This is wonderful news. I give thanks to God and the Australian Anglican equivalent to a High Court for allowing the generosity of spirit that this appointment entails.

Women have been betrayed, shunned and abused by so many churches in Australia; that their priests no longer have the right to purport before God that they adequately care for their women and thus have the right to speak exclusively on their behalf. Where men abandon their women and are indifferent to their suffering and are willing for their females to suffer indefinitely, then the bonds of affection that keep women quiet no longer apply.

Ezekiel 18 provides the biblical justification. The male who sins is male who suffers the consequence, not their son nor their father, nor their wife nor their mother nor their daughter. Each soul is judged on their own merits, no other soul can be offered up as a substitute atonement.

If the males wanted it any other way, then they could have bothered to look after this planet and its women. No pretty song or tap dance can turn back time, 2000 years of neglect is enough to prove covenants have been forsaken.

Hope they haven't sold the pass on the protocols!

I feel that we have abandoned the faith of the universal Church; to elect a woman to the Episcopate is to fly in the face of one main functions of the Bishop, to be a symbol of unity around the altar of Christ. A diocese that cannot be at one in its sacramental is not a diocese and is not representative of the Universal Church, the bride of Jesus Christ our Lord.

God bless and protect your servant, (+)Kay. Merciful Christ, soften and convert the hearts who are so hard against her, and Your calling of her to apostolic ministry.

FELICIDADES AUSTRALIA!

Which planet are you from, Mark Wharton? The seventh? Certainly it can't be the third rock from the Sun.

Do you seriously need to perceive the male thingys on your Priest/Bishop in order to believe the validity of the Sacraments?

Perhaps you were just speaking with tongue planted firmly in cheek, as if to point out the very absurdity of the position you were hypothetically espousing.

Mark, may I ask:

Please tell me how keeping the ordained ministry to men unites people around the altar of Christ, apart from the usual arguments that Christ only chose men for his apostles, that the Church cannot ordain men--and of course, that women are not allowed to speak in Church as the Scriptures taught us.

Mark wrote: "I feel that we have abandoned the faith of the universal Church..." Mark, the Church is living, organic, never static but always growing. It isn't a idol for you to worship like some golden calf--frozen in time. The gifts of women in ordained leadership are a gift to the entire Church. I'm sorry you're hurting and hope you find peace.

This is wonderful news, and we look for more such news from Australia in the near future. Australians are lucky that the pool of talent for episcopal appointments has now been considerably widened, and there are lots of great women and men in whom God's call may be discerned.

The protocols are everything that they should be: an agreement, without legislation, that bishops will do their job, that is, to hold the church together even where it disagrees. The agreement is very careful in maintaining the full authority of a bishop who is a woman, and where a male bishop is brought in he will act on her behalf, and will only be a retired or neighbouring bishop, not some specially created flying bishop.

Mark, the answer is the Roman Catholic Church and you wlll be very welcome. Please don't do a Vicar of Bray in Anglicanism.

This was very good news when it leaked on Friday, but now it's been an even better weekend in Australia - we now have a woman appointed to be the next Governor General.

We haven't been let in on the full story of what the protocols for dissenting clergy will be, but this will undoubtedly become known. On the topic of women and ordination, perhaps it's worth noting the retirement of a certain rural diocesan here in Victoria. He'd been elected to a diocese where the house of laity in the synod were consistently passing the legislation for women in the priesthood only for it to be blocked by the clergy. It was finally passed, and in assenting to the act, this bishop said that while he had no objection to women serving as priests in his diocese he would not ordain them. Needless to say, he's ducked out of the way before he gets yet more bifurcated.

I am glad the Australia church has opened its doors to female bishops. It is unfortunate, however, that it comes with strings attached. A prejudice is not a valid basis for an objection of conscience. As long as female bishops are held down, I call upon male bishops to accept the same restrictions on their ministry.

Many prayers of thanksgiving for Bishop Goldsworthy - as the old folk saying has it in USA, She probably has to be four times as good as a man of her generation, to even be considered in the running for a leadership position.

