On the Square Today

Wesley J. Smith on the high price of establishment :

I happened to be in London when the Church of England voted to reject female bishops. The verdict came as quite a surprise. Women have been ordained as priests in the Church for twenty years, and allowing them to become bishops would certainly seem to be the next logical step. Twelve years of negotiations between “reformers” and “traditionalists”—apparently a way of life in the C of E—had culminated in a compromise under which dissenting parishes not wanting to be under the authority of a female primate could request hierarchal supervision by a male. Both the soon-to-retire Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and his about-to-be-installed successor, Justin Welby, energetically advocated for the reform. In the run up to the vote, most commentators believed that the resolution allowing woman bishops would receive the General Synod’s overwhelming support.

Also today, Kevin M. Clarke on what the Pope really said about Christmas :

The Pope’s new book,  Infancy Narratives , was released on November 21. The day’s headline of the  Daily Mail ? “Killjoy Pope crushes Christmas nativity traditions: New Jesus book reveals there were no donkeys beside crib, no lowing oxen and definitely no carols.” CNN’s online story followed suit. The  New York Daily News  repeated the claim about the animals, adding not that the pope agreed with some historians on an earlier dating of the birth of Christ but that “the Christian calendar has Jesus’ birth year wrong, Pope Benedict XVI claims in a new book.”