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CANADA: Acting Primate Says Provincial Autonomy Is Way To Go

CANADIAN ACTING PRIMATE SAYS COMMUNION SHOULD WORK INDEPENDENTLY OF OTHER PROVINCES

By David W. Virtue

ST. CATHERINE'S, ON (5-29-2004)--The acting Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Most Rev. David Crawley blasted the four instruments of Anglican unity to more than 400 delegates at the 37th General Synod last night.

The archbishop effectively dismissed the four instruments of unity as having any juridical authority. While he urged sensitivity to the broader Anglican Communion he said the Canadian Church should have independence in its personal decision-making.

"We have provincial autonomy" he told the Canadian Anglicans. "The four instruments of unity have no juridical authority, only consultative and moral authority," he said.

Crawley said the Canadian Anglican Church should and will work independently of any action by another province.

He said it was equally unacceptable for direct interference in the affairs of the Anglican Church of Canada by Primates of other Provinces of the Communion. "That is not the way our Communion operates." The Synod was the highest legislative authority, he said. "We have no central legislative body and no Magesterium."

Crawley said the basis for decision-making is "Is it what I want?" or "Is it good for the Church?"

The criterion for our decisions must be, "Will this enhance or inhibit the spread of the Realm of God?" or to put it another way, "Is what we are doing true to the nature of the Kingdom of God?"

Crawley said Christians cannot simply abandon their traditions and be blown to and fro by the changing winds of their culture, but Christians who repudiate entirely the culture in which they live either retreat into a social, spiritual and intellectual ghetto or attempt entirely to control society. "Neither response is faithful to the Gospel. The trick of course is to maintain a balance, to 'be in the world but not of it.'

Crawley said the church had settled the residential school scandal for $25 million with each diocese contributing their proportional share. He said the Government had changed its tune and was willing to accept partial release exempting claims for loss of language and culture from it.

"As painful and difficult these last ten years have been for all of us in the church, from then has arisen a determination to forge a new relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Anglicans."

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