Agreement on women priests set to collapse: Bishops' compromise under threat

THE CHURCH of England's compromise on the ordination of women has come apart. The Movement for the Ordination of Women has written to the House of Bishops urging that no one be ordained in future who does not believe that Anglican women really can be priests.

The bishops will consider this request at their next meeting on 19 October. It is unlikely that they could agree to it. Opponents feel that they have conceded more than enough by admitting that women can be legally ordained in England.

The Rev John Broadhurst, the chairman of Forward in Faith, which is the main opposition grouping, said: 'Nobody will be able to deny that women have been legally and canonically ordained in Church of England. But it would be contrary to the spirit of the legislation and the assurances given to Parliament if clergy were not allowed to dissent from theological recognition.'

But if the bishops fail to modify the 'Act of Synod' which will set out the ways in which opponents of women priests can continue in the Church of England after women are ordained in February next year, supporters of women priests plan to raise the matter at the General Synod's meeting in November, when the Act can be amended.

Under the terms of the compromise agreed unanimously by bishops in Manchester in July, and subsequently approved by the General Synod, all that will be required of opponents after the first women priests are made next spring is that they admit that women have been legally and canonically ordained. Many of them believe now, and will continue to believe, that this does not make women real priests.

Under the arrangements envisaged in the Act of Synod, opponents can, however, continue to behave as if women priests did not exist. They will have the support of special 'flying bishops' throughout the country.

In London, where the opposition is most entrenched, the opponents will form a network of parishes not admitting women priests, or bishops who support them, grouped around the Bishop of Fulham.

A spokesman for the opponents' leader, the Bishop of London, The Rt Rev David Hope, said: 'Dr Hope remains committed to the idea of two integrities within the Church of England'.

Meanwhile, the Church Society, a conservative evangelical body, has been given a date at the end of the month for the next stage in its application for a judicial review of the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament's decision to approve the legislation.