Monday, July 07, 2008

Welfare officer


On Saturday someone was speaking of the need to look after the welfare of those who cannot cope with women bishops. Bit different from the sort of job the old LCC welfare officers used to do

It is now well over 30 years since I was warned that my soon to be new boss had a problem working with women. His previous assistant had provided his first experience of working with such a strange being. When he was first told the news he actually wrote a formal submission to explain why, although he had no objections to the employment of women in principle, he thought he personally should be excused this imposition

Until the late 1980s I tended towards the view that, since we ought not to have priests anyway, I did not care if women could be ordained. But when the subject came up for serious discussion in the press & the synod, so much real misogyny of the really scary kind came out, in some really unexpected quarters, that I became a convert to the cause

Why did every Anglo-Saxon king need a bishop at his side?

It’s a power thing, stupid