THE simmering row at the heart of the Church of England over women priests may lead to a Darlington congregation defecting to the Roman Catholic Church.

Worshippers at St James the Great will hold a public meeting to discuss entering the Ordinariate – a special branch of the Catholic church for Anglicans who convert to Catholicism.

The meeting will be addressed by Fr Keith Newton, the former Anglican bishop of Richborough, who, along with two other ex-Church of England bishops, was ordained as a Catholic priest 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 allow married Anglican priests to convert without having to be celibate.

For more than 100 years, St James the Great at Albert Hill has been an Anglo-Catholic church.

However, its priest, Fr Ian Grieves, said that 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.

“It would be so easy for me personally to live at the vicarage protected by the freehold, drawing my stipend and then my full pension at 65.”

He added: “There is no future in staying where we are.

“The CofE has changed beyond recognition – we all know that – churches are closing, congregations are dwindling, vocations are few and money is short.”

Despite being one of the smallest and poorest parishes in Darlington, Fr Grieves said, because of the size and generosity of its congregation, it has an income of about £100,000 and could support itself were it to break from the Anglican Church.

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

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

Preliminary discussions have taken place between senior members of St James the Great and the Durham diocese.

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

He added “This is new territory for all of us and none of know how this is going to work. I very much hope that the Ordinariate will not impair our very good relationship with the Roman Catholic Church in the North- East.

“My overriding 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 takes place at St James the Great Church Hall on Sunday, February 13, at 11.30am.