From Reuters-
Draft legislation introduced at the weekend said women should be consecrated as bishops on the same basis as men, disappointing the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical wings of the Church which had wanted a "two-tier" system. Some are now likely to consider Pope Benedict's offer last October to make it easier for Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism. The Pope is to visit Scotland and England in September on a trip already mired in controversy.
The liberal wing of the Church of England, which has campaigned for women bishops ever since the first woman priest was ordained 16 years ago, welcomed the draft legislation. "It is now right for the Church of England as a whole to accept women and men as equal before God in all parts of its ministry," Women and the Church, a group which champions women bishops, said in a statement.
The Church's revision committee proposed safeguards for traditionalist parishes, including the right to request that a male bishop perform blessings and ordinations. But it did not accommodate calls for new dioceses or a special class of bishops. The draft proposals will now go forward for debate at the Church's General Synod, or parliament, in York, northern England, in July, and will still have to pass a number of stages before England could see its first woman bishop, possibly in 2014.
More here-
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE6481SO20100509
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