The Anglican Church's most senior woman bishop said she believed
that one day the church would be led by a woman Archbishop of
Canterbury.
"The signposts are pointing in one direction," said Victoria
Matthews, for 15 years a bishop in Canada and now moving to
minister in Christchurch, New Zealand.
"I would be very surprised if it wasn't accepted world-wide," she
said on Tuesday at the Lambeth Conference, the once-in-a-decade
gathering of Anglican bishops from around the globe.
"But it would be difficult to say the timeline. A third of Anglican
provinces have now given permission for women bishops," she
said.
The issue of women bishops has sparked controversy in the Church of
England, the Anglican mother church, with threats of mass walkouts
by traditionalists fiercely opposed to them.
Earlier this month, the Church of England's governing body
confirmed it will ordain women bishops but also opted for a code of
practice that would seek to accommodate objectors.
Anglicans in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand
already have had women bishops.
One in six of English parish priests is a woman and, more than a
decade after they were first ordained, liberals say it is insulting
not to admit them to positions of power.
Traditionalists say that, as Jesus Christ's apostles were all men,
there is no precedent for women bishops.
Frosty response
If the compromise wins full acceptance and the scheduled timetable
is mapped out by 2012, the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual
leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, could one day be a
woman.
"Once they are in the episcopate, it is entirely possible,"
Matthews said.
The decision by the Church of England on women bishops provoked a
frosty response from the Vatican which called it an historic break
from Christian doctrine that will drive Anglicans and Catholics
further apart.
Matthews retorted: "With the greatest respect, the Vatican has to
understand the Anglican communion is not synonymous with the Church
of England.
The Anglican communion has had women in the episcopate for about
20 years.
"They really need to do their homework and realise that the
communion is 38 provinces and not one with satellites. That is a
pretty significant error."
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is fighting fellow clerics
on another divisive front.
The Lambeth Conference was hit by mass defections by conservatives,
mainly from Africa, Asia and South America, who were vehemently
opposed to the ordination of openly gay US Bishop Gene Robinson and
the blessing of same-sex marriages in Canada.
Williams readily admitted at the conference on Monday that the
thorny issue of women bishops was "a huge bit of unfinished
business" for the Church of England.
But he did not feel that the mother church had entered the
conference mortally wounded "as a bleeding, hunted animal with
arrows in its side."
