Breakaway congregation recognition is blow to Canadian Church

http://geoconger.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/breakaway-congregation-recognition-is-blow-to-canadian-church-cen-50908-p-6/

[Conger] 13 May 2008--The Anglican Church of Canada’s united front against the breakaway congregations and clergy of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) received a major blow last week after a diocesan synod voted to recognize the secessions.

“All of these churches have by their decisions stayed within the Anglican Communion,” the synod of the Diocese of Athabasca said on April 26, disputing assertions made by Bishop Michael Ingham of New Westminster and other Canadian bishops that by quitting the Canadian Church the secessionists were no longer Anglicans.

The Northern Alberta-based diocese adopted a series of resolutions affirming that it was in “full communion” with ANiC and its sponsor, the Province of the Southern Cone.

The diocese also expressed “its dismay” at the attempts by several bishops to respond to the secessions by turning to the civil courts. “By resorting to the civil courts so readily, the bishops of those dioceses where there are dissident parishes and clergy have displayed so visibly that, to them, the issue is power, not the will of God,” synod said, according to a statement posted on the diocesan website.