I wonder why not do as the RCs in some places, with a severe clergy shortage, do. You get a retired priest who is senile or just a gibbering idiot, who can be wheeled to the altar daily to say mass. All the real business of the parish is conducted by lay staff and volunteers—if they’re very, very lucky, under the direction of a member of the near-extinct species of nuns, who can address the congregation—though, of course, their “addresses” can’t be called “homilies.”

That should be theologically satisfactory for any good Anglo-Catholic (you did say “mass”, right?). Let them put their money where their mouths are or watch ‘em change their tune.

In our deanery we have to move from eight stipendiary clergy to 6 in five years. One of our benefices is a Resolution A, B & C outfit which means they have alternative spiscopal oversight.

The committee trying to reorganise the area for six clergy found incredible that a letter from a layperson from this A, B & C benefice should be sent to us, assuring us that they would settle for nothing less than a full-time-priest with a daily mass, and untained by anything to do with women in the sanctuary.

Time will tell. Their incumbent will retire, and I think the congregation will change its tune very quickly, especially if a replacement isn’t found until they reconfigure their parish grouping.

Now (in the US at least) most who press for institutional unity don’t care two straws for doctrinal uniformity. Of course, no one’s prescinding…

I suppose the CofE’s being the established church creates further difficulties but I’m sure a deal could be cut. Globally, religious realignments are inevitable and the Anglican Communion is no longer viable. In the long run duking it out to keep refusniks in the institutional fold is going to be more expensive in a variety of ways than losing revenues from churches that pull out because they don’t want to ordain women, don’t want to bless same-sex unions or whatever. Send them off happy, with their buildings, silverware and endowments, bishops and archbishops, to band together with like-minded churches in the Southern Cone and Timbuktu.

Of course no institution willingly lets go of territory and no bureaucrat will tolerate any shrinkage of his bailiwick. But that’s just an example of market failure.