Archbishop: CofE has 'explaining to do' after female bishops veto

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/21/archbishop-church-vetoing-female-bishops


Rowan Williams, the outgoing archbishop of Canterbury, told the General Synod that the church had 'undoubtedly' lost credibility due to the move and could not afford to 'park' the issue. Photograph: Yui Mok/AP

The Church of England has "a lot of explaining to do" to the church and to wider society after its rejection of legislation that would have allowed women to become bishops, the outgoing archbishop of Canterbury has said.

In a strongly-worded speech to the General Synod on Wednesday, Rowan Williams warned that the failure of the vote in the house of laity on Tuesday had made the church's governing body appear "wilfully blind" to the priorities of secular society.

"We have – to put it very bluntly – a lot of explaining to do," he said. "Whatever the motivations for voting yesterday … the fact remains that a great deal of this discussion is not intelligible to our wider society. Worse than that, it seems as if we are wilfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that wider society."

Williams, who will be succeeded as head of the church by Justin Welby, the bishop of Durham, next year, said the church had "undoubtedly" lost credibility due to the move. That was the reason, he added, why the issue of female bishops could not simply be "parked" but had to be worked on further with urgency.