That’s enough flannel about women bishops

 
Bishops
10 July 2012
WEST END FINAL

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The Church of England has agonised for 12 years about whether to ordain women as bishops and at last has come to a decision, viz, to put the whole thing off until November. Or possibly February, so the new Archbishop of Canterbury can get to grips with the question. (And you wonder why there aren’t any outstanding candidates?)

The proponents of women bishops, you see, are hugely exercised by the opt-out clause in the deal. That allows opponents of women’s ordination to call on bishops for their parishes who are not only male but have been ordained by men.

There aren’t many of these parishes: think very camp Anglo-Catholics, or evangelicals with strong views about women ordering men about. But these harmless dissidents are enough for the would-be women bishops to refuse to play. Nope. If they’re not going to be ordained on their own terms, they won’t be ordained at all. There are so many occasions when life calls out for Trollope, and this is one of them.

I’ve got no business, myself, getting involved, given that I’m a Catholic and we don’t actually believe that any of them are properly ordained. But I do get a bit restive when I hear the likes of the Rev Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, one of the many media-friendly female clerics, declaring that “the whole point of having women bishops was to say that the Church of England believes that women and men are equal and made in the image of God. I do not want it enshrined in law that we officially do not believe that.” Hang on there. Our lot don’t have women bishops either but I’ve never had any problems on being made in the image of God, thanks all the same, Miranda.

The whole thing is preposterous, and not just for unbelievers who can’t quite get their heads around the notion that this is being debated at all. The point of the C of E is that it’s recklessly inclusive, a national church that seems incapable of turning anyone away. You can have ordained Anglican clergy who believe that God was made man and born of a virgin and those who can’t quite buy the Virgin Birth. You can have bishops who believe in the Resurrection and those who believe it is true in a very real sense, ie, not at all.

I would have said once that the only thing that actually unites the Anglican communion is a belief in God but that was before the Right Rev Richard Holloway came along, the former primus of the tiny Scottish Episcopal Church, who couldn’t make his mind up about it.

And with this extraordinary latitude on the things that actually count, the one thing they’re going to make a stand on is women bishops? Christ.

Fancy a bath for art’s sake?

There’s a treat in store at the National Gallery: as a modern take on Titian’s Diana and Acteon, artist Mark Wallinger is installing a proper bathroom right next to the Titian, and has recruited real women called Diana to sit in the bath for a couple of hours at a go.

Titian’s picture showed Diana bathing, being surprised by the hunter Acteon. In the contemporary version, members of the public will be invited to peep through the keyhole at real naked Dianas: voyeurism, old and new, don’t you see?

I expect there’ll be no shortage of art lovers anxious to participate in this exercise but does the experiential bit go far enough? Diana’s response to Acteon seeing her naked was to turn him into a stag and set his own dogs on him. For the full effect, the modern voyeurs could be chased off the premises by curators baying like hounds.

A Timon for hard times

You can’t fault the National Theatre for not tapping into the national mood. Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens kicks off tonight with Simon Russell Beale in the title role: all about the consequences of living above your means. Ring any bells?

Timon lives high on the hog, bailing out anyone who needs it. And when it turns out that he’s been spending money he doesn’t possess — ding ding! — he calls on his erstwhile friends for help. They refuse, and in a misanthropic sulk he goes and eats roots in a cave.

There can’t be many people, self included, who will listen to his servant, Flavius, who could see it all coming, without a pang: “He commands us to provide, and give/ Great gifts, and all out of an empty coffer. Nor will he know his purse ... his promises so fly beyond his state, that what he speaks is all in debt.”

Yep, we’ve been there. But it would have been more helpful — don’t you think? — if this had been staged in 2007, not 2012.

Crying foul on Games figures

Just £2.4 billion. This is the figure, folks, that we need to keep in mind whenever anyone talks about an Olympic “underspend”. (Indeed, people such as Ed Balls have already come up with suggestions for how to spend the underspend.) That £2.4 billion was the original estimate at 2012 prices of how much the Olympics would cost. The figure on the back of which Tessa Jowell sold the Games to a sceptical nation.

Seventeen days to go and the official estimate is now £9.3 billion, though the real cost is anyone’s guess. According to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, it could be, oh, half a billion less; according to the Commons public accounts committee it’s probably £11 billion. Either way, it’s over three times more than £2.4 billion. Remember that.

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