Catholic woman plans episcopal 'ordination'

BY SIMON CALDWELL
A CATHOLIC lesbian feminist academic is poised to become Britain's first woman "bishop".
Dr Elizabeth Stuart will be ordained the fourth "bishop" of the Open Episcopal Church (OEC). a Protestant sect which preaches a doctrine of "inclusive Catholicism" it says is "orthodox but not conservative".
The ceremony will take place in the Chapel of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, in Egham, Surrey, on 10 April and could reignite the row over the possi
bility of women bishop's in the Church of England.
Dr Stuart will be consecrated by "bishops" Arthur Palmer, and Charles Wilson, who founded the OEC in 2001, and Jonathan Blake. a former Anglican vicar who became the third "bishop" in the sect.
Dr Stuart said: "I was shocked and filled with trepidation when 1 was approached by the bishops but there are times when you are called to live up to everything you have taught and preached down the years and this was one of those times.
"I joined the OEC precisely because it preaches an inclusive
and risky Catholicism and now I am going to be a sign and symbol of that inclusivity."
She added: "My consecration is not in any sense a statement of protest at what other Churches do or not do. It is just what we in the OEC believe and do."
A spokesman for the "college of bishops" said that "Mother Liz" was elected on the basis of her "qualities as a priest".
The spokesman said: "The OEC preaches with St Paul that in Christ there is no male and female. It is not a big step for us to consecrate a woman.
"It is a natural step. Gender and sexual orientation are simply not issues for us." Dr Stuart, a professor of Theology at King Alfred's College, Winchester, first rose to prominence in 1991 when she published Daring to Speak Love's Name: A Gay. and Lesbian Prayer Book.
The book was banned by former Anglican leader Dr George Carey from the Church of England's Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge bookshops in 1992, but his move was not enough to dissuade Dr Stuart, a once active member of the Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement. from just three years later publishing Just Good Friends: A Lesbian and Gay Theology And Relationship.
Dr Stuart is a patron of Catholics for a Changing Church. and a member of the Catholic Women's Network, a group which forms part of the National Board of Catholic Women. a consultative body to the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, Most recently, she has served as a theologian to the OEC and was made "provincial prior" of the sect's Apostolic Society of St Brigid, a religious order she founded, she said, to "live out the vision of St Brigid of Kildare, an ancient Irish saint who, according to ancient tradition, was herself consecrated a bishop".
The OEC claims to be the "largest independent Catholic Church in the United Kingdom" with 40 clergy and another 25 ordinations planned this year. It says it traces its apostolic succession back through the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands to the 16th century Cardinal Scipione Rebiba.
The Catholic Church does not recognise any of the claims of the OEC. Fr Paul Jennings, a canon lawyer of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton. where Dr Stuart's so-called consecration is to take place, said the "ordination" would be invalid. "She can call herself what she wants but she wouldn't be ordained anything," he said. "For valid ordination one of the requisites is that you are a male that's in the Code of Canon Law — so she wouldn't be anything other than what she is now — a lay Catholic."
A spokesman for the Church of England said that a working party has been set up under the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir Ali, to study the "theological implications" of women bishops.
"It won't be affected by the consecration of women bishops in other churches," he said.