Has Bishop John Howe averted Schism?

http://blogs.theledger.com/default.asp?item=690916

[The Ledger] 23 Oct 2007--There have been some pretty significant developments in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida within the past week. Nine priests in the diocese -- two with connections here in Polk County -- met on Oct. 16 with Bishop John Howe to discuss ways they might "disaffiliate" with the Episcopal Church. Something like this had been rumored for awhile. (See my story about this meeting here.)

But then, Howe sent a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rown Williams, looking for some hint whether or not the Episcopal Church is facing some kind of sanction over its progressive stance toward gays, in defiance of a consensus in the Anglican Communion. In his reply, Williams gave Howe a place to stand in the midst of this whole controversy. In part, Williams wrote: "I should feel a great deal happier, I must say, if those who are most eloquent for a traditionalist view in the United States showed a fuller understanding of the need to regard the Bishop and the Diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the 'national church'." (Read the entire correspondence at Kendall Harmon's TitusOneNine blog here.)