“Although the ordination of women bishops in the Church of England would undoubtedly create an additional major obstacle to any future full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and might further impair the degree of communion already existing, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales remain committed to maintaining as much unity as possible with the Church of England”. That’s one of the premises made at the beginning of the document written by the Department of Dialogue and Unity of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, in response to the “Rochester Report” on Women Bishops on which the Church of England has long been working (since 2004) with the prospect of removing the existing obstacles that, even within the Anglican Communion, prevent women from gaining access to the episcopate. The question was at the centre of the work of the last two Synods of the Church of England. It is hoped that a decision will be reached in the early months of 2006. The work group that drew up the “Rochester Report” also included two “ecumenical representatives”: one for the Catholic Church, the Rev. Anthony Barratt; and one for the Methodist Church, the Rev. Richard Clutterbuck. In its preface, the Report invited the ecumenical partners to send in their reflections on the document. The Department of Dialogue and Unity of the English Bishops’ Conference accepted this invitation and presented its observations in October. Both in tone and content, the document in which it does so is more an open letter than a “theological” document. The English bishops in fact do not dwell on Catholic doctrine: “Some of our reflections they explain simply echo notes of caution already contained in the text of the Report”. According to the Catholic Department, opening the way to the ordination of women as bishops would in fact be too great a risk for the Church of England to take, given the existing difficulties or the fact that the “the strong opposition to the decision to ordain women as priests” has not yet abated.