So far as the reiterations of traditional objections, pained as their inference and implication sounds written out: I do sympathize.

For one thing, the loss of exclusive mens club privileges is difficult, and requires an added dollop of grace as the formerly inferior and unequal women are welcomed as real, functional equals in daily life.

Pat traditional references to male and female anatomy and genital functions are quaint, yet clever and besides the real mark. Bishop Forsyth has tons more ethical, theological, and indeed citizenship explaining to do before his pat traditionalisms will make any enduring sense, given this huge occasion of individual and communal repentance and amendment of life.

If the traditional position espoused by Bishop Forsyth is really NOT cover for all the mistreatment, subjegation, dominance - all aimed at women individually and as a class or group - and indeed a sort of foundational superiority of men over women period in God's eyes, of boys superior over girls in God's eyes? - then the burdens of showing how the traditional beliefs enact rigorous fairness and equality now rest pretty much heavily on the shoulders of the traditionalists, including those like Bishop Forsyth who continue to let their good conscience be formed by males only presuppositions.

Many of us realize yet again, that the arguments he is making to prevent women from sacramentally being able to be bishops was earlier used to argue that women could not be priests, could not go to college, could not go to law or medical school, could not work and train and give, outside the home and family life?

Traditional males only believers do not get a free pass on this one. Everybody is watching you, good bishops, yes, every day from here on out. And praying that whatever your traditional gender and sex and sexual orientation beliefs may continue to be, you be graced to consistently be fair and wholesome and equal with all the women in your daily citizen and church lives, not to mention graced to be graceful in traditional Anglican welcome of believers (lay, priest, bishop) who see things differently in good conscience.

In response to Ren Aguila; the arguments with regard to women’s ordination have not gone away and have not changed, the faith of the universal Church is always the same. Nothing that Jesus did was without meaning and the choosing of the 12 men was not a mistake, but an example of the faith of the Church.
And in response to Robert Ian Williams; I know that you are right and that Rome beckons, she is calling all Anglicans home to OUR true home, the rock of Peter.
I cannot accept and do not believe that it is God’s will for women to be ordained and I pray that the Church will one day see the light and return to the faith of the apostles.

If only those who are like the apostles may be ordained, then I think one ought to ask how many male priests are:

Jews.

Fluent in Aramaic and Koine and able to follow Hebrew for liturgy.

Ethically Judean or Galilean

Obey the dietary and holiness codes.

This would be to BE like Jesus.

But it seems like those are not requirements many mlae clergy can meet.

For some people, it seems, it's not really necessary for a priest to BE like Jesus, but only to p.. like Jesus.

"Nothing that Jesus did was without meaning and the choosing of the 12 men was not a mistake, but an example of the faith of the Church."

12 *Jewish* men: guess it's time for all the goyim "priests" to turn in their credentials, too! ;-/

Re "Peter" (Rome=Peter is a fond affectation, acceptable only in terms of the great saint's martyrdom location---if that!). The Bishop of Rome, and all who are in communion w/ him, are welcome back into eucharistic fellowship w/ "Augustine" (Canterbury), any time they want: no questions asked, no rings kissed. Merciful Lord, speed the day!

Don't worry about the attached strings. They will unravel with time.

Women have been living with compromised outcomes and making the most of what remains. It was like that before Jesus' time too.

It was Miriam who kept her parents copulating so that Moses was conceived. It was the faith of the women who resisted and objected to their men purloining their jewelry to make the golden calf at the bottom of Mt Sinai.

It was Ruth who accepted the loss of her first husband, and then being widowed from Boaz on her wedding night, where she had conceived David's great, great grandfather. It was Tamah who shamed Judah into acknowledging her righteousness.

Like Judah, these men might work to avoid being a laughing stock. However, in the course of history their antics merely expose them for what they are.

Scribes who would hinder others in their paths whose lying pens show partiality in matters of the Law.

