Forward in Faith welcomes wholeheartedly the recent address of Cardinal Walter Kasper to the House of Bishops of the Church of England (June 5, 2006).

We are grateful that the Cardinal made plain the theological  basis of the practice of the Catholic Church of reserving sacerdotal ordination only to males. This is not to be attributed to misogyny, but to a desire to remain faithful to scripture and the tradition – precisely to that obedience to which Archbishop Rowan Williams referred in this recent speech to the General Synod.

The Cardinal portrayed the present moment in the life of the Church of England as one of defining importance – whether to side with the great churches of the first millennium or the communities of the sixteenth century reformation. He made it abundantly clear that the ordination of women to the episcopate in the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion would fundamentally affect the nature of the ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and Anglicans.

It is, in our view, seriously to be doubted whether the Church of England has (or has ever had) the ecumenical restraint to draw back from this momentous decision. If such restraint is still possible, Cardinal Kasper has given cogent and pressing reasons for its exercise.