[Telegraph] 4 Jul 2008--The Church of England has already decided to consecrate women bishops, even though the General Synod vote will not occur until Monday. It is odd that the same hierarchy that so fervently desires this innovation is the one that for decades devoted so much energy and zeal to effect an ecumenical rapprochement with Rome.
The consecration of bishops, following the ordination of women 16 years ago, has put an end to that hope. It just shows that, for all their talk of the primacy of theology and of church unity, they will ditch any doctrine if it conflicts with their higher, secular dogmas of feminism and egalitarianism.
Thus we see that the Church always follows secular trends – only, like some prince consort, one dutiful pace behind. Anyhow, when it was decided to vote on women bishops, the General Synod agreed that in the event of a “Yes” it would create Transferred Episcopal Arrangements to guarantee a permanent place in the Church for traditionalists who cannot accept the authority of a female episcopacy.
These arrangements, it was declared, would be firm and fair: traditionalists would retain real authority within an alternative hierarchy acceptable to them.
Now this agreeable arrangement is being sidelined because the feminists and the egalitarians have ganged together to propose a one-clause motion saying that women shall be consecrated bishops with no concessions to traditionalists.
The groups who have banded together to devise this ruse to isolate the traditionalists are mainly from two powerful cliques in the Church: Affirming Catholicism (the Rowan Williams groupies) and Women and the Church. Traditionalists are disappointed and upset.
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