Comprehend that some of these leaders have tried to tell their parishioners in recent years that they needed to wind back their Anglicare services until there were sufficient funds to provide for their city's own poor and suffering. Yet there has been no talk of winding back their stirring up dissension and sponsoring dissidents outside their own jurisdiction. Contemplate also that their affluence is based on a local booming property market, which was possible because the secular government listened to good advice and used the Olympics to create infrastructure in neglected parts of the city. Thus re-writing how Olympics were done (up to then, getting the Olympics was the equivalent of declaring a desire to become bankrupt).

So even this wealth that they use to tout themselves and buy favours comes from that which they despise and refuse to acknowledge.

They should go back and re-read Paul's history. The disciples were emphatic that whatever he did, whatever he sponsored must be diligent to provide for the poor and the widows.

These modern priests' arrogance has made them blind to the imperatives of the God of the Torah. But then, according to them, there were no feminine traits to this God of gods. This was a vengeful, capricious, angry God; incapable of love which is why Jesus came to make something "new" - a "loving" god.

Let them teach this to the illiterate and like-minded opportunists. Their teachings and devotional priorites make the best statements of what they are not.

Mark:

Why, then, was it given to three women to be the first witnesses to the resurrection?

How unfortunate Mark Wharton that you are treated with contempt by commentators here rather than respect. We all belong to the same Church - whatever our differences and genuinely and honestly held beliefs. Clearly the longed-for universal acceptance of women's ministry has not yet happened within Christendom yet. Those who argue and behave as if it has should wake up to the fact that great battles still lie ahead (people have been talking amongst themselves rather than to others for too long) because they are not yet in the majority in terms of 'Christendom'. I hope one day they will be...but this will only come by arguing gently, persuasively and by treating others with immense courtesy.

'Many prayers of thanksgiving for Bishop Goldsworthy - as the old folk saying has it in USA, She probably has to be four times as good as a man of her generation, to even be considered in the running for a leadership position.'

Dr Danfee. I had to laugh at this because in the Church of England the reverse is true. You could say the same thing about traditionalist candidates for the episcopate, and the system is falling over to get women into positions of strategic and authoritative influence within just months or years of ordination. Men who do not fit in with the new status quo will now wait decades...and then still be ignored. Not that this is bad for anyone's soul.

Response to JCF,,...not meant to cause offence, but I believe we have the right of reply.

St Augustine ( of Canterbury ) was in full communion with the successsor of St Peter, who had sent him to covert the Anglo-Saxons. Roman Catholics are in communion with the successor of that same Augustine, that is Cardinal Murphy O'connor and NOT Rowan Williams.

Cardinal O'Connor ( and I'm no personal fan) has the same pallium from Rome that Augustine had. He upholds the seven sacraments.... five of which Cramner rejected). He holds the two left in the same way that Augustine held them, and which within Anglicanism are open to various interpretations.

St Augustine believed that baptism is regeneratibve and is the Biblical way to be born again.

He taught that the Eucharist was the body , blood and soul and divinity of Christ offered for the living and the dead.

For every Anglican who believes that interpretation, I can give you one who believes that belief was abolished at the Reformation.

For every Rowan williams I can give you a Tom Wright or a Philip Jensen.

As for the Jewish argument. the gospel was firt to the Jews and then to the gentiles. The Apostles ( who were the nucleus of the new Israel) when they chose pesons to follow them in the episcopate, they chose from gentiles as well....but never from women.

"but never from women"

The word "never" just foiled the whole argument.

Never means never, not ever, not once, ever.

The bible has many instances of ever, more than once, in both the OT and NT components.

Deborah is the best rebuttal at this point. If you won't take responsibility for being a prophetic leader to salvage this planet and its occupants, don't complain if a woman stepped up to do what no male had the balls to do.

Cheryl.....there were Queens, women judges and prophetesses...but never a selection of women as Bishops. Thats why you need an infallible church to detect and sift the authentic tradition. How for instance do you deal with baptism for the dead....your way is supposition.

Cheryl, "there is a way that seemeth right to a man, and the end thereof is death."

