Religion

In Papua New Guinea, no one dies from natural causes except, perhaps, some foreigners. At least, that is what every islander believes. Even a lifelong active Christian such as Mr Justice Narakobi’s mother, on her deathbed, attributed her fatal asthma to sorcery.

On page eleven of this book, Australians are called an engagingly innocent people ‘splendidly unthinking of anything but the simplicities of affluent living.’ On page twelve, they are called ‘lazy and uncreative’. On page 311, the author writes: ‘Yet in spite of a widespread belief (mainly self-generated) that we are a nation of yahoos, we have as much capacity for some unique kind of greatness as the people of any other race and nation.’

‘Women as clergy ... would be comparable to offering a meat pie on the altar of God.’ The Rev. Ian Herring, Victoria, 1971.

That is not the isolated view of a raving misogynist. The 1968 Lambeth Conference heard the now Anglican Primate of Australia, Marcus Loane, say that the admission of women into the priesthood would sound the ‘death knell’ of men’s interest in the Church. Just like a public bar.

And at Lambeth this year, 200 Anglican bishops were billeted 2 km away from their wives, so that they could more easily ‘wait upon God’.

The established Churches, like all our political institutions, have tenaciously guarded their rituals and hierarchies from female intrusion.