The spiritual head of the world's 77 million Anglicans said today his church is trapped by questions of sex and may well face irreconcilable differences over acceptance of homosexuality that could lead to its break up.Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, also told a press conference in Toronto that if Canadian Anglicans vote in two months time to authorize church blessing of same-sex unions, “I don't think it takes rocket science to work out that this will cause problems.”
He urged Canadian Anglicans to ask themselves when they come to decide on the issue what is good for the health of the church locally and globally.
The decision will be taken by the Canadian church's general synod, or governing body, meeting in Winnipeg in June.
A resolution asking the synod to approve local option at the diocesan level for the blessing of same-sex unions is being given quiet support by many senior bishops and is expected to be approved.
“My hope is that whatever decision is made will be made out of a resolution to maintain the highest degree of union in the church and [a concern] for what level of consensus is needed for the church to go forward.”
The Anglican Communion — the world's third largest Christian denomination after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches — is bitterly divided over acceptance of homosexuality between its liberal branches in Canada and the United States and its more conservative national and regional churches in the southern hemisphere.
At a meeting earlier this year of the communion's primates — its senior archbishops — the U.S. branch of Anglicanism, known as the Episcopal Church, was given until Sept. 30 to pledge not to appoint openly gay bishops or bless same-sex unions and to accept spiritual oversight from foreign Anglican bishops for conservative Episcopalians who don't like the direction on which their church is heading.
The U.S. bishops last month rejected foreign oversight and asked for an urgent meeting with Dr. Williams — a request that has grown increasingly clamorous over the past few days.
Dr. Williams said today in Toronto he will meet with the U.S. bishops, taking several primates with him and representatives of the Anglican Consultative Committee, one of international agencies that glues the communion together.
(The Anglican Church is not a monolithic structure like the Roman Catholic Church. Rather it is a loose federation of 38 largely autonomous national and regional churches called provinces. And unlike the Pope, who is chief executive officer of the Roman Catholic Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury is considered only primus inter pares — first among equals — with other senior archbishops.)
The Archbishop of Canterbury is in Toronto to receive honorary degrees today from University of Toronto's two Anglican Colleges, Trinity and Wycliffe. He met with theology students at the two colleges in the morning — from which the media and theology students of other denominations were barred — and gave a public lecture at the university in the afternoon.
Tonight he goes to Niagara Falls to meet with Canadian bishops and lead them in a silent day-long spiritual retreat tomorrow. He return to the United Kingdom on Tuesday night.
The archbishop has been criticized by some senior Anglican clerics in the West, including the Canadian primate, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, for being indecisive on certain aspects of the homosexuality issue.
When asked today about this — with Archbishop Hutchison sitting beside him — Dr. Williams said that, as a theologian and national bishop (he was primate of Wales) prior to becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, he had the liberty to speak out on certain issues.
But as archbishop of Canterbury he plays a different role, he said. “I am steering and pastoring a church in the process of discernment [trying to achieve understanding and insight into itself],” he said. “My role is trying to explain people to one another. If there is to be any change, I am hoping the church can move as a whole.”
He said: “These are complicated days for our church. We are trapped by questions about sex. If you ask any of my primatial colleagues, ‘Is this what you want to be talking about?' they'd say no.”
He said the division over homosexuality is “a really principled issue” — not a division as simple as nice people being in favour of fully including homosexuals in the church and nasty people wanting to exclude them.
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce