Why won’t men in frocks let women wear the trousers?

From Scotland-

Check. Famine, pestilence and poverty undefeated? Check. Inequalities in life expectancy unresolved? Check. Global warming still rampant? Check.

With that kind of in-tray, what else would the General Synod of the Church of England find to furrow its brow for two days of internecine warfare but that burning issue of the day: women bishops. If God wasn’t so darned busy, she’d doubtless despair. What is it with these men in frocks that they won’t let women wear the ecclesiastical trousers? Heaven knows they spent long enough letting them tiptoe from the kitchen to the pulpit.

By the time some 32 female priests were finally ordained in Bristol in the mid-1990s, 14 were well on the way to retirement and one was about to meet her maker.

Yet lots of the boys in the black stuff were still very unhappy.

Many, many toys were flung from the evangelical wing’s prams. There were schemes for a sort of flying bishop corps who could swoop into dioceses contaminated by female ordination, so that no dissident member of a flock should be deprived that brand of clerical wisdom and pastoral care which can apparently be dispensed uniquely by men.

It wasn’t dressed up as anything so crass as misogyny of course. It was a matter of the highest learned and theological principle. As it should say in the good book: “Aye, right.” And the muttering went on when the numbers of women priests slowly rose until, good grief, there seemed to be hundreds of the besoms. Just as well a huge proportion of them couldn’t actually find paid employment.

But just as you finally get an axe through one stained glass ceiling, as if by magic another one appears above. The monstrous regiment of women priests might have got to first base, but promoted posts?

Forget it.

Female bishops? An outrage too far.

More here-

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/ruth-wishart/why-won-t-men-in-frocks-let-women-wear-the-trousers-1.1041178