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Kate, I think you misunderstand what I wrote. The fault is undoubtedly mine. It is precisely because people leave the spouses of their youth and their children for some bimbo or lounge lizard and then, in ECUSA, get treated as if nothing has changed, welcomed to communion and the other sacraments, allowed to hold positions of authority, ordained, even to the episcopacy that what Fr. Toon says should be considered seriously. Divorced and remarried people should be barred from the sacraments unless and until they have repented and reconciled themselves to the Church. It won't cause an extinction. Orthodoxy has operated that way for 1400 years and we're growing! Divorced men should not be bishops, indeed, married men shouldn't be bishops. Priests should marry once, before ordination and never afterward.

As for women priests, I know there are arguments on both sides, most of those in favor of female ordination being just about as specious as you can get and little more than a spin on the ancient female diaconate which my Church established and has in Greece just reauthorized.

"As it stands now, I can't see why I ought to consider a divorced man with a trophy wife, who has left two wives and five children, to be superior to a fine, upstanding, celibate, devout woman, simply because the man has a penis. Which in the end is all that this argument amounts to."

Frankly, having been around at the time, it was a "women's rights" issue arising from the secular women's movement which lead to female clergy. It had virtually nothing to do with holy celibate women. I'm related to several of them...they are called monastics, nuns. The same movement also lead to an explosion in divorce in this country which ECUSA seems to also have embraced. That said, you are absolutely right that you should not embrace an adulterer of any kind for any position of authority in the Church. Which sort of makes Fr. Toon's point.

I am glad that you agree with me that men are not, inherently and regardless, superior to women in the leadership of the church. I remain unconvinced that NO woman is capable of leading the church, just the same as I remain convinced that we should not judge all working women by the large maajority who get pregnant and then want the 12,000 people in the firm where they work to center the business around "me and The Baby." Women ought to be judged as individuals, by what they do for the Church Universal and Triumphant -- not by whether or not they have the requisite genitals. And when you boil down most of the "Boy's Club" speeches against women taking positions of authority, that's where you end up.

As for "feminism" being to blame for the rise in divorce, I would call it rather "reaping the whirlwind" -- before feminism, the wife had to put up with the affairs and the second family, and pretend that nothing was going on. These days they split, although the young second and wife soon learns they're still married to the first wife and children, and the third even younger wife takes on both the other families.....