Mark Harris: Women Bishops are Our Business, Not the Romans’

From PRELUDIUM: Bishop Tom Wright gets it right (at long last.):

So, the skunk is on the table: The criticism from the Roman Catholic Church is that they are “anxious to advise us on what we may and may not do with our orders, which are not regarded as valid anyway.”

Good for Bishops Wright and Stancliffe.

Now that the skunk is on the table, the stink is evident not only as concerns the criticism of women as bishops, it also applies to the argument that we can not proceed in the Episcopal Church with any other activity regarding our orders that make for “new and serious difficulties” in relations between The Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed every attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to “advise us on what we may and may not do with our orders” needs to be seen in the light of the fact that they are “not regarded as valid anyway.”

So the Windsor Report’s reference to such difficulties now comes home to the good bishop of Durham, in that he sees the problem of being gored by an ox that does not see us as a valid church, but as a quasi-ecclesial community. The paper states, “We note that Dominus Iesus (2000), continued to regard Anglican churches as separated quasi-ecclesial communities.”

Perhaps it is time to lay to rest the Roman Catholic critiques of what Anglican Communion churches do, in so far as they suggest some degrading of the status of Anglican Orders. They are already degraded enough. We as Anglicans may, and God knows we do, argue about women and gay and lesbian persons in orders but that is our business. It is not Rome’s. Not unless they can decide that our orders are valid, i.e., real.