Anglican Communion Faces Serious Challenge

By STAFF WRITER, Nassau Guardian

The Anglican church in The Bahamas and worldwide is faced with a serious challenge, and Archbishop Drexel Gomez says he hopes and prays that they find a collective way forward to avoid the route of a split. This came from Gomez during his charge at the recent 107th session of the Synod, at Holy Trinity Conference Centre.

"Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which humans distort God's created order. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave together, to be fruitful and multiply.

"When human beings 'exchange' these created roles for homosexual intercourse, they embody the spiritual condition of those who have 'exchanged' the truth about God for a lie."

The Province of the West Indies adheres firmly to this theological position, according to Gomez.

"The diversity of opinions across the Communion has led some persons to conclude the Anglican Communion will have to divide, seeing that those who are convinced that the Gospel is clear in its teaching and must take precedence over culture cannot accommodate those who believe the contrary," he said.

"The split — if it occurs — will be about the most fundamental of all questions: the nature of reality. Which relationships correspond to God's ordering of life, and which violate it? It is clear that the future of the Anglican Communion is unclear at the moment, but there can be no doubt that the future shape of Anglicanism will have to undergo significant adjustments if the Communion is to remain intact" said Gomez.

He informed Anglicans that the Archbishop of Canterbury in his reflection clearly stated that as a result of the action taken by the Episcopal Church in 2003, that: "There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment."

"Meanwhile, I hope and pray that collectively we may, as a Communion, find a way forward that avoids the route of a split. However, we are faced with a serious challenge," said Gomez.

<> <>At that last session, Gomez provided Synod with an update on the response of the Episcopal Church in the United States to the questions raised in the Windsor Report. The Primates reviewed the report on the response provided by the Episcopal Church and put questions to the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, the issues which were:

* Consent to the consecration to the Episcopate of people living in same-sex unions.

* Confirm that resolution of general convention means that a candidate in a same-sex union will not receive consent to be consecrated to the episcopate

The House of Bishops at their meeting held in New Orleans Sept. 20-25 said that the House acknowledged that non-celibate gay and lesbian persons are included among those to whom the article stated.

"While the use of the term moratorium was avoided by the Bishops the response provides a positive clarification and also provides reason to believe that consent for consecrations of gay and lesbian candidates will not be given in the Episcopal Church unless General Convention decides otherwise," said Gomez.

He further said that the Primates noted the ambiguous stance of the Episcopal Church. "There appears to us to be an inconsistency between the position of General Convention and local pastoral provision." The Primates requested to House of Bishops to "make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorize any rule of blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention."

The House of Bishops responded that they "pledge as a body not to authorize public rites for the blessing of same-sex union until a broader consensus emerges in the Communion, or until general convention takes further action."

While the bishops affirmed that the majority of bishops do not make allowance for the blessing of same sex unions they implied that quite a few bishops actually do. In addition, the bishops also implied that local pastoral provisions will continue in particular local contexts.

"In this regard the pledge of the bishops "not to authorize for use any public rites of blessing" fails to remove the ambiguity between the non-authorization of public rites and the acceptance of local pastoral provisions," said Gomez.