THE simmering row at the heart of the Church of England over women clergy boiled over last night as a North-East congregation announced it planned to defect to the Catholic church.

The congregation at St James the Great, in Darlington, is to hold a public meeting next month to discuss entering the Ordinariate – a special branch of the Catholic church for Anglicans who convert to Catholicism.

The meeting will be addressed by Father Keith Newton, former Anglican bishop of Richborough who, with two other ex-Church of England bishops, was ordained as a Catholic priest earlier this month and made head of the Ordinariate.

The Ordinariate was proposed in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI as a refuge for disaffected Anglo-Catholics.

It will allow them to retain some Anglican traditions and also allow married Anglican priests to convert without having to be celibate.

St James the Great, in the Albert Hill area of Darlington, has been an Anglo- Catholic church for more than 100 years. But its priest, Father Ian Grieves, said the church was looking to split, chiefly because of plans to ordain women bishops.

He said Anglo-Catholics had lost their “honoured, respected and permanent place”

within the Church of England.

Fr Grieves, who has been at St James the Great for 22 years, said he was confident his congregation would support the plans.

He said: “It would be easy to stay as we are, as many of my clergy brethren are – not to rock the boat and pretend all is well.”

But he added: “The C of E has changed beyond recognition – we all know that.

Churches are closing, congregations are dwindling, vocations are few and money is short.”

The Catholic church is expecting about 50 priests and about 30 groups, totalling approximately 500 people, to defect.

Should the parish of St James be part of that number it is not know what will become of the present church buildings and whether the congregation will continue to worship there.

However, preliminary discussions have taken place between senior members of the church and the Durham diocese.

The Bishop of Jarrow, the Right Reverend Mark Bryant, said the Church of England was still looking for a compromise and he hoped that most churches would wait until this had been worked out before joining the Ordinariate.

He said: “I very much hope that the Ordinariate will not impair our very good relationship with the Roman Catholic Church in the North- East.

“My over-riding response to this is one of sadness. It’s always sad when a family gets split up and people feel they can no longer have anything to do with the family.”

The meeting will take place in St James the Great church hall on Sunday, February 13, at 11.30am.