Bishop silent on 'defectors

• • by Kasia Giedroye
THE RT Rev John Bickersteth, Anglican Bishop of Bath and Wells, recently revealed that three former Catholic priests have become Anglican priests in his diocese over the past 20 months.
Speaking at a Diocesan Synod earlier this month, in the same week that the Rev Peter Cornwell, former Vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, was received into the Catholic Church the Bishop declared: "But we don't shout it around".
Bishop Bickersteth added: "And I don't feel that the Church is breaking up when the Rev so-and-so becomes a Catholic."
The Bishop said that ecumenical discussions at the parish level were "more important than these individual departures", but he pointed out that "there is a steady stream of Roman Catholic laymen becoming Anglicans."
Bishop Bickersteth told the Catholic Herald this week that Anglicans "were not interested in scoring points over it all" and refused to reveal the names of the three former Catholic priests in his diocese, although they were all "quite open about it to their congregations" he said.
"There has been a wonderful coming together of our Churches after centuries apart", said the Bishop. "Making a song and dance" of departures either way, he added, was damaging to the ecumenical movement.