LATER this month Canon Jane Hedges will raise the Christian chalice before a congregation at Westminster Abbey. Before administering the sacrament she will recite from the eucharistic liturgy: “All honour and glory be yours, Almighty Father, for ever and ever.” By then she will know whether or not the Church of England is willing to consecrate women as bishops.

Today, after years of debate, the General Synod will vote at its meeting in York on the fundamental principle of admitting women to the episcopate. Even opponents admit it is unlikely that the vote will fail.

Canon Hedges was among the first women to be ordained a priest in 1994 and became the first female residentiary canon at Westminster Abbey when she was installed in January. Aged 51, she is almost certainly in the running to be one of the first women bishops in England. Yet there are still thousands of men and women who believe that her orders as a priest could be invalid; and this question mark, which hangs over the head of every one of the 2,000 women priests serving in England, is given its own validity by the continuing refusal of the Church of England to consecrate women as bishops.

For all the Church’s official statements advocating non-discrimination, so long as women cannot break through to the senior positions, they will continue to feel “less than”. The election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as the next Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, giving her equal status to an Archbishop, has merely brought the issue into sharper focus.

Canon Hedges, who is married and has two teenage sons, said: “For the most part, everybody I meet regards me as a priest. We are still technically in a period of ‘reception’, but I do not really think about that aspect.

“The reality is that we are priests, and that is that. The vast majority of people I speak to probably do not realise that women cannot be bishops.”

Although the synod voted last July to begin the legislative process towards women bishops, it is not until today that it will vote on the principle. On Monday the legislative process will begin. Even the most optimistic believe it unlikely that there will be a woman bishop before 2011.

The process could take even longer because plans to introduce a tier of “flying bishops”, titled Transferred Episcopal Arrangements, are in disarray after bishops failed to agree on how to implement them.

On Monday the synod is expected to set up a new group to draw up the legislation that will be needed to permit the consecration of women and to safeguard the place of opponents within the Church.

Christina Rees, chair of Women and the Church, said: “By lunchtime the Church will have decided whether or not it is going to have women bishops. It is hugely significant because it will be an acknowledgement of the value of women. We have two hours to go for it. This is it.”

Stephen Parkinson of Forward in Faith, representing traditionalists, said: “Only a structural provision — an additional province, for example — will be capable of averting the sort of chaos we are seeing now in the Episcopal Church in the USA.”

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