God Changes People For Good

I found this little patch of blue sky waiting for me, amidst the rain clouds of yesterday, on MADPRIEST's blog

Tuesday, January 09, 2007
God Changes People For Good
(Ah! Now I see what they mean)

From icWALES:

One of the most prominent figures in the campaign against the ordination of women priests a decade ago has admitted he got it wrong. Carl Cooper, the Bishop of St Davids, was a leading light in the "no" camp in the early 1990s, but now admits that view was "inconsistent".

The Church in Wales voted against ordaining women priests in 1994, but the position was later reversed and this weekend sees the 10th anniversary of the ordination of the first female priests in Wales.

Bishop Cooper, then vicar of Dolgellau, was a vocal opponent of the move. But he said it was now appropriate for him to make clear he had changed his views.

He said, "While people who know me realise that I have been not just happy but rejoicing in the fact that I have been able to ordain a number of women, not everybody will know that. It might be appropriate to come clean a little more publicly."

Bishop Cooper, 46, said he now supported the idea of women bishops, currently impossible under the Church in Wales rules.

Perhaps surprisingly, he said it was the initial "no" vote in 1994 (it was reversed two years later) that began to plant doubts in his mind. He said, "I distinctly remember sitting in my seat in the governing body, and you might think that when you have argued for something and when your argument has carried the day you might be quite pleased, but actually the opposite was the case. I distinctly felt deflated, especially because I became acutely aware of the hurt and distress that the no vote caused to the many women in the church who clearly felt they had a vocation to the priesthood."

He came to see there were "inconsistencies" in the arguments against women priests, Bishop Cooper said, adding, "I ought to make quite clear that doesn't mean that any standpoint that I take from now on is faultless."

COMMENT: Sometimes I need to be reminded that it's not only bad people who get things wrong. Good people are just as prone to making mistakes. It seems clear to me that at that first debate, God touched the bishop's heart. He was "man" enough to accept his Lord's correction - I wonder if I would be.