Theological change usually comes through an experience of God in new ways. Those who support women in the ordained ministries of the church have, I believe, discovered that in deaconal, priestly, and episcopal ministries, the Holy Spirit works just as effectively through women as through men. However, one must be open to the Spirit to learn from experience, just as those supporting change must listen attentively and responsively to those who oppose it.

"For every Anglican who believes that interpretation, I can give you one who believes that belief was abolished at the Reformation."

Is that the best you can do, RIW?

Poll after poll has shown that the *majority* of Roman Catholics surveyed were seriously in "error" as to what the RCC officially teaches (believing that "the Immaculate Conception" refers to Jesus's conception, for example. *Many* hold to only a "Symbolic Presence" of Christ in the Eucharist).

The rest of your argument is simply the tendencious same ol'/same ol' which informed Anglicans have *heard before*, but reject.

"[Present day X, whom I agree with] holds in the same way that [ancient common authority Y]": STIPULATING AS FACT, ARGUMENTS AT ISSUE.

*I* say that St. Augustine of Canterbury sides w/ the current ABC (over your Cardinal Murphy O'Connor at any rate---whom St. Augustine REALLY cheers is ++Katharine Jefferts Schori! :-D).

See? You claim yours, and I claim mine. Neither of us can prove it, either way. Vaya con Dios, RIW (but you're *still* welcome to partake of Christ's Body&Blood at an Anglican church near you).

Obviously there are individual Catholics who are misguided or dissenters. There are 1.3 billion of us.

Just as in Anglican Nigeria here are people involved in polygamy. However within the Catholic Church is a definitive Gospel and doctrinal standard...whereas within Anglicanism there are several contradictory interpretations. Look at the confusion as to what is Anglican Orthodoxy at GAFCON.

Orthodoxy is gauranteed only by communion with the Holy See....otherwise its a subjective free for all. So I will politely turn down your invitation to Anglican Holy Communion.

By the way one clarification...I do not regard male Anglican ministerial orders as anymore valid than female.

"Orthodoxy is gauranteed only by communion with the Holy See....otherwise its a subjective free for all."

...subject to the Holy See's subjective free for all. ;-)

Seriously, RIW: can you not understand how *logically* your above assertion makes no sense? That even IF one accepts "Papal Infallibility, w/ respect to Faith & Morals" (which obviously, I don't), that you're now extending infallibility to the BofR's *personal ethics* as well? [i.e., if Benny16 says "No BodyBloodSoul&Divinity for you!" then ergo, the excommunicant MUST be heterodox? Like you could never have a pope who was "just being a jerk" (like the rest of us sinners!) for example?]

(Sung to the conclusion of "God Bless America", by Irving Berlin)

"...I am an Anglican: one step from Rome.
(But what a step!)
I am an Anglican: Via Media, that's Home!"

;-D

RIW

"Thats why you need an infallible church to detect and sift the authentic tradition."

You mean that YOU personally need an infallible church. Anglicans don't happen to think this is in any way valid.

"Sorry, Lord, they made me think/do it."
Or:
"I decided to follow their advice because I didn't want the responsibility of thinking a complex issue through for myself", (which I what your recent comment on the embryology bill amounted to).

I remember a famous instance in the bible where that wasn't a defence either.

Robert wrote

"Thats why you need an infallible church to detect and sift the authentic tradition."

That is ludicrous. To purport that any human institution (irregardless of the proportion of its feminine component) can "detect and sift the authentic tradition".

Please, God, let them continue their "slam dunks". Every "slam dunk" proves the paucity and opportunism in their theology.

I think that welcoming women into the threefold ministry, while providing adequately for those of a traditional integrity, is a wonderfully Anglican - and catholic - approach, and I am proud at this moment to belong to this Communion.

I believe the Catholic Church is Divine, and "he that hears you hears me."

Newman's hymn sums it up for me,

And I hold in veneration,
For the love of Him alone,
Holy Church as his creation,
and her teaching as his own.

I couldn't exist in the nightmare world of evangelicalism, with a host of contradictory teachings and doctrines.

