The fraudulent bandwagon of Church of England governance rolls relentlessly on. This week the General Synod agreed to fast-track the process which will lead to the appointment of women bishops by the end of the year. Under the agreed measures – which won overwhelming support at the last synod meeting three months ago – female bishops will be introduced with a house of bishops “declaration” setting out guidance for parishes where congregations reject female episcopal oversight. The plans will see the creation of an ombudsman who, appointed by the archbishops and with the backing of lay and clergy representatives in the Synod, will rule on disputes once female bishops are appointed. Clergy who fail to co-operate with the ombudsman could be subject to disciplinary proceedings. Thus the Act of Synod of 1993, the benign inspiration of John Habgood, then Archbishop of York, which guaranteed by statute a permanent place in the church for those who conscientiously oppose the ordination of women, will be rescinded.

Opponents will no longer have this statutory safeguard. The so-called “flying bishops” appointed to provide their pastoral oversight will be no more. Traditionalists will in effect have to rely on the generosity, goodwill and fair-mindedness of the feminists: and we have bitter experience of just how short a way that will take us.

The reality is that the liberal takeover of the Church of England is now complete. In this context “liberal” is the most misused word in the ecclesiological lexicon, for our liberal mistresses and masters exercise liberality only to those with whom they agree. For “liberal” read “totalitarian leftism.” They hate traditional Evangelicals and Anglocatholics, seeing them as throwbacks to an unenlightened era before the feminisation and diversification of the church took place. In his last speech before his retirement, Rowan Williams said all there is to say about the future shape of the church when he declared that we have a lot of catching up to do with the mores of secular society. As if Jesus Christ had commanded, “Go ye into all the world and set up focus groups.”

Well this week’s vote has seen to it that Rowan Williams’ prescribed catching-up has been achieved. The character of the church has been irreversibly changed. In Gertrud Himmelfarb’s memorable phrase: “The counter-culture is the culture now.” And traditionalists can expect no charity from the new regime.

What does all this presage for the future of the church? We can see pretty clearly what this future will be because we have a precedent in the development – I should say decline and fall – of the Episcopal Church of the United States which has adopted all the secular social fads of the the age with the result that that once great institution is now a laughing stock, a caricature of political correctness, with collapsed attendances and the complete loss of its influence in the nation.

Like ECUSA, the Church of England has become a right-on secular sect: its liturgy long since destroyed, its Authorised Version of the Bible cast contemptuously cast aside, its theology demythologised and its pastoralia debased into a form of practical socialism.

At least they should have had the decency to end this week’s synodical proceedings with a Requiem for the C.of E.