Posted on 07/11/2005 5:28:53 PM PDT by sionnsar
Forward in Faith UK welcomes the recent call by seventeen bishops for the Church of England to engage with the issues raised in the Rochester Report on women in the episcopate in free and frank debate. We are encouraged that the names of bishops who ordain women are included in that list.
It was to contribute to that debate that a working party set up by Forward in Faith published the best-selling Consecrated Women?
In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury ‘There is an obvious problem in the consecration of a bishop whose ministry will not be readily received by a significant proportion of Christians in England and elsewhere’. The internal, inter-Anglican and ecumenical consequences of the appointment of bishops who can no longer be a focus and sign of our unity need to be weighed carefully.
Of course, there are those who believe that the decision to ordain women to the episcopate was effectively taken in 1992. The anomaly of excluding from the House of Bishops those who had been admitted to the presbyterate was one which we pointed out at the time. It was, however, an anomaly with which the proponents of the ordination of women were content to live, and which received the support of the Synod. It is up to them to make a cogent case for abandoning that position now.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
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