Anyway at least we are still in dialogue. Conversion to the Catholic Church is in any case a spiritual revelation..." For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you..."

"I couldn't exist in the nightmare world of evangelicalism": well, I'm with ya on that one, RIW. [I believe "evangelicalism" is the worst enemy of *evangelism* ever invented!]

"Conversion to the Catholic Church is in any case a spiritual revelation"

Which is why I give thanks for my conversion to the Catholic Church: my baptism (age 4 months, 9 days) into Christ's Body, per the BCP rites of the Episcopal Church! :-D

"but never a selection of women as Bishops."

Thanks be to God for the proud staunch patriarchs.

In their glee to prove that women have never been in legitimate authority or position since Jesus and his resurrection, they absolve women of guilt for the mess this planet has become. Just as their rejection of GLBTs and non-Christians makes them innocent of this mess.

After all, if we have no legitimate role in this planet or how it is run, then we can't be held accountable for it or its occupants demise.

Please males (of all religions and levels) laud it before God that you are the only legitimate authority on this planet, and have been so since Jesus and before.

The women sit back with glee and watch you tap dance to explain this planet's demise.

After all, it's not our place to tell you what to prioritise or do. That would be an act of rebellion. Who are we (females, GLBTs, non-Christians, non-humans) to act against the wishes of the ordained holy Christian heterosexual male leaders? To do so would be a sin, and we all know that we can't sin and go to heaven.

I went through an extended period of alienation form the Church. During that time, I once lamented to a friend that I could not become a Roman Catholic "because of the way they do authority." Likewise, I could not be a protestant "because of the way they do authority." I could have happily been Orthodox (real Orthodox, not rhetorical Orthodox), but since I accepted the ordination of women it would be hypocritical. I was, I lamented "a trapped Anglican."

In the present crisis, I would make one amendation. After Romanism and protestantism, I'd add the observation that "I couldn't be an Akinolist because of the way they combine the excesses of the preceeding two."

When you receive the gift of Catholic faith, you know that the authority is the freeing and liberating power of the authentic Gospel.

You have the same gaurantee of God's true teaching as the first Christians. Its so wonderful....God's plan is perfect.

Don't be afraid Cheryl!

God's plan may be perfect.
The Catholic church is a conservative organisation that has on more than one occasion found itself wrong footed by history and then adapted its own stance later.

You will forgive me if I fail to see God's plan in opposing 2 people loving each other, and in pretending that you need a penis in order to understand how God wants to be represented in the world. It is just so incredibly pathetic!

Thank you for your kind words, Robert.

I confess to bemusement at God's perfect plan. That leaves women abandoned, unloved, unprovided for, unprotected and insulted (along with GLBTs, non-Christians, non-humans, and suffering Christians).

I find bemusement in the concept of the complete fulfillment of scriptures, but the feminine is vilified, denied and rejected out of hand.

I wonder when Micah 4:10 will be fulfilled "You will go to Babylon; there you will be rescued." Or Isaiah 54:13 "All your sons will be taught by the LORD, and great will be your children’s peace." Or wonder how Isiah 49 has been fulfilled when apparently the Daughter of Zion is no longer nor a legitimate biblical character with covenants to be honored. Where's the tenderness after being allured into the wilderness (Hosea 2)? Or the rebuilding with joy by the feminine (Jeremiah 31 or Revelation 3:9)?

Dear Cheryl,

The Catholic Church exalts womanhood..look at the person of the Holy Mother of God...who is the Mother of all Christians.

Look how women have always been able to exercise a vocation...something denied by Anglicansism for 300 years.

Cheryl, look again.

ROb

Rob:

Relegating women to one of two roles--mother or nun--isn't what I'd call "exalting."

Oh--and there have been Anglican and Episcopal nuns for centuries. But we're a step ahead of you in many of our provinces, since in those places we open ALL vocations to women.

