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Anglican Communion Moves Towards Precipice

ANGLICAN COMMUNION MOVES TOWARDS PRECIPICE

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue

A leak from the Lambeth Commission this week suggests that the Anglican Communion must face the inevitability of a formal split because it cannot agree on the rightness or wrongness of homosexual behavior by segments of the Communion, and the fulfillment of the latter in the consecration of an avowed homosexual to the American episcopacy.

The unidentified source told Ruth Gledhill of the TIMES that a proposal was on the table to turn the Anglican Communion into an Anglican confederation.

What apparently is now on the table is a confederation, modeled along similar lines to the Geneva-based World Lutheran Federation.

What this means is that relations between provinces would be freed up, with new loyalties based on differing theological and moral principles.

The one unifying principle for both conservative and liberal Anglicans is that they remain in communion with the mother Church of England through the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Furthermore, where a national church went too far in embracing modern secular mores, it could be reduced to an observer status or not invited at all to meetings such as the Lambeth Conference, held every ten years.

Such a system, the source said, would placate the conservatives who have been demanding disciplinary measures against churches such as those in the United States, which ordained an openly homoerotic bishop, and Canada, where same-sex blessings have been authorized.

It would permit provinces effectively to excommunicate each other by refusing to recognize their priests or bishops, but they would remain tied in a loose international Anglican confederation by remaining in communion with Canterbury. Canon lawyers are preparing documents they will present next month in Kanuga, NC to see if the Lutheran model is viable.

In a letter sent over the weekend to all the primates and moderators of the Anglican Communion, Dr Robin Eames, the Primate of Ireland, who chairs the Lambeth Commission, pled strongly with conservatives not to split by forming new provinces or dioceses until the commission has completed its work at the end of this year.

In a subsequent article by Jonathan Petre of the TELEGRAPH following another leak, or perhaps a continuation of the trial balloon being floated, an all-powerful "star chamber", headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury would be created under proposals to avert the collapse of worldwide Anglicanism over homosexuality.

The blueprint drawn up by advisers, would grant Dr Rowan Williams significant new powers, though not enough to transform him into an Anglican "pope".
The archbishop would preside over a final court of appeal, allowing him to exercise the "judgment of Solomon" over warring factions in the 77-million
strong Church.

Now the idea of a federation is not entirely new. A paper drawn up last year by Professor Norman Doe, a commission member and the director of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University had already suggested that provinces should be prevented from acting unilaterally against the greater good of the communion as a whole.

Doe’s commission paper argued that when disputes arose, a final appeal could be made to the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by a "bench" of senior churchmen and theologians. Any province acting in defiance of the archbishop's judgment could be expelled.

So what does all this mean?

Clearly, at one level, liberals and revisionists would be the obvious losers in any break up of the Communion.

Pansexualist Anglicans have become the most aggrieved group since they aired their feelings at Lambeth ‘98, and any attempt to discipline them will be met with great resistance. In provinces like the ECUSA and Canada they will demand that they are autonomous with provincial and national canons and constitutions that are not subject to international discipline.

On the other hand, Western orthodox Anglicans would see a plus because it would enable them to recognize only these provinces, individual dioceses and parishes that are faithful to the received doctrine and teaching of the church and reject those “pluriform” dioceses that have rolled over to the secularizing forces of post-modernity.

Interestingly enough some 21 provinces have already declared themselves to be in impaired or broken communion with Frank Griswold and the American Episcopal Church over the Robinson consecration, and this would be codified, legitimizing what has de facto occurred.

Another plus is that the formation of the Network (NACDP), in hindsight a brilliant move by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, would be recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the authentic voice of Anglicanism in North America, in effect isolating the bulk of ECUSA’s bishops who are liberal and revisionist.

The Anglican world could then watch as they slowly withered and died with an inclusive “gospel” built on the foundation of diversity and pansexuality.

Another plus for the orthodox in the United States and Canada would be the break up of geographical lines and the ease with which bishops and archbishops will be free to cross diocesan lines to minister to those persecuted parishes in revisionist dioceses like the Diocese of Pennsylvania.

Some problems will still persist.

If there is no uniform canons and constitutions that can be agreed upon by the whole communion, and clearly this is not in the Episcopal Church’s best interests because it is run by revisionists who view the glue of the church in terms of monies and properties, then it will require a brave orthodox parish who is prepared to sue his diocese over the validity of the Dennis Canon.

The issue of who owns the properties will need to be confronted, and the validity of the Dennis Canon will need to be challenged.

One parish, The Church of the Good Shepherd in St. Louis is doing just that in the Diocese of Missouri, and it will be interesting to see how that all plays out both in St. Louis, their State Supreme Court and ultimately the Supreme Court – the Rev. Paul Walter is ready to go to the mat with Bishop Wayne Smith.

There is also another problem and it is this.

Will the African bishops remain in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury if he still remains in communion with the likes of Frank Griswold? The jury is still out on that, but I wouldn’t bet ECUSA’s Trust Funds that a merger of pan-African bishops, Southern Cone bishops, South-East Asian bishops, doesn’t just up and pull the plug on the Anglican Communion and reject Dr. Williams leadership altogether.

Impossible you say? Perhaps, but a realignment is underway that not even Dr. Williams can stop, and the growing momentum by the orthodox in the ECUSA has made it clear that business as usual with ECUSA’s revisionists is well and truly over. Both Canon David Anderson of the American Anglican Council and Canon David Roseberry, facilitator of the Plano gatherings, are way beyond arguing with Griswold, their only question is what a future Episcopal Church will look like.

Whatever finally emerges from the leak, and the possibility of a new confederation, one thing is for sure, the Anglican Communion is moving closer to the edge of the abyss and unless the revisionists repent of their moral apostasies and theological heresies, then one way or another it is all over for the Anglican Communion.

END

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