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Not every moose needs a flying squirrel

Oh to be a Moose...but not here, oh definitely not here! Thank you for your Monday letters, I have enjoyed them all, but this one particularly tickled me. Your service is invaluable...and not just to me.

Christine Downey
Christ Church Gananoque and Church of the Redeemer Rockport
Gananoque, Ontario, CANADA
8 October 2012

 

It gave me a good chuckle but also made me rather sad to read your suggestion that those within the Anglican church who insist on treating women as second class citizens should consider becoming a Moose Lodge instead (no criticism of the worthy work they do intended).

Thankfully here in Canada we do have women Bishops and very fine, caring, intelligent episcopal leaders they are. The church would be a much poorer place without them. Strangely enough the sky did not fall in when they were consecrated either.

We wonder why church attendance is decreasing and why young(er) people find us increasingly irrelevant. Well, our world is torn apart by war, we are poisoning our environment with each passing day, the poor are getting poorer and more desperate and here is our church tearing itself apart squabbling about whether women should be bishops, whether gay people should be ordained and who will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Navel gazing at its worst.Give me strength...........it makes me want to join the Moose Lodge........oops can't do that, being a woman and all...........

Sheila Robson
All Saints Whitby
Whitby, Ontario, CANADA
8 October 2012

I enjoy your page every week (it's the first thing I see in my browser) but I don't think I've laughed so hard at your essay in a long time. It is priceless - to say nothing of the wonderful juxtaposition of the pictures. I needed a good laugh, and this will provide me with one all week.

Thank you for your humor, common sense, and constant calling us to reason

Christine Gilson
Trinity - El Dorado
El Dorado, Kansas, USA
9 October 2012

I disagree with your leading article and the validity of your analogy. Surely there is a place for organisations solely for women (e.g. most Anglican women's groups except for the Mothers' Union that now allows for male members, the women's "masonic" body, The Order of the Eastern Star, and here The Country Women's Association, etc). But so too there is surely a place for men only activities such as men's breakfasts or dinners at church, and for men only organisations such as the Anglican Men's Society, Freemasons (which do a great deal of wonderful charitable work), and men's Probus Clubs in the US and Australia and elsewhere that happily exist alongside women's Probus Clubs and mixed Probus Clubs. Over 22 years as Rector of a working class parish, I know our healthy congregation had a good number of men, but a considerable number of other men came mainly only when our Sunday Evensong (still maintained over those years) was followed by a men's dinner and speaker.

On the bigger issue, I think our Church should be broad enough to include clergy and lay-people, in many place the majority, who support the ordination of women to one or more of the three orders of Anglican/Episcopal ministry but also those who do not on conscientious biblical and theological grounds, however offensive their opposition may be to some (though not accepting opposition that arises out of ugly misogyny or an unwillingness to debate on rational and Scriptural grounds) and to make sensible provision for them. Liberals as well as conservatives can be intolerant of those with whom they disagree as recent US Episcopal history (with some notable eirenic exceptions) indicates.

I hope we are broad enough also for those who while keenly supporting ordained women's ministry, do not want to see in the Church what has happened in most of our primary schools and banks, very few male teachers and very few male tellers - nor a Church that is generally "feminised" - repelling men in unnecessary ways from its services, but rather a Church with an important place for all its members. In this regard, David Murrow raises some important points in his book, "Why Men Hate Going to Church" (Nelson Books, 2005).

The Revd John Bunyan
St John the Baptist's, Canberra, King's Chapel, Boston, and Pitt Stree
Campbelltown, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA
9 October 2012

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