ANY HOPE of the Catholic Church recognising Anglican religious orders have been dashed by the consecration of women bishops, the head of the Vatican’s office for relations with other Christians told Anglican bishops attending the 10-yearly Lambeth Conference.<\/p>\n
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said he wanted to be “clear about the new situation in our ecumenical relations”, and said: “The ordination of women to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church.” The Anglican bishops were unsurprised by the cardinal’s words and acknowledged in their final document that other Churches were “bewildered by apparent Anglican inconsistency”. Disappointed by the fruits of formal dialogue with Rome, the bishops suggested in their document of reflections from the conference that “the future of ecumenism should be from the bottom up, not the top down. However, whatever we do at local level must accord with dialogue at the top.”<\/p>\n