The Church of  England’s decision to admit women bishops appears an insoluble block on the road to church unity. But in the 175 years since this paper first appeared, the door to union has closed several times, only to open again Recent years have often been referred to as an ecumenical winter. This is especially evident in tensions engendered between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion chiefly over, on the one side, the ordination of women and, above all, of an openly gay priest as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States and, on the other, the establishment of the Ordinariate and the publication of Liturgiam Authenticam, which brought to an end the use of shared liturgical texts in English. This seasonal metaphor was occasioned by the apparent gloriou