FiF UK
TEA - an interim commentary
Mar 14, 2006

1. Introduction
   
   1.1 Representatives of Forward in Faith (Brian Hanson, Paul Benfield, Stephen Parkinson and Geoffrey Kirk) were grateful to Bishop Christopher Hill for his invitation to meet him on January 12, 2006, immediately upon the conclusion of the Leeds meeting of the House of Bishops which finalised the proposals of the Guildford Group, which were presented to the General Synod on February 7 and 9, 2006. The meeting was characterised by Dr Hanson as a briefing rather than a consultation. Bishop Hill guided the FiF representatives through the main points of the proposals, copies of which were not at that time available.
   
   1.2 It became apparent, as discussion progressed, that there had been informal talks with those in favour of the ordination of women to the episcopate before the Guildford proposals had reached their final draft. Christina Rees was mentioned by name in this connection.
   
   1.3 The meeting with FiF representatives was friendly and cordial. This short paper is intended to give a summary of what we believe to be the salient matters arising, and to make a contribution to the process of further discernment which Bishop Hill indicated would probably result from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s motion at the February Synod.
   
   
2.   Collegiality
   
   2.1 The Forward in Faith response to the ordination of women has always emphasised the collegiality of priests and bishops. In the Church of England this collegiality is signalled by Canon A4, by the specific wording of the oath of canonical obedience and by the role of the Archbishops of each province as the principal consecrators of its bishops.
   
   2.2  Canon A 4 stresses the equivalence and interchangeability of orders. This is expressed liturgically when presbyters take part with the bishop in the laying-on of hands at an ordination. It follows that when a bishop introduces into his college of priests any whose orders cannot in conscience be received and respected by other members of the college, a degree of impairment of communion exists within the college and with its bishop. The oath of allegiance stresses the collegiality of bishops and the extension of that collegiality through time. All priests swear the oath to their diocesans in the same terms. It is an oath to him, ‘his heirs and successors according to law’. It follows that when the college of bishops receives into membership those whose episcopal orders cannot in conscience be received and respected by others in the college, or by those who will be required to swear obedience to them, a further and graver degree of communion has come into being. The archbishops, as normatively the principal consecrators of bishops in their provinces, witness by their very office to the same collegiality and continuity. By the lively symbol of the bishops of the province gathered around them for the laying-on of hands at a consecration, the equivalence of orders is expressed and effected. By their metropolitical rôle the ordination of a bishop is linked back to the very foundation of the local church. It follows that any impairment of communion within the college is acutely focussed in relationships with the metropolitan.
   
   2.3 It needs to be stressed (since it is a matter which the Guildford Group seems not to have grasped in all its implications) that this impairment of communion is structural and collegial. It relates to relationships within the colleges of priests and bishops, and not particularly or solely to the gender of those involved. A male bishop or archbishop who acts collegially with women stands in the same relationship to those opposed as does the woman herself.
   
   
3. Jurisdiction
   
   3.1 Forward in Faith welcomes the acknowledgement in the Guildford proposals that the degree of impairment of communion resulting from the ordination of women as bishops would require a transfer of jurisdiction from the diocesan bishop. Those opposed could not in conscience accept the jurisdiction of a woman bishop or of a male bishop acting collegially with her.
   
   3.2 The proposals for the transference of jurisdiction, however, seem confused and (perhaps because confused) needlessly complicated. It is proposed that jurisdiction be transferred from the diocesan (at his request) to the metropolitan. This jurisdiction would then be parcelled out between a new episcopal creation – the Provincial Regional Bishop – and the diocesan bishop (to whom some functions would be returned by the metropolitan!). “Though complicated,” explains para.44 of GS 1605, “such arrangements would reflect a sense of shared jurisdiction.”
   
   3.3 Clearly shared jurisdiction is not transferred jurisdiction. It is by no means clear, in these circumstances, where jurisdiction would actually reside. In what sense (having delegated it to others) would the Archbishop exercise it? Would he retain any aspects of jurisdiction which would not fall to him in any case under existing canons? And why, even if he were to abstain from ordaining women to the episcopate, is it thought that his exercise of such jurisdiction as remained to him would be acceptable to opponents of women bishops?
   
   3.4 It is hard not to suspect, in this avowedly complicated solution, a degree of prestidigitation. At the very least the Guildford Group has failed to ask and answer some prior questions which ought to have informed its proposals. What constitutes jurisdiction? Can jurisdiction be shared? Can a sustainable distinction usefully be made between sacramental acts (such as ordinations), juridical acts (such a clergy discipline) and administrative acts (such as the granting of faculties or the suspension of livings)?
   
   3.5 It has been the practice of the Church of England from the earliest times to unite these sacramental, juridical and administrative functions in the ordinary jurisdiction of a diocesan bishop. It remains to be explained why, in these proposals, that practice (which has both antiquity and utility to commend it) is being abandoned. If jurisdiction is to be transferred, why not transfer it directly to the PRBs, under the metropolitical jurisdiction of the Archbishops as defined in existing canon law?
   
   
4. Single Clause Legislation
   
   4.1 It is clear that single clause legislation will alone satisfy some proponents of women’s ordination, whose arguments are based upon ethical a priori assertions about equality and human rights. For them opposition to women’s ordination, like racism, is simply intolerable in an enlightened society and cannot be sustained by the Church if its credibility in that society is to be maintained. This position will not allow the indefinite continuance of a party opposed within the Church. Logically it requires that any code of practice offering provision for opponents should be minimal and temporary.
   
