You are here
ULTIMATUM: Shape Up or Ship Out
By Ian Hunter
Church pronouncements - at least those from the hierarchy of the Anglican Church - are usually phrased in a gelatinous and unctuous prose that obscures meaning. But not so the communiqué issued this week by the 35 global Primates (i.e. senior Bishops) after meeting for a week in Northern Ireland.
Those sections of their final communiqué dealing with homosexuality in the church are remarkably free of ecclesiastical bafflegab. And that is bad news for the Anglican Church of Canada.
Essentially, the Bishops have given the renegade Anglican Churches in both Canada and the United States an ultimatum: shape up or get out.
The Bishops view the current North American situation as ".of the utmost seriousness", and they add: ".there remains a very real question about whether North American churches are willing to accept the same teaching on matters of sexual morality as is generally accepted elsewhere in the Communion." In other words, the Bishops doubt whether the Canadian and U.S. Churches remain part of that ".one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic church" that all Anglicans profess to believe in each and every time they recite the Creed.
So, what's to be done?
The Bishops directive is blunt and it is in four parts:
(1) Until 2008 (the next meeting of the Lambeth Conference) Canadian and American Bishops are no longer welcome to participate in the Church's deliberative assembly, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). A more blatant snub is difficult to imagine.
(2) The Canadian and American churches must respond fully to the recommendations of the Windsor Report, issued last October; this Report requires, among other steps, a formal Canadian apology for the antics of New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham (blessing same-sex unions); and from United States Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, (for consecrating as Bishop a man who had left his wife and children to live with his homosexual lover). To date, no such apologies have occurred, although there have been expressions of "regret" for "hurt caused to all sides". The Windsor Report also requires, and the global Primates re-affirmed, a future moratorium on same-sex blessings.
(3) In June, 2005 Canadian and U.S. church leaders will be summoned to a meeting in Nottingham, England, in effect to "show cause" why their severance from the worldwide Anglican Communion should not be made permanent. The Global Primates left little doubt that unless there are big changes between now and then, an ex-communication (although not called such) is in prospect.
(4) Their most consequential decision may have been the direction given to the Archbishop of Canterbury -".as a matter of urgency" - to get on with the creation of a panel to recommend and supervise alternative Episcopal oversight. This means that Anglican priests who find themselves serving in a diocese like New Westminster or Niagara, under a renegade Bishop, will be able to carry on under orthodox supervision.
No one expected the global Primates to be quite so direct and forceful; the after-shocks will be felt for some time. Orthodox Anglicans will regard this development as an answer to prayer; it is harder to predict how the Canadian House of Bishops will take such a public face-slapping.
It has been estimated that roughly a third of Canadian Bishops oppose the blessing of same-sex unions on theological grounds; many others are closet supporters of Bishop Ingham, even though some regret his timing and his preening ego. Will the Bishops common desire for "peace in our time" trump theology and doctrine? We shall have to wait and see.
Is there a limit to the patience of that dwindling band who still attend Canadian Anglican churches? Many of them have felt betrayed by their Bishops in the past - over liturgy; over squandering money on politically-correct causes (e.g. the residential schools imbroglio); over other issues - and yet they continue to go to church; will the faithful wish to continue when they are disowned by the worldwide Anglican Church?
If the Canadian Bishops want a text for their upcoming deliberations, I make bold to suggest these words of the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah: ""It is you - shepherds of my people - who have scattered my flock; it is you who have driven them away; it is you who have not attended to them" (Jeremiah 23; 1-2).
--Mr. Hunter is a Canadian writer and attorney. Thi's column first appeard in the National Post in Canada
