Forster had served as a member of the English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee. He has been critical of a “drift” in ecumenical relations “from a vision of full visible unity to an essentially debased vision of reconciled diversity,” the Church Times said.
The retired Anglican bishop had supported the ordination of women to the Anglican priesthood and the Chester diocese was the first to have a woman bishop. At the same time, he was critical of the Church of England’s approach to women bishops and how this affected relations with other Christian bodies. He thought it was “astonishing” that the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission had not published anything on the ordination of women.
The Church of England broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th century, adopting a different theology and sacramental practices. Its head is the English monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. The Catholic Church generally does not recognize Anglican holy orders as sacramentally valid.
Forster has been involved in some debates of the day. As an Anglican bishop seated in the House of Lords, he opposed 2013 legislation to recognize same-sex unions as marriages in England and Wales, though Parliament successfully passed the bill.
In 2015, in response to Pope Francis’ encyclical on God’s creation Laudato si’, he co-authored a critical commentary with Bernard Donoughue, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords and a lay Catholic.
Forster and Donoughue said the encyclical struck them as “well-meaning but somewhat naïve.” While the Pope’s “ecological spirituality” recommends much that is “valuable and commendable,” they said “to regard economic growth as somehow evil, and fossil fuels as pollutants, will only serve to increase the very poverty that he seeks to reduce.”
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