Church at a Crossroads?

Women Bishops from USA, Canada, & NZ visiting England.


Today the Church of England published the Guildford Group's report. What's this report? Well it is from the Bishop of Guildford with regard to the synod of the CofE proposing that women should become bishops. Trouble is that quite a few of us don't believe in this novelty with regard to the Faith. However, we are in a minority so the Guildford Group was charged with coming up with some ideas. In a roundabout way they are saying like it or lump it!

Traditionalists want a third province to allow the continuation of the Faith as Anglicans have undestood it. The current hierachy of the CofE seems more concerned with the world's opinion rather than discerning what has been believed "by all in all places at all times".

We are being given the nod that a beefed up version of Flying Bishops is on offer. This is, at first glance, rather odd because it suggests that a parish would still have to recognise legally a woman as a bishop in order to petition for the new "Transferred Episcopal Arrangements". Under TEA, as illustrated in the report, parishes opposed to women priests and women bishops could opt, by resolution of a Special Parochial Church Meeting, for the Diocesan Bishop to request the Archbishop of the Province to arrange for episcopal ministry to be provided by a Provincial Regional Bishop (PRB). The PRB would exercise jurisdiction over such a parish in certain matters, while the diocesan bishop continued to exercise jurisdiction in others.

So the Diocesan bishop, if a woman, would still have some role in the life of a parish that could not accept female ordination as sacramentally valid. Fudge indeed!

Sad as it all is, and I realise the world outside the confines of this debate probably view it all with a curiosity verging on disbelief, the two elements of Anglicanism (traditionalists and liberal) are moving further away because the core understanding of the nature of the Faith is so different.

http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr0606.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4618780.stm

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