The Pulpit Barrier

FOR THEIR PART, THE BISHOPS AND PRIESTS GAVE strong approval. But among lay delegates at the Church of England's synod in London, the historic ballot that approved women as priests reached the required two-thirds by a margin of just two votes. That close decision broke 19 centuries of tradition, and it brings pressure to bear on men-only branches in the worldwide Anglican Communion (70 million members) to imitate the English mother church, U.S. Episcopalians and others. (Australia's Anglicans are expected to authorize women this week.) In England one-fourth of the bishops and priests remain strongly opposed, and some kind of split could develop when ordinations of women begin in 1994. A Vatican spokesman warned that the Anglican move "constitutes a new and grave obstacle" in the effort to reunite Anglicanism and Catholicism. Nevertheless, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey beseeched the synod to "take the risk of faith," and it did. (See Cover Story beginning on page 52.)