Pat:
I cannot conceive how you can say that motherhood of a vocation to the Religious life is relegation. It is not in God's plan to relegate or undermine. We need to extol the differences between us, not blur the differences. Mary, the Blessed and Most Holy human in all creation had the greatest calling ever; We can not say that she was relegated in anyway at all.

Mary wasn't relegated, no. But expecting all women to either emulate her or become "brides of the church" most definitely is.

No, it is not in God's plan to relegate or undermine...but we're not discussing God's plans here, but the actions of a human institution, the church--specifically the Roman Catholic church.

Pat:
The Church is Holy; we need to honour and respect her as the Bride of Jesus Christ.

"The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee"..... (Te Deum laudamus, 1928 BCP [USA] page 10, a.k.a. the "tedium" to us choristers, a hymn of some questionable origin, but with usually a wonderful tune change in Anglican Chant)

So if the "holy" church doesn't recognize 'the call' in better than half of her population I guess acknowledgment is lacking....whose fault is that Mr. Wharton?

When my Roman Catholic uncle-in-law got going on "dogma" one year at a Christmas Dinner, I just looked at him and asked, what is that? Oh, another human creation I reckon...

Well human creation became a little closer to God's Creation and got it right down under. Well done Australia.

choirboyfromhell
I would like you to read an article from New Directions the link is here : http://trushare.com/0155APR08/05call_to_a_priesthood.htm
Tell me whay you think of it.

M. Wharton:
It would seem obvious that Mrs. Mowbray had not heard properly her call. She seems happy in present situation, and does not require anybody else to ascribe to her beliefs, why do you?

I sing in an all-male choir on Sundays. I wouldn't even think that a choir of men and boys is a standard to uphold in the face of Anglicanism, it is just necessary for myself (and my tastes) to uphold a unique heritage and genre. I make no attempts at saying it is the only holy way to make music in a church. That's the difference between you and me Mark, it is a stylistic source of food for myself, and I don't presume to force it upon (or use it as an instrument of limiting) others.

Many years ago, when it was still an issue in TEC, I felt uncomfortable about women priests. I figured out that it was more about myself, and my personal tastes. On the other hand, my lack of knowledge, or more precisely, knowledge about the certainty of God convinced me of the question I needed to ask of myself was, who am I to judge a person's ability on just because of what is between their legs?

What is necessary for the individual is necessary for that individual alone.

And what do you think of this Mark Wharton?

http://www.redeemermorristown.org/

choirboyfromhell,
Thankyou for reading the article. I have now looked at the website and found it most interesting:
1) Why MLK why not liberation saint say, Maximilain Kolbe.
2) The communion for all: why should those not in communion with the faith be part of the greatest banquet on earth?
3) The grape juice and the no formal instruction:
the grape juice invalidates the Mass and it seems totally impractical to have no instruction.
3) The reading from a secular or non scriptural source seems pointless as we have Holy Scripture
4) Janet Morley is not a liturgist
5) The Nicene Creed is the faith of the Church catholic which this church seems to have very little interest in
6) A lay person cannot absolve a priest
7) The celebrant should receive communion first because the whole Mass is, among other things, a symbol of his servant hood, not just the administration.
8) The "Our Mother" is in direct contradiction to Jesus' command. "When you pray, pray, Father"
9) What does this mean "Contemporary Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services" mean and may I see a sample please?
10) The blessing of same sex partners is in direct contradiction with scripture and the faith.
I would like to ask this question “in what sense is the church of the redeemer Christian in the universal, catholic and faithful. Also do you have lay presidency at the mass?

Mark:

It was meant as a joke. Guess you take yourself too seriously and have too much time on your hands.

Then again, I would ask the question, why does this church, located across the globe and hundreds if not thousands of miles from both of us provoke such a reaction from you? Are you reacting to that "church" out in W. Texas with the same veracity? If not, why?

Go, go worship in your little world of male only (straight for sure) priests and just leave the rest of us alone. We'll leave a light on when you decide to grow up.

I am concerned about the whole Church because we do not act alone, but as a catholic body.
I fail to see why you need to be so aggressive; this is, however a hallmark of all liberalism.
Shalom.