Chapter 34: Paige Katay’s Go Girl Ministry in the Sydney Anglican Diocese

The Sydney Anglican worm has turned! Paige Katay's brave defence of women's ministry in Sydney Anglican churches has overturned the corrupt merchants' tables in God's Temple. On the 18th February 2016, Paige Katay, a Meriden College student, proclaimed that the Bible is not sexist, and that Archbishop Glenn Davies has never said anything that restricts women's ministry in Sydney Anglican churches. Bravo, Paige! Paige has bucked the misogynist Sydney Anglican system: she has persuaded us that God wants women to be ordained as Anglican women priests to minister in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. 

Women priests have arrived, and they're staying. Via Paige, God has declared "GO GIRL!", revealed that the Bible imposes no limitations on women's ministry, and has ordained brilliant women preachers to serve the Sydney Anglican Diocese. Many Anglican women preach in Sydney, and their reasonable, inspired teaching and preaching, like Paige's teaching and preaching, is attentively heard. Last Sunday (21/2/2016) I witnessed a brilliant team of Sydney Anglican women lead the worship at St Barnabas' Church Broadway. Many women exercise powerful Christian leadership and management in Sydney Anglican churches, and the vast majority of Sydney Anglican men respect and defer to them, just as all Sydney Anglicans defer to Paige's reasonable judgement and proclamation. 

It is certainly a fact that Sydney Anglican parishes could not function without their current women leaders, administrators and managers. In fact, gender discrimination against women's priestly ministry in all its forms has fallen flat on it's face in the Sydney Anglican Diocese since journalists revealed how prejudiced churchmen exposed church women to domestic violence by endorsing rampant male misogyny. Ordained Anglican women priests from outside Sydney visit many Sydney parishes regularly, and Holy Communion has been celebrated by an Anglican woman priest (a senior Australian Defence Force military chaplain) in Sydney, without the heavens falling in. Sydney Anglican discriminative male dogmatism has collapsed in shame at its excessive hubris. The army of offensive Sydney Anglican male misogynists who invaded Sydney Anglican churches and dominated them for many years are definitely on the way out. However, they're kicking and screaming all the way down the nave to the church door. The Sydney Anglican Synod is still dominated by men who disagree violently with Paige. Their latest coward punch is to use indoctrinated, clearly good-hearted, but confused babes in arms as human shields.

Scared out of their wits by being consigned to misogynist hell and damnation by the community at large, these Sydney Anglican churchmen scrambled to rewrite their anti-women-priest dogmas. Rapidly backing away from their insistence on exclusively male church headship coupled with righteous male subordination of church women, they (and a cohort of well rewarded, subordained female deacons who have signed away their right to female priesthood) are now teaching two convoluted, unattractive red herring heresies about women's ministry that distract and confuse parishioners.

Complementarianism - otherwise known as Plugging the Gaps Ministry

Ironically, Sydney Anglican mob bosses couldn't find a word in the Oxford English Dictionary to describe it, so they invented a new buzzword - complementarianism. This convenient invention illogically asserts that trained and subordained women ministers, however capable, should do only what male ministers can't do, or don't want to do. Women get the ministry crumbs that fall under the table, the leftovers, and are supposed to lick them up gratefully. Like cleaning the church. It's so completely in tune with Vatican male misogyny that even Pope Francis is promoting it!

Egalitarianism - otherwise known as KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Ministry

This heresy involves replacing the word "equal" with "egalitarian", in order to control discourse about women's ministry. "Egalitarianism" is reductive, but the equality of women with men under God, preached by Jesus Christ, raises us all up to enjoy the riches of God's glory together. Egalitarian churches are anti-equality: the egalitarian church system reduces ministry to a lowest common denominator, promotes pseudo-ministry TAFE level adult education courses, and denigrates tertiary education in Christianity, reserving it for senior males. Egalitarian churches claim to honour women's ministry, while avoiding the issue of women ministers' equality with male ministers under God, and the right of women to be ordained to sacramental priestly ministry. Celebration of Holy Communion (Eucharist) is minimised and sometimes abandoned in egalitarian churches. Overworked, undereducated male and female Deacons carry out a greatly simplified public egalitarian ministry, while a selected caste of ordained male priests avoid the limelight, celebrate Holy Communion privately and regularly, and reserve all power to themselves and their selected, well paid, silent lay allies. This is the same system used by the Pharisees in Jesus' time on earth. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for parading themselves as holy and sinless, while condemning others to perpetual servitude.