Posted on 12/23/2005 4:17:29 PM PST by sionnsar
Sydney’s Standing Committee has rebuffed a plea from its Primate not to plant churches in other dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia and has written to the Bishop of Southwark asking him to reconsider his censure of the Rev Richard Coekin. Archbishop Phillip Aspinall asked Sydney to defer implementation until July 2006 of the “Affiliated Churches Ordinance” passed at the October meeting of Synod.
The Ordinance allows “non-Anglican” congregations across Australia to “affiliate” with the diocese. Affiliated congregations are invited to “nominate two representatives to attend each ordinary session of the Synod”, however they are “not entitled to vote in relation to any business of Synod” but may be allowed to take part in debates. The Standing Committee of the Anglican Church of Australia’s General Synod wrote to Sydney asking that a moratorium be placed on the Ordinance. It “raises the possibility of there being two Anglican churches in some country towns in New South Wales, for example,” Archbishop Aspinall told The Australian.
“You could have one church with a sign at the front saying it was affiliated with the Anglican diocese of Sydney, and just down the road you could have the local Anglican church” — an arrangement that “will give rise to division and confusion,” he said. The Affiliated Churches Ordinance puts “at risk diocesan integrity,” Archbishop Aspinall argued, and violates the principles of territorial episcopacy and diocesan boundaries as stated by successive Lambeth Conferences.
At its December 12 meeting, Sydney’s Standing Committee declined to act upon the Primate’s request. One member told The Church of England Newspaper the Ordinance applied to non-Anglican Churches and made no mention of an expansion of episcopal powers. The purpose of the Ordinance, he told us, was to “stabilise” and support smaller independent Churches and thereby boost the number of active Christians across the country.
In other business, Sydney’s Standing Committee passed two motions supporting the Rev Richard Coekin of Dundonald Church in Wimbledon. The Standing Committee endorsed Mr Coekin, and his fellow ministers in the Co-Mission Initiative for southwest London for “their stand for biblical truth”, and asked the Secretary of the Committee to write to the Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Tom Butler, asking him to “reconsider his removal of Mr Coekin’s licence to minister in the diocese and seek reconciliation with him”.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. I know it is not at all your fault, but this simply reads as a list of factoids. I am not informed enough to know what the significance of any of this is.
This seems to be a smaller image of what's happening in the Anglican Communion, with churches leaving their geographical root (ECUSA, Aussie liberal dioceses) and re-affiliating elsewhere (Uganda etc., Sydney).
Thanks for the clarification, though hardly anything suffices to really clarify what is going on among our semi-separated brethren.
Oh, for a Magisterium!!
Soli Deo Gloria,
Deacon Paul+
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