Previous News Items

• Which Anglican leader will meet the Pope?
• ADVERTISEMENTS: Professional Positions June 2008
• Anglicans get used to women bishops
• Richardson takes up Anglican post in Rome
• Burma junta's delays set to add to death-toll
• LETTERS: May 2008 ... Readers react to a newspaper's closure

Show all news items

WELCOME: Perth's Archbishop Roger Herft joins the congregation in welcoming pioneer Bishop KayGoldsworthy. PHOTO: Anglican Messenger BENCH: More than twenty of Australia's Anglican bench of Bishops made the trip to Perth's St George's Cathedral to be part of the historic consecration service. PHOTO: Anglican Messenger CEREMONY: Perth's Archbishop Roger Herft places the bishop's mitre on Australia's first women bishop, Kay Goldsworthy. PHOTO: Anglican Messenger

The nation's first woman bishop believes the recent decision by The Australian Bishops Conference to reach an agreement over how best to look after the interests of opponents of the change has significantly lessened the change of a major split in church ranks.

In a wide-ranging interview with the ABC TV 'Compass' program screened May 25, Bishop Kay Goldsworthy, said the new protocols will be a positive step as the church gets used to the new development.

"I don't think this will provoke a split," Kay Goldsworthy said, "and I don't think the response from the bishops' meeting indicates that this will cause a split."

"Even those bishops who disagree with this, particularly those on the issue of 'headship' for instance," she said, "for them this is not a matter of salvation. This is what they might call a second order matter."

From the wider international Anglican church perspective, many Anglicans have learnt that predictions of doom-and-gloom, simply didn't eventuate.

"There have been women bishops for twenty years," Kay Goldsworthy told Compass' Geraldine Doogue. "The sky didn't fall in Henny-Penny."

Landmark service

More than 800 people packed St George's Cathedral in Perth for the milestone 22 May service as Perth archdeacon Kay Goldsworthy, 51, took on her new role as an assistant bishop in Perth Diocese.

Perth's Archbishop Roger Herft told the congregation the service was "an historic occasion."

"It marks the culmination of a long journey in the life of the Anglican Church of Australia, a journey of some 40 years or more to the full inclusion of women in the three orders of ministry."

Among the 21 bishops at the service were national church leader, Brisbane's Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, Melbourne's Archbishop Philip Freier and Adelaide's Archbishop Jeff Driver.