Church of England looks to ordain women bishops

Here's a conversation over instant messenger between myself and fellow contributor Brandon Kraft, from this afternoon:

Brandon: the church of england voted to continue the process to admit women to the office of bishop
Mark: of course they did
sorry -- my militancy comes out
Brandon: it's england though- they've been slower to adopt the liberal leanings that we're used to with the [Episcopal Church of the United States]
they have another vote in the future that needs a 2/3rd majority in all three houses to be approved the vote today, only needed a simple majority, would have been only one vote over the 2/3rd required for the final rule change
so really, it could stall out still
today's vote marked the [Church of England]'s acknowledgement that theologically they accept the possibility
Mark: well i suppose we can hope for something
Brandon: i think we've given up hope for an instutitional reconcilation with rome
or at least that's my read
like there's no pastoral provision for the eastern orthodox
we're still hoping for instiutional unity with them
Mark: yeah that's far more likely i think
Mark: with [the Church of England] i just see a history of the false sense of "compromise," giving an inch here and there and pretty soon it's just too far gone to resemble anything that would be considered reconcileable with traditional Christianity (that is to say, Catholicism and Orthodoxy)

So there you have it. I wish I could say it surprised me. But we'll see how all this pans out.