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Dissident Anglicans leave Church
2011-03-09 21:04:26
9 March 2011 Last updated at 16:12 Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print Dissident Anglicans leave Church of England Three former Anglican bishops were ordained as Catholic priests on 15 January Continue reading the main story Women Bishops Controversy Row as women bishops law amended Women oppose female bishops move 'No more change' on women bishops Women bishop concessions rejected
A first wave of about 600 Anglicans are officially leaving the Church of England in protest at the decision to ordain women as bishops.
They will be enrolled as candidates to join a new branch of the Catholic Church - the Ordinariate - which has been specially created for them.
They attended Catholic Mass marking Ash Wednesday before spending Lent preparing to convert.
The Ordinariate is led by three former Anglican bishops.
The group leaving the Church of England - which includes 20 members of the clergy - are unhappy about developments in Anglicanism they claim have led it away from traditions historically shared with Roman Catholics.
'Goalposts shifted'Father Ed Tomlinson, who has stood down as a parish priest in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, said the Anglican Church had been "shifting the goalposts".
"We couldn't continue to be Christians in a normal sense when we were in a maverick Church that kept changing the rules to appease the common culture," he said.
He said changes to the rules on divorce and family had produced a "political Church where people campaign for things".
Parishioner Kay Abbey, who is leaving her church in Hockley, Essex, said the ordination of women bishops was the final straw.
"It just gets totally away from what we've been taught in the Bible that it comes through Jesus, through the male line," she told the BBC.
"The Catholic tradition gives us that and that's the way I want to continue to go."
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