In 1944, two days after he had priested Florence Li Tim-Oi, my father wrote to William Greer, his former curate and later Bishop of Manchester: “It is better ordination of women should come in this way out of need and out of gift than out of theoretical  discussion on equality of men and women.”  Members of WATCH may cavil at the second half of that view, but it is God’s call and God’s gift which are the prior considerations.

After Archbishop Robert Runcie had met Lee Tim-Oi in 1984, he said to Archbishop Ted Scott: “Who am I to say whom God can or cannot call?”  In the same way Peter defended his baptism of the Gentile Cornelius: “How could I stand in God’s way?” 
Peter recognised that Cornelius had been given the same gift of the spirit as the first disciples.  God had done a new thing in clear contradiction to the traditional understanding of those he had chosen hitherto.  In the same way the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews recognised that God had made Jesus a priest out of the tribe of Judah, not out of the tribe of Levi, which had been the traditional qualification.

God is free to call and to give his gifts to whom he will to meet the needs of his church.  His call to priestly and episcopal ministry and his gifts to exercise that ministry are the same for all.  It is not for his church to discriminate or impose artificial legal restrictions on those, whose call the Church has recognised, in the exercise of that ministry.  To limit the episcopal ministry not only of women, but also of the male bishops who ordain or consecrate women, as also of the men whom those women bishops may ordain, is to stand in God’s way.  That is the thrust of Canon A4, even if it needs minor amendment to make that thrust crystal clear, not to water it down.

To be evenhanded, a Code of Practice is needed because it is right to provide continuing recognition for those who have received God’s call and gifts for ministry under the old dispensation.  That earlier call and gift is not to be negated, but the protection traditionalists demand cannot negate the call and gift received under the new dispensation.  That protection cannot be provided under some separate dispensation of a parallel province, diocese or synodical structure.  Catholic doctrine had traditionally forbidden parallel episcopates; this rules out oversight from another Anglican province.

A parallel has recently struck me.  At a public meeting to discuss where new houses should be built in our village, almost every speaker put forward arguments why each proposed site was inappropriate.  Towards the end of the meeting I was the only speaker to be applauded when I suggested that we should think of the potential positive contribution to our community of new residents, rather than about the putative negative effect on the value of our existing homes.

It is abundantly clear that God has given and is giving gifts to women who have the potential to strengthen the House of Bishops, without devaluing existing spiritual homes.  Without casting aspersions on present occupants  of the bench, it must be obvious that the pool from which they are chosen is shrinking as it continues to be confined to men, especially when the number of male clergy with adequate experience from length of service is reducing as the average age at which they are ordained increases.