Excellent BBC report on defections to Rome

There is an excellent report by Robert Piggott BBC News religious affairs correspondent on the defection of the five Anglican bishops to Rome.

He states that - the conversion of these five bishops is not unexpected, and will not, in itself, rupture the Church.

Two of them - Edwin Barnes and David Silk - are retired, and the other three - the Bishop of Fulham John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet Andrew Burnham and the Bishop of Richborough Keith Newton - are so-called "flying bishops".

That means they were specially appointed to care for traditionalist parishes who found it impossible to accept the ordination of women as priests in 1994.

They are assistant - or suffragan - bishops, not among the more senior bishops in charge of dioceses, whose conversion would have been a sign that the move to Rome was going to bite deep into the Church of England.

So why are they going? The immediate reason is their unhappiness with the way the Church of England is introducing women bishops.

Like most traditionalists on the Catholic wing of the Church of England, they accept that women bishops were inevitable, but they wanted concessions that would allow them to call on a male alternative.They failed to persuade the Church of England's ruling synod - it voted last July to press ahead with the ordination of women as bishops with minimal concessions to traditionalists.

It decided that there should simply be a code of practice - yet to be written - guiding diocesan bishops in their dealings with parishioners and clergy unwilling to recognise their authority.

He concludes his report of Nov 8:

It seems most traditionalists on the Catholic wing of the Church of England are prepared to stay.

The Church has managed to combine Protestantism and its own form of Catholicism since the Reformation, and many Anglo-Catholics are determined to preserve this "broad church".

However, divisions between Protestants and Catholic Anglicans have been largely replaced in recent years with another more potent threat.

The most damaging disputes are now between traditionalists and liberals - over women and homosexuality in particular - and the protagonists are in no mood to leave, and give up the Church to the other side. 

MORE AT http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11714764