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LONDON: Bishops told: say sorry for gay rift
by Christopher Morgan and Sarah Keenlyside
THE SUNDAY TIMES
10/17/2004
THE American Anglican church that caused outrage by ordaining an openly gay bishop will this week be asked to apologise by a commission set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury to heal the rift.
It is asking each of the bishops who took part in the ordination of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire last November to make the public apology.
But this is still unlikely to pacify the 22 out of 38 independent provinces of the Anglican communion around the world that are planning to remain “out of communion” with America.
Gregory Venables, Primate of the Southern Cone of America (one of the 22 churches) said: “The provinces in broken communion will remain in broken communion. It’s like saying, ‘Am I going to return to having an adulterous relationship?’ The schism is there.”
In the report, to be published tomorrow, the commission will announce the setting up of a common law for the communion which will include a covenant forbidding the ordination of openly gay bishops if it is contrary to the majority will of Anglicans.
Venables said: “It would mean that we would all be pulling together. Canons (rules) govern individual dioceses and provinces but there are no canons for all the provinces together. This common law is a sharing of decision-making, which means we are all more or less accepting that if 10 out of 12 say ‘We don’t want to do that now’ those two accept it even if they don’t agree.”
The commission’s report will also contain a stinging rebuke for the American Episcopal church as well as asking for an apology.
The commission is expected to reaffirm a Lambeth conference resolution of 1998 that stated that the place for sexual activity was marriage.
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