Conger

The Governing Body of the Church in Wales has declined to authorize women bishops.

Support for the women bishops fell short of the constitutionally required two thirds majority at the meeting of the Church’s synod in Lampeter on April 2. Although all six bishops voted in favour of the bill and the measure passed in the lay order 52-19, it fell short of the two thirds margin in the clergy order, 27-18.

A bill providing for “pastoral care and support” for opponents of women bishops through the “ministry of an assistant bishop” or flying bishop was also defeated, 48-71.

The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the rejection of the women bishops bill, but noted he had the consolation of seeing the flying bishops bill go down to defeat. Had the flying bishops’ amendment passed, it was likely the women bishops bill would have “sailed through.”

However, that “would have meant us, as supporters, compromising our principles, which we were not prepared to do,” he said.

The Bishop of Monmouth, the Rt. Rev. Dominic Walker said that enshrining flying bishops in the church’s canons would undermine the ministry of any future woman bishop. An assistant bishop for recusants who did not recognize the episcopal orders of a woman bishop was an ecclesiological impossibility as it fractured the collegiality of the house of bishops.

The Provincial Assistant Bishop of Wales, the Rt. Rev. David Thomas questioned the House of Bishops inaction in appointing his successor. While he was scheduled to retire in July, the House of Bishops had so far been silent on providing a new flying bishop for traditionalists.

The chairman of Credo Cymru/Forward in Faith Wales, the Rev. Alan Rabjohns said the Governing Body’s failure to pass the bill lay in “trying prematurely to foreclose the period of reception and refusing to clarify the nature of the provision for opponents contained in the original bill, when the constitutional provision contained in the amended bill had been ruled out.”

“This led to some of those who would not have voted against the Bill in the ordinary way of things to say that without even a modicum of fairness and justice they could not support it,” he said.

“Like this Bill, the Bill to ordain women to the priesthood was initially defeated, but it came back to the Governing Body and was passed 11 years ago,” Dr. Morgan said. But this was not “the end”. “It will not go away and it will not be ignored, it is something the Church in Wales will have to grapple with,” he said.

Fr. Rabjohn said opponents of women bishops were under no “illusion that the issue has gone away; it will inevitably return.”

However he hoped that when it does so wiser counsels will prevail and the ‘experiment in internal ecumenism’ which began with the appointment of the first Provincial Assistant Bishop in 1996, and which has helped many of us to continue to play as full a part as possible in the Church of our land, will continue.”

The Welsh experience would “no doubt inform the minds” of the Church of England’s General Synod as “they gather in July to consider the recommendations” of the Legislative Drafting Group, Forward in Faith secretary the Rev. Geoffrey Kirk said.

“Many enthusiasts of the innovation in England had looked to Wales to give a lead - and many in Wales had hoped to pre-empt the English. Both parties need now to take stock. It is clear that the price of women bishops is clear and adequate provision for those whose obedience to scripture and to the Church’s two thousand year tradition prevents them from accepting the orders of ordained and consecrated women,” he said.