Posted on 08/04/2008 4:30:54 AM PDT by Schnucki
The Archbishop of Canterbury blamed liberal North American churches yesterday for causing turmoil in the Anglican communion by blessing same-sex unions and consecrating gay clergy as he attempted to chart a way out of the crisis that has been engulfing the church.
On the final day of the Lambeth conference, a 10-yearly gathering of the world's Anglican bishops, Rowan Williams said practices in certain US and Canadian dioceses were threatening the unity of the Anglican communion.
"If North American churches do not accept the need for a moratoria [on same sex blessings and the consecration of gay clergy] we are no further forward. We continue to be in grave peril," he said.
He was speaking as 670 bishops prepared to leave the University of Kent campus after 18 days of reflection, prayers, conversations and efforts to hold a divided communion together.
Making his third and final presidential address Williams said the "pieces are on the board" to resolve the wrangling over homosexuality. He put forward the idea of a "covenanted future" involving a "global church of interdependent communities". But even as he was speaking disaffected primates from developing countries expressed regrets about the conference. A statement signed by more than a quarter of the world's Anglican archbishops said theological voices outside the west had been missing from some key sessions. "We are concerned with the continuing patronising attitude of the west towards the rest of the churches," they said.
Williams also faced disenchantment at home, with some English bishops questioning the nature of the conference. Michael Scott-Joynt, the bishop of Winchester and the fifth most senior churchman in England, said: "The Lambeth Conference is required to do something rather than live down to the worst expectations of the bishops who stayed away."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
So nice for Rowie to be concerned about the church after his public capitulation to Mohammadan interests in the UK. Touching.
Liberal churches in the U.S. have the annoying habit of b**chslapping the rest of the church and then calling for unity.
Does the Archbishop need to bone up on his grammar? He uses a singular article with a plural noun. It's either "a need for a moratorium" (singular) or "a need for moratoria" (plural).
Even the godless Rowan Williams has sense enough to know that the obsession with affirming gays is destroying the church!
To do him justice, he doesn’t. This is a journalist’s poor transcription of a radio interview, in which I quite clearly heard him say ‘moratoria’ without the article. Given that he is, before anything elase, an academic theologian who chooses his words with great care, a lapse of the kind erroneously attributed to him would be highly improbable.
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