Episcopal Bishops Robert L. DeWitt, Bishop of Pennsylvania; Daniel Corrigan, Suffragan Bishop of Colorado; and Edward R. Welles II, the retired Bishop of West Missouri., ordained elevent female Episcopal deacons as priests, sparking a crisis in the Episcopal Church. The acts were declared valid but irregular by the Episcopal Church.
The act was pioneering as the direction became that of the Episcopal Church and much, but not all, of the Anglican Communion thereafter. It also had the result of causing it to be increasingly impossible for the overall Anglican Communion to reunite with the Catholic Church, which does not recognize the ordainment of women and of course which generally holds that Anglican holy orders are invalid, although there are exceptions we won't deal with here for individual priests and circumstances. The validity of Anglican holy orders has been a major topic in the Anglican Communion.
It's worth noting that Christian churches in general were becoming increasingly liberal in the wake of the 1960s, although that wasn't universally true. It was relatively noticeable in the Episcopal Church which had always been one of the most influential in the United States and one of the largest of the "mainline" Protestant churches. The Episcopal Church had been particularly associated with wealth and establishment in the US and remained so for much of the 20th Century, but starting at some point after this it began a dramatic decline and no longer holds the status it once did. The Anglican Communion itself has globally been in a condition of strife as conservative elements, with a heavy African representation, have been opposed by developments such as this within it.
The mysterious Alpha Group within the KGB Special Forces was created by Yuri Andropov.
.png)
