In July 2010 the General Synod of the Church of England took yet another decisive step in the direction of enacting legislation that would make it possible for women to be admitted to the episcopate. At the same time General Synod declined to make any appropriate provision that would satisfy the consciences of those of us who cannot accept that such ordinations would be a legitimate development in the life of the Church. Some have already decided that they can no longer remain within the Church of England. We genuinely wish them Godspeed as, heeding the call of conscience, they embark on a new episode in their Christian discipleship. We, too, in similar obedience to conscience, seek, if at all possible, to remain faithful members of the Church of England and undertake to support all who seek to do likewise.
Even at this late hour we are seeking a way forward that would enable us with integrity to retain such membership. We are passionate in our commitment to the mission of the Church of England and urgently seek a settlement through which we would be free to play our part to the fullest measure. We believe this could be done by the formation of a society within the Church of England, overseen by bishops committed to our viewpoint. Such bishops would need, of course, the necessary ordinary jurisdiction that would enable them to be the true pastors of their people and to be guarantors of the sacramental assurance on which we all depend for our authentic sharing within the Body of Christ. Given that our parishes are also constituent parts of local dioceses we also understand that some way would have to be identified for sharing jurisdiction with the diocesan bishop. We understand it to be something of this nature that our archbishops were trying to achieve in their ill-fated amendment at the July meeting of the General Synod. That amendment, though narrowly defeated in the House of Clergy, was widely supported elsewhere in the Synod and, indeed, a majority of members supported it. It might well be that a revisiting of the archbishops’ proposals, with some further development of them, could still help our Church to find a way forward that enabled us all to remain faithful members of it.
One thinks it inevitable that in the Church of England the developed precedent about who can be admitted to holy orders will simply win out over the adverse feelings of anyone currently living, whether in holy orders or in the laity. In America, once the originally uncanonical (in 1976) ordinations of women began, diocesan and the national General Convention activists began to exert single-minded and unrelenting pressure to move as many women as possible into the episcopate. Activists expressed their politically correct pastoral compassion (that is, their PCPC) by saying that reactionaries would eventually go away or die off. The story of women’s ordination is most likely to end similarly in the Synod of the Church of England. And then, as in already the case with the Episcopal Church in America and the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of England will no longer be recognized globally as a genuinely intentional member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.
These should look to the “Camp Allen Bishops” for the future, HG, in addition to the history you note.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It has tributaries in England as well as the USA.