Via Edward Tomlinson SSC:

It is now time for fair minded Anglicans who see no reason why women should not be priests and bishops, but who understand that it is possible to be a Christian and a faithful Anglican and take a different view, to make clear that they don’t want their so called “traditionalist” brothers and sisters to have merely hospice room in the Church of England, but rather the chance to flourish and grow.

And hospice room is all that the draft legislation offers. Within a short time, there will be no traditionalist bishops with jurisdiction, and therefore the authority to encourage and discern ordination candidates, or the authority to send labourers into the harvest and direct the mission of the church. Soon we will have a college of bishops the vast majority of whom merely tolerate traditionalist priests and parishes rather than love them into growth.

Everybody secretly knows that the scenario on offer from the legislative group is designed to be a stop-gap to deal with a group of people until they die out. No one will admit this publically, not primarily, I believe, out of loving regard for the people concerned, but to hide from themselves the reality of what they are doing.

Read the rest here; please note that these are not my words, but the bishop’s.

Comments by Peter Broadbent, Bishop of Willesden (for the Americans, he’s a suffragan to the Diocese of London):

There are 4 defining motifs:

1. It’s rooted in monepiscopacy (one Diocesan Bishop having authority in the Diocese) - which has become a kind of faux catholic shibboleth for a certain sort of liberal catholicism. That determines everything else, because on that presupposition you can only have one bishop and no dual or twin track arrangements. What we’ve produced is internally consistent with that approach.

2. It doesn’t give women bishops an entirely clear run, so it won’t satisfy those who want the ministry of women to be untrammelled and equal in the Church. But it probably does enough to satisfy WATCH - though they have to compromise their position.

3. It doesn’t do the job for traditionalist catholics and conservative evangelicals, whose desire for “sacramental assurance” and “headship” respectively aren’t met. (These are doctrines that I personally don’t believe in, but they have been clearly laid out very clearly by those who espouse them, and what the Revision Committee has produced simply doesn’t deal with this) So we know before July that those two groups will seek to amend the report to take account of their concerns. Read the report - we crossed a rubicon at paragraph 148.

4. The report gives a good account of all the arguments and would repay reading (I would say that…) But the content of a Code of Practice isn’t yet worked out, and is likely to be pretty minimalist, giving less to those opposed than the earlier woman priests legislation.

Biggest problem is that the CofE varies hugely regionally (lots of clergy and parishes opposed in the big city dioceses; very few opponents in many rural areas). That, plus the fact that loads of people have been ordained since the 1992 legislation and don’t see why we should be making “provision” will, I fear, make the whole debate in July a dialogue of the deaf.

See original here.