A PRESSURE group which wants to see more women promoted in the Church of England has expressed its frustration at the slow pace of change.Women and the Church (WATCH) claim that although the Women’s Bishops Legislative Drafting Group has met nearly a dozen times, it will not bring a report to General Synod until July 2008.
The Chairman of WATCH, Christian Rees, said: “On one level, the women clergy have been taken to the heart of the Church and are loved and appreciated by the people they serve, but on the official level, many women feel that there is still a question mark over their status as priests until they are also accepted as bishops.”
She added: “This situation is undermining, dispiriting and corrosive and I am continually amazed at how positive and committed most women priests are in the light of having their validity and acceptability as potential bishops openly discussed as if they were an unknown and alien species.” WATCH claim that some women are so disillusioned with the Church of England that they are seeking refuge in the Roman Catholic Church.
They give the example of a senior Roman Catholic priest, Fr Michael Seed, who helped two Church of England clergywomen to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. Fr Seed said they left the Church of England because ‘they were tired of being treated like dirt in their own Church.’
A press officer for Manchester Diocese said that Bishop Nigel McCulloch — who heads the Women’s Bishops Legislative Drafting Group — did not wish to comment on the matter.
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