A changing identity

With the go-ahead given on 12 July to the ordination of women bishops, the Church of England has in effect confirmed a decision it took two years ago. On the question of women bishops, as on that of homosexual priests, the Church of England and more generally the Anglican Communion, remain profoundly divided, with Anglo-Catholic parishes, dioceses and provinces contrary to the ordination of women in the Church and other more Protestant ones in favour. To this situation of crisis the Pope has given a response with his Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus, providing for personal Ordinariates to permit Anglican ministers and lay faithful to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, while preserving elements of the specific spiritual and liturgical Anglican heritage. On this situation SIR Europe has put some questions to Mgr. Andrew Faley, assistant general secretary with responsibility for ecumenism of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, who participated, as Catholic observer, in the Anglican Synod which ended in York on 13 July. What are the consequences of this decision?“The Church of England has demonstrated, with this vote, that it is increasingly thinking of itself as a Protestant Church. The decision it has taken goes to the very heart of its identity: the identity, namely, of the church it chooses to be. The Church of England sees itself as an ever more Protestant, Reformed Church which is distancing itself from the Catholic Church, and is increasingly less willing to accommodate those who remain attached to their Catholic roots”.What will now become of those Anglicans contrary to the ordination of women?“They will increasingly find themselves without any room for manoeuvre within their Church. When the Synod voted in favour of women priests in 1992, the idea was devised of independent (non diocesan) bishops for parishes opposed to them”. Is not a similar guarantee now possible for those opposed to women bishops?“This was the intention of the proposal that the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the two leading churchmen in the Church of England hierarchy, wanted to introduce with their amendment that the synod rejected on Saturday. Rowan Williams and John Sentamu asked that diocesan bishops be obliged to choose another male bishop to serve those parishes contrary to the ordination of women bishops”.In the light of the Synod, when are the first women bishops likely to be ordained?“The legislation, which regulates the way in which women bishops are to be introduced, will be presented to the various dioceses for further discussion and will then return to the Synod for final approval. I don’t think we’ll see ordained women bishops before 2014”.How do you think Anglican dioceses will react to this decision?“It’s difficult to say, because the dioceses vary a great deal; some are more catholic, others more evangelical, others occupy the middle ground. We should also bear in mind that a new General Synod will be elected in November 2010 and will meet for the first time in February of next year. This will be a significant change”.Why?“No one can predict what kind of Synod it will be. It could have a different composition than the present one. It might contain more delegates contrary to the ordination of women bishops. The General Synod is important because it’s there that the legislation is decided. The dioceses can only send in comments and, by voting for their representatives in the Synod, influence the process, but they have no right to change the legislation once it’s passed. The Church of England maintains that there will be a code of conduct to protect parishes contrary to the ordination of women bishops. One of the weak points of this Synod, however, was precisely the absence of the code of conduct. The committee of revision that drafted the legislation to introduce women bishops, for reasons of time, did not prepare the code and so we don’t yet know what it will contain”.Is it an adequate guarantee for those contrary to women bishops?“I don’t think so, because there exists no protection in the legislation itself of the kind that the Archbishop of Canterbury would have wished. The result is that those who are against women bishops will be sidelined and ever less tolerated within the church, also because the composition of the Church and of the Synod will change in favour of women and there will ever more frequently be women bishops; even the two senior archbishops could in future be women”.What impact will the vote of the Synod have on relations with the Catholic Church?“The Catholic position was clarified by Cardinal Kasper in his address to the bishops of the Church of England in 2006 and at the Lambeth Conference (which brings together all the provinces of the Anglican Communion every ten years) in July two years ago. ‘The Catholic Church does not think it has the authority to ordain women and when the Church of England decided to proceed with this ordination it distanced itself further in the Protestant direction’, said Kasper, who added: ‘the ordination of women in fact definitively blocks any possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church'”.When will an Ordinariate as provided by Anglicanorum coetibus be established?“An Ordinariate will undoubtedly be established, but when it is difficult to say, just as it is impossible to say how many members of the Church of England are thinking of becoming Catholics”.