Ten years on from the ordination of women to the priesthood, opponents of the innovation are in good heart and are well organised. The PEV system has worked better than might have been expected, and Forward in Faith has managed to maintain a high level of morale. New parishes are still passing 'Resolution C', and Cost of Conscience is about to launch a nation-wide campaign to induce 'A and B' parishes to take 'C' in preparation for the legislation to ordain women as bishops and the necessary re-organisation which will ensue.

The ordination of women to the episcopate is inevitable. The Archbishop of Canterbury is committed to it and would probably like to see English women at the next Lambeth Conference. Diocesan Synod motions asking for the preparation of legislation are building up at the General Synod, and cannot indefinitely be ignored. The Rochester Commission reports this Autumn to the House of Bishops. Its Report will be public by the February 2004 meeting of the Synod. Allowing for a minority report, it will recommend proceeding.

There is probably sufficient unease among the House of Bishops for them to want to approach actual legislation as slowly as possible, utilising all the Synodical procedures and levels of consultation to put the brakes on. But there is also a powerful feminist lobby for greater speed. A reasonable guess would be legislation by 2008. It will pass. The first woman bishop is likely to be ordained 2009/10. [Though delaying tactics, if successful, could hold the event back to 2012.]

Delay is not now in our interests.

2.   Rationale Part One: What are sacraments for?

Sacraments are an extension of the incarnation and a memorial of saving events. This is best understood in considering the Eucharist and Baptism. In the Eucharist we receive, really and substantially, the Lord's Body and Blood; in Baptism we are enabled to share the Paschal Mystery of the Lord's death and resurrection, and so to share his new and eternal life.

These sacraments are memorials of saving events in the sense that they are commanded by Christ ('do this for the anemnesis of me'; 'go baptise all nations'). They are necessarily tied to a particular time and culture; but by their very nature they are required to be repeated in all cultures and all times until time itself is at an end.

Sacraments are a means of grace and of salvation. The Church is formed and created by them. The Church is the koinonia of those who share the sacraments. This is the initial and primary meaning of the phrase in the Apostles' Creed: 'communio sanctorum' - fellowship in the Holy Things.

Holy Order in the Church, exists primarily to assure the faithful of the authenticity of sacraments. It does so in two related ways: through continuity in time and through geographical extension.

There is nothing spontaneous or adventitious about the Church's celebration of the sacraments. They are not an arena for innovation or experimentation. The Church seeks, faithfully and intentionally, to do what Christ commanded, and no other. The seriousness of that intention is expressed in the succession of ministers going back to the time of the Apostles themselves. (Preface to the Prayer Book Ordinal: 'It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient authors…') In present time it is expressed by the mutuality and interchangeability of those orders, so that they are seen to be self-consistent in every place where the sacraments are celebrated (Canon A4: 'ought to be accounted both by themselves and others to be truly bishops priests and deacons')

3.   Rationale Part Two: What the CofE has done to Orders?

To the administration of the sacraments, as St Thomas pointed out, the notion of 'intention' is crucial. The minister must intend to do what the Church does: the Church must intend to do what Christ did. There are cogent and disquieting reasons for supposing that the Church of England is deficient in that intention.

The first reason derives from the implications of the so-called 'doctrine of reception'

This notion, borrowed from the sphere of ecumenical dialogue, posits the possibility of a period during which the church is genuinely uncertain about the authenticity of a particular development and is awaiting its 'reception' by the wider church. At the end of such a period of testing or experimentation (which will be of undetermined length) the doctrine is either 'received' or repudiated.

The problem of applying such a concept to Holy Orders is obvious. Orders exist to give assurance of the validity of sacraments and to minimize dubiety. Wilfully to institute orders of which the best that can be said is that they may at some future time be 'received' as authentic, is to undermine the very purpose for which orders exist. This truth is apparent from the schedules of the 1993 Measure to ordain women, which have the effect of overruling Canon A4, and permitting private judgement in the matter of orders. The Measure sets no term to the exercise of such private judgement, and the Act of Synod seems to envisage it continuing in virtual perpetuity.

The second reason is the so-called doctrine of 'Provincial Autonomy'.

The Cameron Report (the Report of the Archbishops' Commission on the Episcopate 1990) speaks of the local Church, the Church throughout the world and the Church through the ages as the three 'planes' of the Church's life, and shows how the ministry of the bishop is crucial to each. It summarizes the episcopal role in each 'plane' as follows:

'In the local church the bishop focuses and nurtures the unity of his people; in his sharing in the collegiality of bishops the local church is bound together with other local churches; and through the succession of bishops the local community is related to the church throughout the ages. Thus the bishop in his own person in his diocese; and in his collegial relations in the wider Church; and through his place in the succession of bishops in their communities in faithfulness to the gospel, is a sign and focus of the unity of the Church.'

