Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure

Tony Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Those gay men were all in the closet. The situation caused those women pain and many of them cried themselves to sleep on many nights during their ordination period. They believed that some people believed that they had no vocation and those people were prepared to use every means in the book to ram that home.

It is particularly ironic that, as one gay man walked in to be ordained bishop, he wore a mitre with the first word of the first Latin hymn on it—“Gloria”—because that had been his nickname at theological college, but he was not prepared to support the ordination of women priests or women bishops. That really rankled with me, because the battle for decency and the rights of all within the Church is a seamless garment—it does not distinguish between the rights of gay men and those of women in the Church.

So much time in so many ministries has been wasted when we could have had wonderful women ministers working in our churches. Did Teresa of Avila have no spiritual insight? Did Josephine Butler have no leadership or political acumen in the 19th century? Did Julian of Norwich have no felicity with language or theology? Of course these women had something phenomenal to offer, and it is extraordinary that people might think that those three aspects—spiritual insight, political leadership and theological insight, which are the foundation of the episcopacy—should not be recognised in women.

How bizarre it is that that should not be recognised in England. England had mitred abbesses sitting in Parliament in the 13th century. It of course had a succession of women monarchs, who were heads of the Church and who appointed bishops. For that matter, it has had a woman Prime Minister who also appointed bishops. It is a country in which women could be elected as a sexton or a church warden long before they could be elected to Parliament, yet we still thought that women could not be bishops. That flies in face of Galatians 3:28:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

I resigned my orders in 1996 to be able to stand for Parliament. For that matter, I resigned as a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Falconer—Charlie Falconer—because I wanted to advance the cause of women bishops, but was told that that was part of his area of responsibility and that I therefore could not introduce such a Measure in the House. I pay tribute to all Members of the House who have taken part in the debate. It is almost inevitable that my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) should do so; they have a semi-episcopal role, given there are Prince Bishops of Durham.

Anyone who ever doubts the Church’s ability to change should remember Cardinal Martini, a very senior Roman Catholic cardinal, who when asked in 1999 whether his Church would ever have women priests, said, “Not this millennium.” I am certain that it will happen in the Roman Catholic Church, just as it has happened in the Anglican Church. I want to end—

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend has heard the word “end”, I suppose. Yes, of course I will.

[Sir Tony Cunningham]

I remember a Catholic priest telling me that he was opposed to Anglicans turning away from their Church to become Catholics because of women priests, saying, “I wonder where they’ll go when there are Catholic women priests.”

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed. I want to end with two quotes from Dame Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century anchoress who played a very important part in the establishment of the Anglican spiritual tradition. She wrote:

“Our Saviour is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly born”.

We should never forget the spiritual insight of the feminine aspect of God, which runs all the way through the Old Testament and the New Testament. Secondly, in words that she could have said in the debate today, she wrote:

“But for I am a woman should I therefore live that I should not tell you the goodness of God?”

Of course she had the right to do so then, and of course women have the right to be bishops in the Church of England.