Forward in Faith thanks the many members of the Catholic Group in General Synod, together with other supporters, for their excellent contributions to yesterday’s debate.
Naturally, we are very disappointed that none of the amendments which would have ensured secure provision for those unable to receive the ministry of women as bishops and priests was passed. However, we are encouraged by the significant minorities, especially in the House of Laity, which did vote for such provision. We are confident that these votes, and the commitment which they represent on the part of many to a genuinely inclusive Church of England, in which all may flourish, will not be overlooked as the process moves forward. The alternative, which we would deeply regret, would be to pursue unsatisfactory legislation, lacking the necessary breadth of support, with the strong risk of ultimate defeat.
Another reason I was out the door.
Here in America where all the oxygen has been sucked out of Anglo-Catholicism, the provisions of the Ordinariate are looking more and more attractive to me. Meanwhile the CofE seems more and more Protestant, even though physically it still possesses “all the vain things that charm me most.” Lead kindly, Light.
I have never fully understood the breakdown of the Oxford movement once it hit American shores. It really lost so much and because “smells and bells” for its own sake, as if it divorced itself from the idea that doing all this “high church” stuff was to give the poor a taste of the Kingdom of God and the riches of the Church to which they were a part.
Thinking out-loud here… but I wonder if the “breakdown” on American shores had less to do with the “smells and bells” and more with a rejection of anything that echoed a type of theology that appreciated conveying a sense of “unifying authority”? After all, having women bishops may be nothing more than the rejection that ministry (episcopacy) that was/is supposed to be universal and unifying. Women in the episcopacy certainly is not achieving that said end or goal but rather just the opposite. This new “thing” is symptomatic of the hemorrhaging going on in the Communion as a whole.