Provincial Autonomy - the notion that individual Anglican Provinces can make local changes to the orders which they share with fellow Anglicans and with other Christians - is a denial of such an understanding of episcopacy. This was tacitly admitted by the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in 1971, when after a vote of 24-22, encouraging the Bishop of Hong Kong to proceed with women's ordination , it went on: 'this Council advises the Bishop of Hong Kong acting with his Synod, and any other bishop of the Anglican Communion acting with the approval of his Province that, if he decides to ordain women to the priesthood, his action will be acceptable to this Council, and that this Council will use its good offices to encourage all Provinces of the Anglican Communion to continue in communion with these dioceses.' [Resolution 28, ACC 1971]

Language about the maintenance of the 'highest possible degree of communion' subsequently became the stock in trade of the Eames Commission (the Archbishops' Commission on Communion and Women in the Episcopate). What the Commission did not openly admit was that there now existed between Anglican Provinces a lesser degree of Communion than the 'full visible unity' which had hitherto been the goal of ecumenical relations.

Taken together the doctrines of reception and provincial autonomy constitute a massive defect of intention. At best they manifest a culpable degree of theological levity; at worst a misunderstanding of the nature and function of Holy Orders fundamental in its character and implications.

4.   So what should we do?

For some time now the Council of Forward in Faith has argued that the ordination of women as bishops (which we believe will render the ordination of women irreversible in the Church of England) requires a response on our part different in kind from that which followed from the ordination of women as priests.

In the years before 1992 we put the case for 'Alternative Episcopal Oversight', and in the event were able to accept and work with something less - what has been called 'Extended Episcopal Care'. This system of PEVs has served us well. We believe that the constituency is now ready to move forward, and that women bishops make such a move inevitable.

The present arrangements depend heavily upon a notion of Communion as 'impaired' but not fractured. They hang, in fact, on the brief clause in the legislation which proclaims that 'Nothing in this measure shall permit the ordination of women as bishops.' When the collegiality of the House of Bishops (of which the PEVs are presently a part) embraces women, the present arrangements will have been rendered unworkable. 'Impaired' communion will have been finally and fatally fractured.

Forward in Faith is arguing for a New Province of the Anglican Communion in the British Isles to address this sad eventuality.

There are presently four Anglican Provinces in these islands: the Church of Ireland; the Scottish Episcopal Church; the Church in Wales and the Church of England. Two of those provinces - the Church of Ireland and the Church in Wales - are separated parts of the Church of England. The model we propose is based on the experience of the Church in Wales, which was constituted as an independent Province by Act of Parliament in 1920.

There are some salient points about that separation which are relevant to our proposals.

First, it was not effected by the Lambeth Conference, nor yet by the Anglican Consultative Council or the Primates' Meeting (for neither body then existed), but by the British Parliament. There was, moreover, no intention to create another or 'rival' Church. Though Wales had been a part of the Province of Canterbury since the time of St Anselm, the Church of England did not continue a parochial presence there, but conceded territory to a new and equivalent body, with its own parochial structures and patterns of organisation. Finally, though 'dis-endowed', the Church in Wales continued to worship and serve in those churches and properties which had previously been part of the establishment of the Church of England.

Our proposal is for the creation of a body not unlike the Church in Wales - one which would have a defined and distinct geographical identity, alongside the Church of England but not overlapped by it (though its parts would not necessarily be contiguous one with another). We are confident that the legal provisions for such a body are negotiable and would be relatively simple.

There are, however, four principles which we hold to be non-negotiable:

First, distinct and separate orders of ministry, such that the bishops of the Church of England, both male and female would take no part in consecrations or ordinations in the new province. Where priests of the Church of England were concerned, the rules presently governing the relations of the Church of England with ECUSA and other provinces which ordain women to the episcopate would obtain.

Second, the right of the new province to select, train and ordain all candidates for its sacred ministry. We anticipate a movement in the Church of England away from traditional patterns of priestly formation, which the new province, on the contrary, would be eager to maintain and extend.

Third, structures of governance independent of those of the Church of England's General Synod. It has been suggested that the new province might operate under the General Synod, with the right to veto or amend decisions which it thought ill-advised or inappropriate (a relationship not unlike that of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man in the Church of England, or of the Diocesan Synods to the General Synod in the Anglican Church of Australia.) We believe such an arrangement would be inadequate to the needs of the new province, which would need to be a body whose instrument of government was more than merely reflexive.

Fourth, complete freedom of ecumenical manoeuvre. Subsequent to the ordination of women as bishops the Church of England's ecumenical agenda and that of the new province are unlikely to follow the same trajectory. The aim of the new province would be reconciliation with the great churches of East and West. The Church of England would, by then, finally and self-consciously have surrendered that objective.