Today the General Synod is voting on the proposal to allow women to ascend to the office of Bishop. However the vote is not that straight forward. As this is a contentious issue, there has been 'tinkering' with the proposal and amendments have been added. One of the amendments has the effect that it enshrines sexual discrimination into Law. This will give people the right not to believe that a woman bishop has the same authority as a male bishop. This could have the consequence of priests being ordained by a woman bishop not being an acceptable parish priest. And if that priest ascended to the rank of bishop, there would be some that believe that he did not have the authority to ordain other priests. Every priest and bishop would have to carry a 'pedigree' of every member of the Church so that certain people can be assured that their authority to practise has not been 'contaminated' by the absence of a Y chromosome.
The whole problem has arisen from the problem that Jesus' disciples were all men. However, if you think of the context, it was an androgynous society, only men were allowed to preach, so that the only way God could get his message across was to make Jesus male, and an all male disciple-ship. If Jesus was born into a different type of society, we might not be having this discussion at all, or even having the opposite discussion!
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