General Synod: Speech Moving Motion on Women in the Episcopate

After the theological uplands of this morning's debate, we move into the more shadowy though I hope not more boggy areas of the process. There will be a good many people who will regret that so much time is being given to this subject. They will include those who feel that it is so self-evident that the obstacles to women becoming bishops are insuperable that it isn't worth debating it; there will be those for whom it is so self-evident that we ought to proceed immediately that it isn't worth debating it. And it's no secret that there are those within the House of Bishops who probably veer to one or other of those positions. Yet the report which you have before you represents the agreed position of the House as a whole following a discussion in January where the outcome was, I think, of remarkable unanimity and convergence.

The starting point is of course that there remain deeply held divergent views on the underlying issues; views illustrated in this morning's very probing, very thoughtful and very responsible debate. We haven't finished grappling with those views and their differences and we haven't yet finished the task of listening carefully to one another before reaching decisions which are going to be major decisions for our church as virtually all the speakers this morning underlined.

So the case for the kind of timetable envisaged in the report from the House of Bishops is this. The report of the Rochester group was published a bare three months ago. And although we have, as we were reminded, no less than five diocesan synod motions on this subject, not every diocesan synod will have had the chance to look fully at the report itself and the view of the House is that it won't do us any harm to have that bit more time for discernment, dioceses having an opportunity to look at the report, the chance to digest some of what is coming in from our ecumenical partners as again we were reminded this morning.

And so the proposal before you is very simply that sufficient time be made available in July for Synod to decide whether it wishes to begin the legislative process enabling women to be consecrated as bishops. the exact steps are set out in paragraphs 9 and 10 of GS 1568 if Synod voted in the affirmative.

And if you look at that paper you will see that the idea is that in July Synod would determine what steps should then be taken, and there's a possible course of action for the House of Bishops in consultation with the Archbishops' council to bring a report by January 2006 for a debate in the corresponding group of sessions this time next year. And that intervening period would have enabled a thorough amount of work to be done on the various practical options involved. Because before legislation could be drafted, Synod would need to have decided on preferred arrangements and the extent to which they should be enshrined in detailed legislation rather than a single clause legislation backed by codes of practice, again, points that were raised and discussed to some extent this morning.

But before that decision is taken the House of Bishops would be grateful for the opportunity to offer Synod its own assessment of those options. And os with that in view, the House of Bishops has established a small group to carry out some further work on its behalf, evaluating the options – the practical options – canvassed in the Rochester Report. I've asked the Bishop of Guildford to chair this group and the Bishops of Blackburn, Lincoln and Willesden will also be membership, and Archdeacon Joy Tetley has agreed to act as a consultant to this group. It will meet for this time during this week.

The balance is not easy between undue haste and undue delay. The House of Bishops has attempted to find a way forward which allows, we believe, reasonable time for digesting the report, digesting also this morning's debate and beginning to form a mind on where broadly speaking the options should fall in framing legislation.

Paragraphs 11 of GS 1568 go into detail about the framework and timescale of decision making which we hope are realistic and I'll say no more at this juncture except to commend to you the mutual prayer and patience and mutual understanding that we shall need in going forward on this subject, hoping that in months between now and July there will be ample opportunity for more of the kind of constructive work that we heard this morning being adumbrated. More of the prayer and conversation and mutual listening which again I think we heard about - I think particularly of what Christina Rees had to say about the listening exercises she's been engaged in – more of that to be done – and, of course, we do need to think very hard about the practical options. These are, I don't think I need to remind you, sensitive and deep, far-reaching issues.

They are indeed about what kind of church we think we want to be; they are indeed about balancing the call for visible manifest catholicity and the call to fidelity to the Gospel as we believe we are receiving it. There are issues about the interpretation of scripture; issues about the very definition of the bishop's office issues about the symbolic order, issues about the proper and responsible use of the gifts of women and issues finally about our own capacity to model for the world around ways of doing our business responsibly, lovingly, and at the same time creatively and courageously.

I move the motion standing in my name.

© Rowan Williams 2005