Posted on 03/04/2004 10:12:10 AM PST by ahadams2
Primates' offer "appalling" and "improper" -- Crawley
By Frank Stirk
FOUR ANGLICAN primates in Africa and one in Asia have offered "alternative episcopal oversight" to Canadian Anglicans disillusioned over the way their bishops have addressed the longstanding controversy over same-sex blessings. So far, four parishes and eight priests in the diocese of New Westminster, as well as one priest in Calgary, have accepted the offer.
Recently, Archbishop David Crawley, the Anglican Church of Canada's acting primate, spoke with CC.com -- and left no doubt what he thinks of their offer.
Archbishop David Crawley: The offer that the primates have made is improper within the understanding of the Anglican Communion. The agreement that primates and bishops do not interfere outside their own jurisdictions goes back a very long way. It was first described more than 130 years ago in England. It was re-affirmed in 1988 at Lambeth Conference, and in 1998 at Lambeth Conference, and at the meeting which the Archbishop of Canterbury called in October of last year around this issue of the blessing of same-sex unions.
That joint statement put out by the primates, which these five primates signed, said that primates should not interfere outside their own countries. And so they're acting improperly and inappropriately. They know perfectly well that we have entered a process, at the request of that meeting of the primates last fall, to provide alternate episcopal oversight internally for dissenting groups.
At this juncture they're behaving very badly. And I have, as acting primate, written them to tell them so.
CC.com: One of the issues from among those who have accepted this offer is that they have been waiting for --
ADC: That's rubbish. They have a bishop -- Michael Ingham is their bishop. Anglican parishes do not have the freedom to disassociate themselves from dioceses. We are not a congregationalist church.
Right from the very time that this motion was passed by [the New Westminster] synod [in June 2002], the synod itself agreed that they would provide alternate episcopal oversight. The national House of Bishops provided a retired bishop for them from eastern Canada who would have the same position as their alternative episcopal overseer, and they're not prepared to accept it, because they 'want a bishop with full jurisdiction.' Well, that can't happen. I mean, it's not part of our structure to do that.
In England, where they talk about 'flying bishops' -- and these people use that as an example -- they have less authority than the bishop who was appointed by the House of Bishops to provide episcopal oversight for these dissenting parishes has.
They say they've been without a bishop, but they have simply refused alternate episcopal oversight when it was offered to them.
CC.com: And there is that commission [of four bishops studying adequate/alternative episcopal oversight] that has yet to report.
ADC: Yes. It's reporting to the House of Bishops in April.
CC.com: So there is a process underway to try to resolve this internally.
ADC: It's inappropriate for those foreign primates to intervene at any time, but it's particularly unhealthy at this juncture.
CC.com: And so what can the Anglican Church of Canada do about it?
ADC: We cannot of course stop them from coming in. I mean, we don't have any legal power. Anything they do here is unlawful, according to our canons. The only way that any action can be taken would be the diocese of New Westminster might choose to act against the priests, the clergy. But the diocese can't deal with the primates. All they can deal with is clergy.
The Anglican Communion, uncharacteristically, does not operate on a written constitution. We are bound by common traditions and by a common understanding of how we treat one another. And when people choose to break the common understanding, we have no way of enforcing it. There is no authority in the Anglican church that can kick a province out of the Anglican Communion.
CC.com: As I understand it, the offer that the primates have made is not just for member-parishes of the Anglican Communion in New Westminster, but could extend to other parishes, perhaps even dioceses, across Canada.
ADC: Yes, I expect they'd be prepared to do that. They just have -- well, I won't say it. They have no business doing what they're doing. They just have absolutely no business doing it, and it's appalling that they're doing it.
CC.com: Are you concerned that with the offer out there, that other priests, other parishes, perhaps even dioceses, could take up the offer?
ADC: I don't know about that. There may be other places where they would think of doing that. But what they have to understand is that by doing so, parishes are reading themselves out of the Anglican Communion.
CC.com: Well, they would say that this offer allows them to remain part of the Anglican Communion.
ADC: No, because those bishops have no jurisdiction here. Anything those bishops and those primates do here is unlawful and improper. They have no jurisdiction. So these parishes are becoming outlaws. They fondly think that this keeps them part of it, but it doesn't.
CC.com: So you object obviously strongly to what has happened, but there isn't much you can do about it.
ADC: We don't have a centralized authority, like the Roman Church. And so there's not much we can do about it, except express our unhappiness to these people.
I think the whole thing's a bit silly myself. I think the primates from the global south who are doing this are -- well, I'm not sure of their reasons. I think they just fail to understand how our church works.
CC.com: Is this a subject that you could bring before the primates as a whole? Are there any avenues of dealing with this?
ADC: Yes, it could be brought before a primates' meeting, but there's nothing a primates' meeting can do. They've already said they shouldn't do it.
Our church is made up of 38 autonomous churches that bond themselves together into the Anglican Communion. Our roots are all originally English, although some of the younger churches find their ancestry in the Episcopal Church. But we have no central legislative body. The Lambeth Conference, which is a conference of bishops that meets every ten years, is an advisory body. The Anglican Consultative Council is as close we come to a central body. Its name is precise -- it's consultative; it's for consultations, not legislation. And the primates themselves, they don't even have a name; they just call it 'the meeting.' They have no authority to enforce anything. Our structure is such that each province is autonomous.
And this is not the first controversy. I mean, there are women bishops in the Anglican Church of Canada and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, who would not be accepted as bishops in the Church of England, let alone in Africa. We have, for example, clergy and bishops in this country and in the United States who are divorced and re-married. They would not be accepted in some parts of Africa.
We are not homogeneous throughout. We have unity, we do not have conformity.
And guess who, willfully and in all deliberateness, broke that common tradition and understanding.
Or some future male bishop's "husband."
Like he really believes this. The only common traditions that he wants to be binding are those he chooses. Hypocrits.
I avoid 60 Minutes like I avoid the plague, but I will watch this program.
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