolition of priestly celibacy and the introduction of a female priesthood – beginning with female deacons'.”

"The Vatican’s working document for its upcoming Amazon Synod is 'politically correct nonsense', a venerable Catholic journalist, editor, and author has said.

"Damian Thompson, of late the former editor-in-chief for the Catholic Herald, said certain parts of the document are “garbage” and that given some elements involved in the forthcoming Pan-Amazon Synod, the assembly should be called off...

"The Amazon Synod’s controversial working document, or Instrumentum Laboris, aside, many fear that the synod is being used as a vehicle for abolishing the discipline of priestly celibacy and for ushering in female priests, using the remoteness of the region, its indigenous customs, and its religious practices as a rationale."

One would have thought that the innovation of ordaining women in the Anglican Communion would have provided the Vatican with sufficient experience-based evidence that, in general, women who seek ordination are advancing themselves not the Kingdom of God which has become a vehicle to further personal aspirations.

Using the Son of God as their model, they play on the various meanings of 'love' to legitimise their departure from the bible, twisting scripture to fulfil their particular desires. - Jesus loves me, therefore....

Their campaign has resulted in leading gullible women into believing that only love matters, excusing any excess. Familiarity leads to 'normality' and acceptability.  Opponents are regarded as disposable bigots. They are the odd ones out, despite having given decades of service to the Church and being among the majority in the Anglican Communion and the wider Church.

First and foremost the ordination of women is about women's rights and equality of opportunity in the workplace based on secular criteria. Their claims are not supported by scripture or tradition. They are based on criteria that permit ambitious women and their supporters to attack the Church as being out of touch for not moving with the times. As a consequence congregations have plummeted.

Regular attendance projections indicate collapse. The Church Growth Modelling blog indicates that the Church in Wales, Scottish Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Church of the USA are all firmly under the extinction threshold with some doubt about the Church of England.

The 'Historic Episcopate locally adapted' has resulted in do as you please provinces, some with women bishops, some approving of same-sex marriage. In Canada where same sex marriage has been defeated, some bishops have decided that they will ignore the decision and go their own way.

The Anglican Communion is unravelling but there is no indication among those responsible for the innovation of women's ordination that it was a step too far. They carry on regardless while Church in Wales bishops have admitted in private that it is finished but encourage congregations to dig ever deeper.

Women have shamelessly lied and cheated their way into the Church, misrepresenting Christ's teaching to satisfy their personal demands.

If what they claim is true, why the lies and deception? False accusations of bigotry, misogyny and homophobia designed to smear anyone who defends the faith against the false prophets as predicted.

It does not stop there. The complete package includes the full liberal agenda leading to LGBT+ clergy promoting so-called 'equal' marriage so that they can live with their partners with the apparent approval and blessing of the Church.

The Anglican experience is clear, progress step by step: Deaconesses leading to women deacons, women priests and women bishops leading to demands for the acceptance of same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.

There is the constant self-promotion of women clergy on Twitter with endless celebrations of women's ordination.

A recent Twitter example illustrates how the trail leads from a tweet to The Campaign for Equal Marriage in the CofE and onto the rainbow collar under the banner 'When in doubt, love'.

That is the ordination of women package. You don't get one bit without the other and the other and the other, etc. Are you listening Francis?

You couldn’t make it up if you tried.

The right to wear the cross

Photo: Rex Features

A belated post after my memory was jogged on seeing this article repeated in the Catholic Herald. See previous posts here and here. 

"In a Telegraph report of 28 April, David Barrett relates that Michael Nazir Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, has written to the European Court of Human Rights in support of Christians who are claiming that they have suffered discrimination at work because they have been banned from wearing a cross. In his submission, Bishop Nazir Ali writes: “We have reached a stage where Christians in the United Kingdom risk their employment if they wear a cross. However, the United Kingdom courts have permitted the wearing of a Sikh bangle, the Islamic headscarf and even a corncrow haircut.”

The Government plans to argue at the same Court that employers have the right to ban the wearing of the cross because it is not a requirement of the Christian faith. Archbishop Rowan Williams, in what seems an embarrassing own goal, appeared to support (or at least not protest against) the Government’s position, by stating at a church service in Rome in March that the wearing of a cross had become something “which religious people make or hang on to” as a substitute for true faith. I disagree with him. “Religious people”, those who publicly profess their Christian faith, wear a cross as a sign of this faith (and who is he to judge their motives anyway?) It is non-religious people – often celebrities – who affect a cross simply as decoration or jewellery, but the Archbishop didn’t say this.

