A SENIOR Catholic bishop has warned his Anglican Church of Australia counterparts that the ordination of their first women bishops will increase obstacles to reconciliation between the two Churches, writes Mark Brolly.

"We can't see how we can ordain women as priests from a doctrinal point of view," Bishop Michael Putney, of Townsville in Queensland, told Sydney's Catholic Weekly. "It's not a question of us choosing not to, it's a question of us being seen that we're unable to."

Bishop Putney, who is chairman of the Australian Catholic Bishops' Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Relations, said that the ordination of women bishops increased the obstacles to reconciliation between Catholics and Anglicans because bishops were the leaders of the Church, and even within the Anglican Communion, that leadership would be received ambiguously.

Bishop Putney was responding to news that Archdeacon Kay Goldsworthy is to be consecrated as Australia's first female assistant bishop on 22 May in St George's Anglican Cathedral in Perth. Nine days later, Canon Barbara Darling will be consecrated as an assistant bishop of Melbourne. Both women were pioneers of women's ordination in Australia, being among the first women ordained as deacons in 1986 and as priests six years later.

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