(This was written 4 days after the failed vote for women bishops in Nov 2012 - I just didn't publish it straight away)
On Tuesday the Church I love broke my heart.
To add insult to injury it broke the heart of many others, female and male, lay and ordained, who had worked so hard, prayed so faithfully and waited so long for that day when the Church of England would finally affirm the unqualified "made-in-God's-image-ness" of one half of the world's population.
It has been a really tough week with lots of tears and anger. LOTS of tears and anger...
Today, something is making it even worse. It is the gradual clamour of voices - often female - who are saying things like:
The response to the women bishops thing is just a bit hysterical...
It won't do any good throwing a tantrum about it...
The best way to deal with all this is prayerfully and silently...
Let's try and be Christian about all this...
We're called to serve our parishes so rather than protesting, the best thing is to obey that call go out and do our job really well...
And so the pain women need to express, the anger women need to voice, the truth women need to tell (and quite frankly, the pain, anger and truth our Church needs to understand) are silenced as somehow how "not good", "not Christian" and "not priestly".
I have two problems with this.
Firstly it shows truly dreadful pastoral skills. To someone expressing grief, would you tell them to pull themselves together and stop being hysterical? Would you presume to tell someone who had been badly hurt - "well, now, I think it's time you got over that and got back to normal"? After four days? Would you condemn anger against any other form of injustice as being "not Christian"? I sincerely hope not.
Secondly, it shows a biblical illiteracy that is frankly quite frightening. Go and read the Psalms, the prophets, the gospels - see how God's messengers and then Godself deal with pain and brokenness. Read the psalmist's anger and despair, hear the prophets wild accusations and threats, watch the Son of God rage at the religious systems and throw over tables in the Temple.
Now tell me that my pain, anger and truth-telling aren't Christian or priestly.
I am sorry if my emotions make you feel uncomfortable. (They aren't much fun for me either!) However, I am called to be a Christian, and that is not - and will never be - a call to be "nice". My calling is to be truthful and to be loving so that in truth and in love I may convey the good news of Jesus Christ. Sometimes, the loving bit needs to outweigh the truth bit - and, let it be known, I do that a lot. But sometimes the truth takes precedence. Sometimes it is loving to be truthful.
This is one of these times.
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