He should have said what was left to retired Anglican Bishop Nazir Ali to say: Christian employees should have the right to express their faith by wearing a cross. The Bishop went on to state, “Any policy that regards the cross as just an item of jewellery is deeply disturbing… It is disrespectful and insulting to practising Christians…The cross is ubiquitous in Christian devotion from the earliest times… The cross is the most easily recognisable Christian symbol in architecture, church furnishing and the dress of the clergy.” He added: “I am aware that many Christians wear the cross and would be distressed to be required to remove it.”

Bishop Nazir Ali echoes what Cardinal Keith O’Brien said in his Easter Sunday homily when he urged Christians to “wear proudly a symbol of the cross of Christ on their garments each and every day of their lives”, adding, “I know many of you do wear such a cross of Christ, not in any ostentatious way, not in a way that might harm you at your work or recreation, but a simple indication that you value the role of Jesus Christ in the history of the world, that you are trying to love by Christ’s standards in your own daily life.”

I was once given a pair of black earrings in the shape of crosses. I have never worn them. They couldn’t be seen as anything but items of jewellery; very different from the little silver Celtic cross, given to me by my mother, which I have worn round my neck for years. Perhaps it is time for parish priests to follow the example of Bishop Nazir Ali and Cardinal O’Brien, and preach about the importance of wearing a cross as a symbol of faith – and not as a style accessory.

The Church doesn’t make a “rule” about wearing a cross, rightly giving people the liberty to choose. But reverence for the cross and what it symbolises concerning the price of our redemption is “a requirement of the Christian faith”. If Christian employees choose to wear one, the Government should recognise this as an expression of deeply held beliefs – beliefs that have shaped the history, laws and culture of this country."

The Three Wise Persons

After a brief interlude, back to the story of the Three Wise Persons travelling from the East to the land of His Darkness to find a re-birth solution to the mess created in the Church in Wales now that religion has given way to gender politics and relitivism. First, apologies to the last member of the panel appointed, Professor Patricia Peattie, former Chair of the Episcopal Church in Scotland’s Standing Committee. Try as I may I can't find a picture of her - unlike the Chairman, the Rt Rev Lord Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford of whom, unsurprisingly, there are numerous pictures. What the other panel member, Professor Charles Handy, former professor at the London Business School, will make of the overblown management of the now tiny Church in Wales is anyone's guess but as they set out on their journey, "Bazzer" is sure to have let it be known that he doesn't like to hear anything unkind said about him, ie, views opposed to his own. Given "Bazzer's" feminist outlook and need for parity it is strange that female representation is in a minority unless that is something he wishes to emphasise.


Had I not been delayed in putting together this post by Archbishop Rowan Williams' briefing on 'humanising of the ordained ministry' I would have missed an interesting point. Yesterday the Blog Let Nothing You Dismay carried an item about the conversion to Roman Catholicism three years ago (in 2008) of an Anglican priest, Una Kroll. Other ancients who have suffered the whole painful crusade of the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) may remember her cry ‘we asked you for bread and you gave us a stone’. Looking through the Church in Wales web site there is a link where people can find out more about the Anglican Communion Covenant. Among the contributions is this intriguing entry:

 "Una Kroll - 07/04/2011
I am a priest in the Church of Wales. Ordained in 1997. I do not want to see the Covenant come into force as it is not Anglican to punish peopple for holding to their conscience. The Instruments of Communion already in existence offer us all a chance of freely accepting Communion with those who dissent from our own preferential opinions and is a profound expression of Anglicanism. Una Krol."


Unless the Catholic Herald story referred to on LNYD is a complete hoax how can this be explained? Only last year an article appeared in the Guardian in which Kroll referred to "the Act of Synod [which] introduced structural discrimination against women", the same distorted cry we hear from her feminist friends in WATCH and GRAS. 


In open meetings in each diocese the Panel will be asking five questions, the first of which is, "What aspect of your diocese and the Church in Wales, do you feel most positive about?" For many in Wales, particularly those not finding favour with their Archbishop the answer has to be 'nothing'. I would be interested to know if Una Kroll turns up to offer them anything from her wide experience but if they are really wise, the Panel will make an excuse and leave by another route.