Anglicans, Catholics Fear That Women Bishops Will Encumber Churches’ Ties

Anglicans and Roman Catholics are voicing new concern about how the consecration of women bishops would affect relations between the two churches following the agreement by the Lambeth Conference of bishops to allow each national Anglican body to decide for itself on the question.

Such action by Anglicans would “increase our difficulties in an unlimited way,” said Archbishop J. Francis Stafford of Denver, the U.S. Catholic hierarchy’s chief spokesman on ecumenical affairs.

In a statement issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, Stafford said: “The admission of women to ordination as (Anglican) bishops would be a hindrance to (the) process of reconciliation, one we want to see go forward.”

Anglican Archbishop Robert Eames of Armagh, Northern Ireland, has been named to head a seven-member committee to consider how to keep the Anglican Communion together once women are consecrated bishops. Asked about the effect of such a move on Anglican-Catholic relations, he replied, “I must say to my Roman Catholic friends that if we are not what they want us to be, in Christian charity you have to take us as we are.”

Subject Came Up

The subject also came up at the recent plenary session of the Second Anglican Roman Catholic Commission in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“I do not see what the possibilities are of the reconciliation of ministries in a situation in which you have a church that has women in the priesthood and episcopate,” said the Rev. Kevin McDonald, a staff member of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. “At the heart of the search for Christian unity is the question of the reconciliation of ministries; this is a prerequisite for full communion” and the interchanging of ministries, he said.

The Rev. Henry Chadwick, Regius professor of divinity at Cambridge University, reported that “in the U.S., New Zealand and Brazil, Anglicans judge that a woman bishop is not just something they’d tolerate, it is something they would actively promote and foster. It might be by the end of this calendar year.”

Like his Catholic counterpart, the Anglican scholar warned: “That now creates a real problem for Anglican-Roman Catholic relations. It might add several hundred years to the reconciliation process.”

‘Authority and Communion’

Bishop Cormac Murphy O’Connor of Arundel and Brighton (England), the Catholic co-chairman of ARCIC, said the question of women bishops “affects not only the question of the reconciliation of ministries but also the question of authority and communion.”

The vote on the final report of First Anglican Roman Catholic Commission on “Salvation and the Church” in January, 1987, “was clear and overwhelming,” O’Connor said. “Sadly--and this is the hurt--the Anglican Church has to present to Rome a more divided and confused communion than formerly. It (Anglicanism) is saying to Rome, ‘We want to be closer to you, we want to grow in dialogue, but at the same time we are doing something that takes us further away from you.’ ”