Mysoginists - "No room for them!"

With these words an angry lady flounced (and it was a most excellent flounce too!) away from the person she'd been engaged in conversation with and vanished from sight. It was a gradual vanish not one of those 'Poof! She's disappeared' vanishes like we get each year when we visit the pantomime. Although, that said it was a sort of pantomime that led up to the conversation she had I giess - we call it General Synod and the Beanstalk.

So there they were, our two combatants. One was an irate lady cleric and the other a frustrated Anglo-Catholic sort. One had been in the vicaring business for a fairly short time whilst the other was telling how they'd been doing the stuff for over twenty years. The former wanted women bishops (although I have to say she wanted it for someone else because on today's showing she'd be better off seeking a job as a lollipop lady (and I would definitely stop because she was frightening!). The latter wanted to have the right to believe as he'd been taught and believed when he was ordained and wish to continued to believe now.

"There's no room for people with your views," said she. "But there should and should be, "said he. There it was a stalemate. One believing they could continue to believe as they had been taught in the pews, in theological college and throughout his ministry and the other remained adamant that there was only one path.

I was saddened to see it and, not knowing either or them or ever likely to see them again, I was left more than just a little saddened. I know the arguments but where there is a theological understanding and where the teaching has drawn upon and supported this for such a long time; and where the issue is such a painful one for the other side, I can but wish to remove myself from the debate. I neither engaged in the conversation nor offered any support for either side but felt myself resolving that anything that brought such cruelty and vitriol just had to be more than a little wrong.

So. If you want to know whose side I find myself occupying I gave to say 'neither'. I Have come to a place where today's public demonstration of the passage, "See how these Christians loathe one another'," leaves me cold and withdrawn about the whole issue. We speak of us as a via media and seek to accept all - unless they are opposed to women as priests, bishops or whatever on theological grounds (and surely this, along with tradition' is the only condition that we should be caring and catering for?

It is all very sad.