Welby Hails New Beginning for Church as Women Bishops Becomes Law

The Daily Telegraph (UK) ^ | 11/17/14 | John Bingham

[marshmallow]

Archbishop of Canterbury hails a “completely new phase” of its existence after enabing women to become bishops

The Church of England has entered what the Archbishop of Canterbury hailed as a “completely new phase” of its existence as legislation enabling women to become bishops came into force.

Forty years of debate and campaigning over the role of women in leadership in the Established Church was brought to an end in just 10 minutes as the Church’s General Synod symbolically showed its approval for the change through a simple show of hands and a few signatures on a piece of paper.

It opens the way for the first woman to be appointed to the episcopate as early as the end of this year and means that the next Archbishop of Canterbury or York could be female.

But amid quiet euphoria from campaigners the Most Rev Justin Welby insisted it could take at least a decade for the Church to achieve an equal balance between men and women in its senior leadership.

He said there was now a major effort under way to ensure that women priests, who make up about a third of clergy in the Church of England, are talent-spotted and put forward for possible selection.

The legislation, which was passed in July and received royal assent last week, became law just before 3pm on Monday through a short item on the agenda of the General Synod, which is sitting in London.

The brief but formally worded Canon was read out by the Synod’s chief legal adviser Stephen Slack followed by a vote, conducted by a show of hands. It was carried with an overwhelming majority, with around 20 voting against.

[hinckley buzzard]

A "completely new phase" is coming all right... the terminal phase of a dying church.

[GeronL]

UK churches are becoming clubs where everything but religion happens

[terycarl]

they stray even further from Christ’s true church....sad!

[Salvation]

**The Church of England**

Old rules say the new phase is wrong. Don’t they read the Bible?

[Alex Murphy]

Old rules say the new phase is wrong. Don’t they read the Bible?

I think it's too long for most of them. Virtually all Catholics I know are so used to the predigested, condensed & expurgated version that is spoon-fed to them at daily mass, that they lack the chewing muscles and digestive systems needed to consume real meat (Hebrews 5:12-13).

[AbnSarge]

Maybe I missed something here, but I thought that article was about the Church of England (Anglican/Episcopalian, not Catholic).

[Campion]

Lovely non sequitur there Alex. If I tell you that it's cold outside, do you respond by blaming it on the Catholics somehow?

Or are you trying to respond to news that yet another Proddie denomination has slipped further into apostasy with an attempt at diversion? "Look! A squirrel!"

All of the European churches which claim institutional continuity back to their founding in the reformation are basically dead, gone from the worship of the Living God to the idolatry of the zeitgeist. Let him who has ears, hear.

[CynicalBear]

Catholics tell us often that it’s only the magesterium that can interpret or understand scripture so why would they feel a need to read it?

[DarkSavant]

It’s amazing some protestants, when given the choice between the Catholic Church and the liberal excrement of Churches like the “Church of England”, will still side against the Catholics.