WILLIAMS ENVOY HOPES TO TURN CANADA'S GAY MARRIAGE VOTE

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent

The Daily Telegraph

5/31/2004

The liberal Canadian Church has been told that worldwide Anglicanism could disintegrate if it paved the way to homosexual "marriages" this week.

In unusually blunt language, Canon Gregory Cameron, a senior official close to the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave the warning to the Canadian General Synod in Niagara on Saturday.

Canon Cameron said the decision it was about to make was "about as serious as it could get".

His comments reflected the growing fears of Anglican leaders that their efforts to avert schism over homosexuality would be "holed below the waterline" if the Canadians permitted gay blessings.

But the intervention by Canon Cameron, who was effectively acting as Dr Rowan Williams's envoy, angered many Canadians, who resented that they saw as outside interference.

The Synod will be asked on Wednesday to affirm that there is no bar to any Canadian

diocese authorising the blessing of "committed same sex unions". Observers believe that the vote is "on a knife edge".

If it is passed, the Synod will have defied Dr Williams's pleas for restraint on all sides. The decision could provoke a profound split that would lead to millions of conservative Anglicans breaking their ties with the Church's liberal wing.

The stakes are so high that Dr Williams backed the risky strategy of sending Canon Cameron to address the Synod despite fears that it might unleash a liberal backlash.

Canada's acting Primate, Archbishop David Crawley, said the Church should have complete independence in its decision-making. Liberals privately complained about "English interference".

Canon Cameron, the secretary to the Lambeth Commission, the body set up by Dr Williams to try to keep the Church together, told the Synod that though it had the right to hold the debate, it should know the consequences.

While the idea of public rites for blessing same-sex unions might not be new, he said, it flew in the face of the Church's official policy and the views of the vast majority.

The Synod needed to be aware of their "sisters and brothers" in Africa and Asia who were wondering whether the West was prepared to pay any attention to their beliefs.

"Nor should we decry their motives," he said. "This is no game playing. On both sides people are acting out of profound convictions that this is what God calls them to."

The Lambeth Commission feared that the worldwide Church was moving from "respect towards rivalry", he told the 300 delegates gathered at Brock University in St Catherine's.

"If you say 'no' to the motions before you, you will be in danger of letting down the gay people in your midst, who are your Canadian family, as well as all those others who are looking towards the Anglican Church of Canada to set a new standard of dealing with this issue.

"But if you say 'yes', the work of the Lambeth Commission becomes horribly complicated. We will be told that the Anglican Church of Canada refuses to hear the voice and to heed the concerns of your fellow Anglicans in the growing provinces of the Global South, who are your international family."

Canon Cameron concluded by saying that "the implications of your decision for the unity of the Anglican Communion, perhaps even its very survival in its current form, are just about as serious as it could get".

One Canadian diocese, New Westminster, has already approved a rite for same-sex blessing.

END