New legislation to enable women to become bishops will be presented to the General Synod in July, the House of Bishops announced on Tuesday, after a two-day meeting at Lambeth Palace.
The Archbishops will set up a working group, drawn from all three Houses of Synod, its membership to be announced before Christmas. This group will arrange “facilitated discussion with a wide range of people with a variety of views” in the week of 4 February, when the General Synod was to have met.
Immediately after these discussions, the House of Bishops will meet and the elements of a new legislative package are expected to be decided at its meeting in May, in readiness for the July sessions.
One wonders: What part of the word [b]NO[/b] do these bishops not understand?
I wish they would put equal energy to reaching people with the Gospel. This does feel like rearranging deck chairs given other pressing needs.
I venture the following comment with trepidation, given that I am outside the Anglican fold. It is I think an Anglican problem in general and a Church of England problem in particular, that there is the belief that if only the grammar can be parsed more finely, the definitions made more general, the language crafted more ambiguously, then we will reach a point where everybody can be included and everybody can feel they belong and everybody will be happy. But we know that this is not always possible, that in real life there are forks in the road. I admire Anglicanism’s pastoral generosity, its honesty (even the open in-fighting; who knows what goes on behind the scenes in the Catholic Church?); this, it seems to me, is a church that treats its members as grown-ups. But there comes a time when endless flexibility does not win adherents but loses them, as people wonder where the solid foundation is on which they can build.
The measure will pass if the proponents are willing to continue the present provisions for those who dissent. But they are not willing to do so.
Exactly, #4.
This dopey member of Parliament, Ken Bradshaw doesn’t have a clue:
[blockquote] “They may have lost their last chance of getting reasonable safeguards, because the tide of opinion now seems to be ‘Let’s just have a simple Measure and pastoral voluntary organisation along the same lines as exists in all the rest of the Anglican Communion where they have women bishops.’ The opponents have, I fear, overplayed their hand very badly.” [/blockquote]
Really, Mr Bradshaw? So why then do women bishops remain illegal in the Church of England? Contemplate an awful possibility – that it is you and your cronies who have “overplayed your hand very badly”.
And you may yet do it again: if you had got what you most desired, women bishops with no provision whatsoever for those opposed, what do you think would have happened – liberal bliss? Not on your Nellie. Do you really think orthodox evangelicals and anglo-catholics don’t have plans for just that eventuality?
well stated Terry Tee, i couldn’t agree more.
i read in the Telegraph that some women voted against it.