The Church of England washes its hands of traditional Anglo-Catholics

By Damian Thompson
November 15th, 2009

Conservative Anglo-Catholics, your time is up. As my colleague Jonathan Wynne-Jones reports, the General Synod committee charged with looking after opponents of women bishops has ruled out the idea of dedicated male bishops to safeguard traditionalists.

The logic of the decision makes perfect sense to me. The C of E has the legal authority to decide whether to ordain women priests and bishops. Having acquired that authority, it voted to ordain women priests in 1992 and will now take the obvious step of raising women to the episcopate. Anglo-Catholics lost the battle to stop this happening 18 years ago; for a time they were allowed to cover their eyes and pretend that women priests had nothing to do with them, but with the arrival of the first women bishops they will have to take their hands away from their faces, look around, and make up their minds whether to go or stay. Actually, many Anglo-Catholics have quietly decided that they can accept ordained women, and have tiptoed out of Forward in Faith and into Affirming Catholicism. The C of E certainly need not worry about the disappearance of bells and smells: women are just as adept at swinging a thurible as men. the rest