Converitavie ANglicans want church within Church of EBNgland if WOmen BEcome Bihsops

The Church of England is in danger of "shattering" into thousands of stained-glass pieces if women are ordained as bishops, its governing body was warned this morning.

Members of the General Synod urged church leaders to postpone a decision on women bishops until more detailed proposals could be drawn up on how to care for opponents.

More than 1,300 clergy are threatening to leave the Church if women are consecrated to the episcopate without legislation enacted to protect them.

The Anglo-Catholic wing wants a special, extra-geographical diocese or province created as a woman-bishop and woman-priest free zone, to preserve the Church's apostolic tradition of a male-only priesthood. On Monday the synod, meeting in York, will vote on a proposal to consecrate women bishops with a voluntary code of practice to protect the place of traditionalists in the Church.

The issue threatens to divide the Church even more deeply than the vote to ordain women priests in 1992.

About 450 clergy left then, of which many joined the Roman Catholic church and a few subsequently returned to the Anglican fold.

 

 

Church of England faces ruin over women bishops