Children are dying on the streets! Archbishop of York launches bitter attack on Synod 'navel-gazing'

Dr John Sentamu said the members of its General Synod are turning into politicians obsessed with their own affairs instead of Christians talking to the nation.

The Archbishop spoke while the Synod, the parliament that draws up CofE laws, plunged into a day of recriminations following anguished arguments over women bishops.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, speaks during the debate on Women Bishops being held today at the General Synod.

 On Monday it voted to speed ahead with the consecration of women and to deny traditionalists safe havens where there will be no women clergy.

The Archbishop of York referred the members of the General Synod to an article in yesterday's Daily Mail.

He said:  'Jesus Christ is on the streets weeping.

'Did you see the the newspaper that said the Church is navel-gazing while our children are being slaughtered and killed?

'We have confused synodical language with governance, with parliament and everything else that goes with it. So I am praying very hard for a fresh understanding in the Church.'

Dr Sentamu warned the Synod at the weekend, before the bitter arguments over women, that the Church must try to reach young people to try to cut knife crime.

Today he accused them of putting politics before the needs of the nation.
Dr Sentamu said some of the 468 members of the Synod 'think when we come here we are representatives of somebody.

'If you do it that way you become a member of parliament,' Dr Sentamu said. 'Maybe some of us should stand and some of us should lose.'

The recriminations followed repeated accusationsdruing Monday's debate over women that liberal and feminist members were acting in an extreme and ungenerous manner. One bishop was left in tears saying he was ashamed of his church.

 More than six hours of debate ended in a vote in favour of women bishops that means the first may be consecrated in 2014 but 1,300 traditionalist Anglo-Catholic clergy are poised to walk out of the CoE.

Bishop of Durham the Right Reverend Tom Wright, number five in the CofE's hierarchy, told the Synod today: 'We are living through a massive and muddled outworking of the law of unintended consequences. In plain English a slow-moving train wreck.'

He said the Synod had become an unstoppable conveyor belt for decisions and said the CofE's complex and sometimes 'disastrous' bureaucracy was creating trouble.

'It is the task of the bishops not to usurp managerial functions but to do the word of God,' Dr Wright said.

He said of the argument over women bishops: 'This debate yesterday: we had the same debate in the House of Bishops last May and we had the same kind of muddle as yesterday. We should have pulled it then and there.'

And Dr Wright warned of the looming Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world which threaten to split over gay rights: 'Many bishops are not sure what is going to happen.'

But some Synod members blamed lack of leadership from the bishops for the unhappiness over women bishops.

David Jones, a lay member from Bridport in Dorset, said: 'We want leadership from our bishops. I am very deeply saddened that yesterday we went through six hours of debate on a motion proposed by the bishops.

'We are accused by some people of being unthoughtful and ungracious. But if the bishops put something up and we support it we should be thanked for that.'

During the arguments Dr Sentamu put his name and reputation behind a call for 'superbishops' that would have given the beleaguered traditionalists supervision by male prelates who would not ordain women priests.

The compromise, however, was narrowly voted down.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams took little part in the debate, intervening only to say he wanted to see more rather than less robust forms of structural provision' to protect traditionalists. Dr Williams did not speak during the recriminations today.

 The Vatican's Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity said today that the Synod decision 'signifies a breaking away from the apostolic tradition maintained by all of the churches since the first millennium, and therefore is a further obstacle for the reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.'