<\/p>\n
The other day I made a post on this blog about a Canadian I am a priest in the Episcopal Church in the US. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Personally, I would rather have my <\/p><\/blockquote>\n My response to Lydia<\/b><\/p>\n <\/b>The dictionary defines a priestess as a female priest. It’s a perfectly good In any case, As for the Catholic Church being Statistically speaking, Catholic Gross <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day I made a post on this blog about a Canadian woman priest giving Communion to a dog. A reader of the Communio blog, Lydia wrote to me saying: I am a priest in the Episcopal Church in the US. The Anglican Communion does not have priestesses. I am sure that you know that. Perhaps you … Continue reading Responding to an Episcopal priest on giving communion to a dog<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1905,1880,2338],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwoman priest giving Communion to a dog<\/a>. A reader of the Communio blog, Lydia
\nwrote to me saying:<\/p>\n
\nThe Anglican Communion does not have priestesses. I am sure that you know
\nthat. Perhaps you are just being sarcastic.<\/p>\n
\nChurch known for giving communion to a dog than for the fact that many of my
\npriests molested children, in countries all over the world, and that
\nmy Bishops did all that they could to ignore complaints about the abuse,
\nto hide the problem, and to protect the offending clergy.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nEnglish word; in fact, the Anglican C.S. Lewis wrote an essay called, “Priestesses
\nin the Church.” If the word “priestess” has a strangely non-Christian
\nsound, perhaps that is because in churches that claim apostolic succession,
\nthere is no precedent for female priests. As Lewis pointed out, there have been
\nmany religions with female priests (priestesses), but these religions are very
\ndifferent from Christianity as it has been known for 20 centuries.<\/p>\n
\nthe word “deaconess” is not considered offensive, so why should
\n“priestess” be so considered? If masculine imagery for divine transcendence
\nneeds to be balanced by feminine imagery of divine immanence, why not say that
\npriest and priestess together represent the divine more fully, like Yin and
\nYang? My impression is that many modern Anglicans (including women
\nclergypersons) think on those lines. So why fight about the sound of a word
\nwhen its substantive meaning is considered OK?<\/p>\n
\n“known for” molestation of children and minors: well, the Anglican
\nChurch in Canada and Australia has been racked by similar problems, particularly
\nin residential schools, with some dioceses being nearly bankrupted. I am saddened
\nby the Anglicans’ troubles since the attacks on their schools is an indirect
\nform of anti-Christian persecution at the hands of a hostile state. As such,
\nthis abuse hysteria threatens us all because it is premised on the assumption
\nthat the sins of a few abusive clergy should be avenged on the entire Body of
\nChrist. In the case of any other group besides the clergy, this would be
\nconsidered unjust prejudice and overreaction.<\/p>\n
\npriests are no more likely to molest than ministers of other religions; it’s
\njust that we are a much larger church and that our dioceses are legally set up
\nas a corporation sole, thus inviting crippling lawsuits and lots of bad
\npublicity. That said, I do agree that we Catholics are not in a position to
\ncast any stones on the sexual abuse issue. And so this blog has not done so.<\/p>\n
\nliturgical abuses and irreverence are a different sort of issue. These
\nliturgical-sacramental aberrations are public acts done in an official
\ncapacity, not secret sins or obvious crimes. And, in fact, I do emphatically
\ncriticize and abhor similar liturgical abuses among Catholics and wish that
\nmore Catholic parishes had the reverence and decorum to be found in many
\nhigh-church Episcopal parishes. It’s not a matter of either side of the
\nReformation divide being free of sin or failure: it’s just that without an
\nauthoritative center of communion and teaching and practice, Anglicanism can’t
\neasily set any parameters for legitimate diversity within itself. And
\nArchbishop Williams himself would sadly admit that that is unfortunately the
\ncase.