A VATICAN cardinal has told the Church of England that to consecrate women as bishops would make unity “unreachable” and shared Communion impossible.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the head of the Council for Christian Unity, has urged the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and his fellow bishops not to proceed towards women becoming bishops without support from the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.

Cardinal Kasper said that the ordination of women as priests had led to a “cooling off”. Women bishops would cause a “serious and long-lasting chill”.

He gave warning that bishops risked overdoing their Church’s traditional comprehensiveness: “Without identity, no society, least of all a church, can continue to survive.”

Cardinal Kasper, a compatriot of the Pope who as a young priest taught, like him, at Tübingen University in Germany, addressed a private meeting this week of the Church of England’s bishops at Market Bosworth, Leicestershire.

He made clear that while the Catholic Church would not break off talks with Anglicans, the tone of ecumenical dialogue would change. “Ecumenical dialogue in the true sense of the word has as its goal the restoration of full Church Communion. That has been the presupposition of our dialogue until now. That presupposition would realistically no longer exist following the introduction of the ordination of women to episcopal office.”

Above all, all hopes of intercommunion would end. “The shared partaking of the one Lord’s table, which we long for so earnestly, would disappear into the far and ultimately unreachable distance. Instead of moving towards one another we would coexist alongside one another,” he said.

His address again indicates the strictly conservative line being adopted in the Vatican under Benedict XVI.

Yesterday the Pontifical Council for the Family issued a condemnation of contraception, abortion, in-vitro fertilisation and same-sex partnerships, saying that the traditional family had never been so threatened as today.

In spite of the Pope’s reservations over Anglican liberalism, he has fostered ecumenical links. This autumn the Pope and Dr Williams are expected to announce the third round of talks under the auspices of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.

But Cardinal Kasper made clear to the Anglican bishops that if they moved towards women bishops, any future talks would no longer have unity as their goal. He was present at the House of Bishops at the invitation of Dr Williams, with several women priests and campaigners for the ordination of women priests.

His address will add leverage to those bishops in the middle ground who fear that the Anglican Church, already close to schism over gays, will be plunged into further strife should women bishops be ordained. Increasing numbers of bishops are arguing for a delay.

Read Ruth Gledhill's Faith weblog

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