Options on tackling the issue of women bishops in the Church of England have been produced by a group headed by the Bishop of Manchester.
The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch said: "The central issue for the Church of England, as our report points out, is the extent to which the Church wishes to accommodate the breadth of theological views that it currently encompasses in relation to women pries
ts and bishops."
The possibilities open to the Church include risking the wrath of traditionalists by introducing the legislation without provision for those who object to women bishops.
Other options explored by the report include special arrangements for those who feel unable to accept women bishops such as a new province, new dioceses and even religious societies.
Such a move would be attacked by campaigners in favour of women priests and bishops in the Church as institutionalising discrimination against women.
The report warns that it is impossible to offer "firm predictions" about when it might be legally possible for women to be consecrated bishops in the Church of England.
Even if each stage is taken as "expeditiously" as possible, a date much before 2014 cannot now be achieved, it said.
The report comes after the General Synod voted in 2006 to set up a group to consider the practicalities of removing the legal obstacles to the consecration of women as bishops.
The Synod had earlier backed a call to "welcome and affirm" the view of the majority of the House of Bishops that the concept of women bishops was "theologically justified."
The first female clergy in the Church of England were ordained in 1994.
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