   4.2 The Church of England, in its approach to women’s ordination heretofore, has taken a different position. By the permissive nature of the 1993 Measure, by the declarations in ‘Bonds of Peace’ and by the 1993 Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod, it has affirmed the provisionality and reversibility of its decision, the theological integrity of opponents and their continued and respected place in the life of the Church.
   
   4.3 A single clause measure for the ordination of women to the episcopate, regardless of the contents of any code of practice accompanying it, would be a betrayal of those assurances. It is well known and attested that bishops appointed subsequently to the passing of the Act of Synod (who are now a majority in the House) have sought to distance themselves from provisions which would not have had their assent at the time. For this and other reason we are convinced that all provision for the needs of opponents of women bishops, in order to honour the undertakings already given, must be by Measure, and have the full authority of the law.
   
   
5. An Additional Province
   
   5.1 Forward in Faith welcomes the brief appendix by Bishop Hill on the use of the term ‘province’ among Anglicans. It was with some diffidence (and aware of the manifold pitfalls) that we ourselves employed the term. It carries, as the bishop points out, a heavy freight.
   
   5.2 The provinces of Canterbury, York, Armagh and Dublin are canonical entities within national churches which have, in modern times developed synodical structures embracing more than one of them. The ‘provinces’ of the Episcopal Church of the United States are administrative units under the one General Convention. National and multi-national churches have in some places been called Provinces (eg The Church of the Province of Southern Africa; the Province of Central Africa). In Australia provinces, which have adopted state boundaries, are best understood as free associations of autonomous dioceses within the federal structure of a national church.
   
   5.3 It will be clear that none of these usages exactly fits the proposals set out in Consecrated Women? We are not committed to the term ‘province’; but at the same time we are aware that other options – diocese, peculiar, personal prelature, etc. – are all fraught with similar difficulties. We take comfort from the fact that (not least in respect of the ordination of women) Anglicans have proved creative both in ecclesiology and terminology.
   
   5.4 We are sorry that GS 1605 repeats assertions made elsewhere that the draft measure contained in Consecrated Women? makes no provision for movement in and out of the additional province after promulgation (‘permeability’). That this is a simple misrepresentation can be seen by reference to p.144 of the text. We trust that a retraction of this claim will be forthcoming.
   
   5.5 GS 1605 raises two major objections to the Consecrated Women? Proposals: that they would form a ‘ghetto’ within the Church of England, and that they would, in effect constitute a ‘continuing church’. These objections are, of course, contradictory. Nor does either of them have substance.
   
   5.6 Ghettoes are not created by their inhabitants, but by the majority which enforces them. The term would most appropriately apply to the condition of opponents living under a code of practice in a church which had enacted the ordination of women to the episcopate by a single clause measure. If a Continuing Church were what the members of Forward in Faith sought it would be open to them to create one or join one. There is no shortage.
   
   5.7 Bishop Hill, in conversation with the FiF representatives, expressed a fear that the two bodies, if sufficiently separate and distinct, might at some future date excommunicate each other. We have to admit that this is a possibility which it would be foolish to rule out entirely. We are frankly apprehensive about a continuing relationship with a Church of England which has so recently wrecked its own prospects of reconciliation with the Roman and Orthodox Churches. But it is a risk which we are prepared in good faith to take.
   
   
6. Practicalities
   
   6.1 During the course of our dialogue with Bishop Hill a number of practical issues emerged from the Guildford Proposals. We mention here matters of patronage, amalgamation of parishes and livings and relationship with the General Synod.
   
   6.2  Under the Guildford proposals all patronage of the diocesan bishop would pass directly to the PRB, without the rights of private patrons being I any way affected.  In our view such an arrangement would be unacceptable. Any Measure making provision for opponents would need to make it an ecclesiastical offence for private patrons to fail to respect the decision of the parish in the matter of Episcopal oversight.
   
   6.3 It is not, in our view, enough for the PRB to be accorded a ‘place at the table’ in discussions in a diocesan pastoral committee about pastoral reorganisation, the amalgamation of parishes, and the suspension of livings. He would need in all cases to have an absolute veto of any proposals.
   
   6.4 Relationships of those opposed to the ordination of women both with the General Synod and the diocesan synods would, in our view, be more complicated than the Guildford proposals seem to assume. The constitution of the Synod, quite properly in an episcopally ordered Church, allows for votes by Houses – and requires them in important matters relating to faith and order. But two of these orders (those of priests and bishops) would, following the consecration of women, increasingly be made up of those whose orders opponents could not in conscience accept. It is for this reason that Consecrated Women? provided for a separate synodical structure. In our view, at the very least, there would need to be an opt-out facility from decisions of the General Synod for parishes under the jurisdiction of the PRBs. How this would be arranged and how those arrangements would differ from our own proposals remains to be determined, as do relationships to diocesan and deanery synods where similar problems will also occur. 
   
   6.5 The Guildford proposals, as we understood them from our meeting, do not adequately address the question of the consecration of successors to the initial PRBs  - whether from oversight, or on the assumption that a succession would not be required we cannot tell. It goes without saying that no provision of Episcopal oversight for opponents of women priests and bishops would be acceptable to them which did not provide for successors whose consecration was by bishops who did not themselves ordain women to the episcopate and who did not remain in unimpaired communion with them.
   
   6.6 It will be appreciated that these notes are an aide memoire of points raised at the meeting on January 12. Forward in Faith will no doubt wish, at some future time, to reconvene its panel of lawyers to examine the published text of the proposals.   

Geoffrey Kirk,

Singapore,

January 25, 2006