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SYDNEY: Church tribunal free to look at female bishops
By Linda Morris
June 21, 2006
SYDNEY Anglicans have failed in their attempt to stall the church's chief legal authority from considering the vexed question of female bishops, as key Australian conservatives have condemned the US election of the denomination's first female primate.
The Australian church's Appellate Tribunal is now free to decide whether any constitutional obstacle exists that would prevent any diocese that has approved women as priests from appointing a female bishop.
The news comes a day after the Bishop of Nevada, Katharine Schori, became the first woman to break the "stained-glass ceiling" and be elected Primate of the US Episcopal Church.
Mark Thompson, the president of the influential evangelical lobby group, the Anglican Church League, warned yesterday that Bishop Schori's election would only deepen the rift within the fragile Anglican communion.
"The Episcopal Church of the USA is an object lesson in what happens when our decision-making is not shaped by the teaching of scripture," Dr Thompson said.
"Unless we are informed about what God has to say on such matters as how men and women should serve each other in Christian congregations, human sexuality more generally, or the unique value and dignity of human life even prior to birth, we are left vulnerable to powerful rhetoric and the attitudes of the world at large - a world which stands opposed to the teaching of scripture."
The Australian Primate, Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, a supporter of female bishops, said he understood that opponents of female bishops would be disappointed by the decision.
He called on all Anglicans to continue talking and working through their differences.
In Australia, supporters of female bishops narrowly failed in their bid to win the required two-thirds majority at the church's national synod in October 2004.
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