I’m not quite sure how St Paul would have coped with a bishop who wears lipstick
If you did have a woman bishop
would she look like Anne Soupa, the Bible scholar who has applied to be
Archbishop of Lyons? The candidate description in 1 Timothy suggests
that “a bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant,
sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach … one that
ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all
gravity (for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he
take care of the church of God?)”
Dr Soupa has, it seems, one husband
and four children. But I’m not quite sure how St Paul would have coped
with a bishop who actually wears lipstick; I fancy he’d have taken a dim
view. But undeniably, Mme Soupa has a certain gravitas; she’s a
scripture exegete … and she’s 73, which is rather a good age to assume a
position of leadership, so, “not a novice”. as St Paul has it.
Trouble is, of course, that while there’s a case for women as deacons, based on their position in the early Church, there’s no such precedent for us to occupy positions equating to those of the apostles. We’d be talking about the successors to Lydia and Chloe, not to Sts Peter and Paul. And since the diaconate in the early church seems to have revolved around service, particularly in distributing alms to the poor, rather than being simply a precursor to the priesthood. I’m not sure than Dr Soupa would be entirely satisfied in that role.
So, is it the ordained ministry or bust for women of similar ambition? Be the Change, the organisation backing her bid, says that her initiative raises the possibility of a separation of the roles of governance and priesthood. In other words, does the head of a diocese have to be ordained? The question is pertinent, since so much of a bishop’s time is actually taken up with business. But if there were to be the equivalent of a CEO running a diocese, I can’t see the faithful viewing her, or him, as the real leader of the local church. What Dr Soupa seems qualified for is to preach and teach. Which, when you think about it, is what bishops in the early church did.
In general, I don’t buy the notion that women clerics are the answer to our present malaise. The Lutheran Church in Sweden has been wonderfully accommodating to the spirit of the age, ordaining women as bishops, including the first lesbian bishop, and where female ministers outnumber male. Yet Sweden is the country with the lowest proportion of believers … fewer than one in five is a Christian. In the Anglican churches, the ordination of women as bishops has done nothing to reverse the steady loss of communicants. What the Catholic Church does still have – though there are now vanishingly few in Britain and Ireland – are nuns … it was they who formed the young and who were visible figures of both service and authority. Successive abuse scandals involving female religious haven’t quite changed that. The nuns of Swaffham are to leave their convent because they are few in numbers and have little to do. If they could do what they’ve always done, catechising children, they could still be transformative.
It’s desperately sad that the Benedictines are to leave Downside,
following the separation of the monastery from Downside School. They
have occupied the site since 1814. I have friends who were at the school
and have warm memories of the monks, just as other friends benefited
from the presence of monks at Ampleforth.
There have been, of
course, abuse scandals in both schools, which is precisely why the
communities separated from them – at present, no monk is allowed a role
in the charity that runs Downside School. But this strikes me, here as
elsewhere, as a wrong response. It stigmatises good members of the
community and it deprives boys of examples of real holiness. The
solution to abusive relationships between monks and boys is not, I
think, segregation but awareness, and a culture that prioritises the
protection of the young.
At best, the presence of Religious in a
school gives the institution a Christian character that secular
leadership never quite replicates. Education has been a function of
monasteries from the earliest period; the severing of the link is a
tragedy. My son is 16. If I could have sent him to a school to be taught
by monks, I’d have been delighted.
Melanie McDonagh is senior writer at the London Evening Standard.
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