On Tuesday the long-awaited Rochester report will be published.
During October, Forward in Faith published its own proposals concerning the establishment of a “third province”, in a book entitled Consecrated Women? And those supporting women bishops also published a book The Call for Women Bishops.
The Church Times of 15 October covered this in some detail:
Forward in Faith offers third-province Measure
FiF rejects team option
Press on with women vote
CT editorial Contemplating a new province
The CT also published an extract from the first book A case not made.
The following week, the CT published an extract from the second book Forget pork pies.
There were also letters to the editor and a report of the FiF National Assembly, Be ready for ‘holy disobedience’, FiF told.
Today’s newspapers have several articles about the issue:
Observer Gaby Hinsliff and Jamie Doward Hewitt gives backing for female bishops
Sunday Times Christopher Morgan Anglicans told to accept women bishops or leave
TRADITIONALIST Anglicans have been warned by a senior bishop that they should consider leaving the Church of England if it backs the ordination of women bishops.
David Stancliffe, Bishop of Salisbury and a supporter of change, said it would be impossible to make special arrangements to cater for members opposed to women leading dioceses. Traditionalists would have to decide whether to accept women bishops or leave the church if they could not.
…Stancliffe said: “If this (ordaining women bishops) is the mind of the church, people will be faced with a choice whether to stay or leave. The present arrangements (of no-go areas for women priests) will no longer be able to hold.”
He believes that all the legislation to allow women bishops will be in place by 2008, with the first ordinations happening soon afterwards.
If the Anglican church in England votes in favour of women bishops my faith in God and Christianity will remain strong. However my respect for the modern church, which has already been damaged by it’s acceptance of women priests and by it’s tendency to grasp the coat tails of contemporary left wing political idealism (which, by definition, despises religion and the very concept of God), will have received it’s final death blow. I will not turn to Catholicism. I was born, and will remain, a Protestant. I will simply wait for something to emerge from the remnants of a church… Read more »