Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Anglican bishops critical of Archbishop of Canterbury’s plan for church unity

http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13436

[Catholic News Agency] 5 Aug 2008--Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said the Anglican Communion can help solve its present conflicts by observing moratoria upon the blessing of same-sex unions, the consecration of openly homosexual bishops, and the consecration of bishops who cross province boundaries to minister to evangelical congregations in liberal dioceses. However, some Anglican bishops say the plan will not work, with one prelate calling for the liberal churches’ “orderly separation” from the communion.

Archbishop Williams, speaking in an address on Sunday that marked the close of the Anglican Communion’s 2008 Lambeth Conference, said the “pieces are on the board” to overcome Anglican controversies which include concerns surrounding theology, biblical authority, and sexual ethics. Advocating a “global Church of interdependent communities,” he said there was still much work to do to overcome the disputes, the Times Online reports.

However, it is believed that conservative bishops will continue to consecrate boundary-crossing bishops. Bishop Gregory Venables, the Primate of the Southern Cone, has taken an entire U.S. diocese into his province and is expected to continue attracting parishes and diocese from the Episcopal Church.

Meanwhile, homosexual lobbyists in the U.S.-based group Integrity said they would fight the moratoria forbidding the ordination of homosexual clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.
"We bless same-sex relationships and will continue to do so,” said Reverend Susan Russell, a member of Integrity.

1 comment:

RMBruton said...

Robin, as you and I believe, TEC will continue to do just what they have been doing. At this point nothing will deter them. For them it is a crusade. The folks on the GAFCON side of the equation have a certain trajectory and I am persuaded that they will continue to do what they have been doing. There are several things that could happen in the remaining months of '08, not the least of which will be what courses the dioceses of Ft. Worth, Pittsburgh, and Quincy, not to mention others, will take? Presumably TEC will move to depose Bp Bob Duncan, so how will that play-out? I find myself wondering how the patchwork quilt of Common Causers will hold together, given their varied positions on issues like the ordination of women etcetera? Robin, as you know, I'm an evangelical of an older sort so I tend to notice certain things on the various blogs I visit. There seems to be a preponderance of Anglo-Catholic or even slavishly ritualistic viewpoints expressed in many comments and very few that express classically evangelical Anglican opinions. I ask myself, why so? I think it is in part due to the fact that perhaps more Anglo-Catholics spend more time blogging. It may also be that so few contemporary Anglicans, or people who claim to be Anglican understand the history of the English Reformation and have read precious little of what the English Reformers wrote and read themselves. Historical and doctrinal illiteracy. There is a wonderful little phrase in Serbian which says "Ubi nas ne znaniye" "What is killing us is our ignorance!" I may or may not ever have a real parish again, but I would like to see the development of a core curriculum of essential reading that may equip my co-religionists to better understand what the English Reformation gave us and how best to preserve it and pass it on to others. In this war, and that is truly what I believe it to be, we each have particular roles to play. Some are Generals and some are simply Foot Soldiers in the Infantry. We are spread across vast battlefields and cannot often see each other, so we cannot see how our little sphere of involvement fits into the grander scheme of things. One must continually be reminded that the temptation is to lose hope and not see the forest for the trees.