From The Church Times-
THE NEXT General Synod meeting will take place in Church House, Westminster, from Monday 8 to Friday 12 February. It has a very full agenda, said the secretary general of the Arch bishops’ Council, William Fittall, at the press briefing on Monday, because it will be “clearing the decks for the Synod at York in July” when the ordination of women bishops will next be debated.
Mr Fittall went on to “refute the myths” that were current in the press that the revision committee on women in the episcopate had been deliberately dragging its feet in order to miss the February sessions and therefore delay any decision, or that the committee had “misapplied itself”.
A large number of proposals had come to the committee, and it was having to examine each in turn, giving the proposers the chance to put their cases personally, and to consider all the legislation line by line.
Asked whether the recent offer from the Pope had further slowed the process down, Mr Fittall refused to commit himself, saying that the committee had had to look at “a lot of big ideas” as well as details. He did not think there was any reason to change the view that 2014 was likely to be the earliest date that a woman bishop could be appointed.
He said that the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, as chairman of the steering group, would give a statement to the Synod about the current situation.
As for the present concerns of the Anglican Communion, he said it would be surprising if there were no formal questions about the Pope’s initiative, or about the controversies in the Communion.
The Archbishop of Canterbury would be giving a presidential address on the Tuesday afternoon which would almost certainly include the tensions in the Anglican Communion. On Wednesday afternoon, the Synod would debate a private member’s motion on the Church’s relationship with the emerging Anglican Church in North America.
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=87983
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