The Catholic group in the Church of England’s General Synod has
called for traditionalists to stay, claiming that they have the numbers
to ensure provisions for objectors to women bishops.
Led by Canon
Simon Killwick, the group claims that a reshuffle in the Church of
England’s legislative body means that Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals
could successfully oppose legislation on women bishops in 2012 unless it
is amended to meet their demands.
They hope to establish a rival
organisation to the Personal Ordinariate offered by the Pope, through
which Anglicans can convert in groups while retaining their distinctive
patrimony and practices, including married priests.
The
Ordinariate could be established as early as January. The new structure
will resemble a military diocese, under the authority of an ordinary
without geographical boundaries beyond the local bishops’ conference.
The
Rt Rev John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, last week told members of
the Forward in Faith national assembly in London that he intended to
resign by the end of the year and join the Ordinariate. He also said he
was remaining chairman of Forward in Faith, the largest umbrella group
for Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England.
He said: “I have
decided that I intend to resign as the Bishop of Fulham before the end
of the year. This is to facilitate my replacement. I’ve talked to the
Bishop of London and he intends to replace me.”
He said he
expected had he would stay on as chairman of Forward in Faith
International, but added: “I am not retiring, I am resigning. Secondly, I
expect that I will enter the ordinariate when it is established.”
Groups
of Anglicans hoping to take up the ordinariate proposed in Pope
Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus were urged
to contact Auxiliary Bishop Alan Hopes of Westminster.
The Forward
in Faith meeting was held two weeks after St Peter’s church in
Folkestone, Kent – in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s own diocese –
became the first Anglican parish to opt to join the Ordinariate as a
group. St Peter’s Parochial Church Council, which consists of
churchwardens, the parish priest and elected representatives of the
congregation and constitutes the governing body of a parish, voted to
join the Ordinariate.
Meanwhile the Society of St Wilfrid and St
Hilda, set up last month with the backing of senior Church of England
bishops, will offer a structure which closely resembles the Catholic
ordinariate.
The society will not have women priests or bishops or
geographical boundaries and its members will obey their own bishop
rather than fall under the authority of the local diocesan bishop, if
the General Synod accepts amendments.
Instead of being in
communion with the Pope members will be in communion with the Church of
England, even if its members consider sacraments performed by women
priests invalid.
Canon Killwick said: “There are a number of
people who, whatever the General Synod does, will join the ordinariate
and the Bishop of Fulham is one of them. But I think the majority of
Anglo-Catholics are looking to remain within the Church of England and
appropriate changes to be made for them to do so.
“This [society] has the potential to make it possible to remain.”
He
said that recent elections to the Synod’s House of Laity and the House
of Clergy mean that they no longer have the two thirds majorities needed
to push through women bishops without approving the new structure too.
He
said the new situation meant that the Synod’s House of Bishops “is
clearly going to have to amend the legislation” on women bishops “or it
won’t go through”.
“Our primary aim is not to be awkward and block
things but to offer a constructive way forward,” said Canon Killwick,
the vicar of Christchurch in Moss Side, Manchester. “The society is
intended to be for bishops, priests and lay people. I imagine it would
be possible for parishes as a community to join as well. We would be
looking for bishops of the society to have episcopal authority for
parishes which request it.”
Plans for an English Ordinariate
gathered pace after the General Synod in July rejected a compromise
proposed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr John
Sentamu, the Archbishop and York, and pressed ahead with plans to
ordain women bishops by 2014 without satisfactory structural provision
for conscientious objectors.
A spokesman for the Catholic bishops
said no timetable had been agreed on the establishment of an
Ordinariate.
He said the bishops were awaiting confirmation from the
Vatican that there was sufficient interest in the offer before an
Ordinariate could be set up.
SIC: CHO/UK