Updated Tuesday evening
The Anglican Church of Canada has published the text of a letter from Archbishop Fred Hiltz, Primate of Canada to the Primate of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables asking him to cancel a planned, unauthorized visit to Canada: Primate asks Venables to cancel visit. He includes this snippet:
I would also add that in a letter earlier this year to one of our Diocesan Bishops Archbishop Rowan Williams stated, “I am quite content to repeat that I do not endorse any cross-provincial transfers of allegiance, and that this office and that of the Anglican Communion recognize one ecclesial body in Canada as a constitutive member of the Communion, the Anglican Church of Canada.”
The Anglican Journal reports that South American prelate rejects Canadian church’s request to cancel visit.
Canadian news reports on this in the Globe and Mail Anglican primate blasts South American rival and in the National Post Anglican leader pulls rival’s welcome mat.
Episcopal Café has the key quotes here.
The Diocese of New Westminster has published this press release: Archbishop of Canterbury recognizes only Anglican Church of Canada.
Earlier, the Anglican Journal had published this: Bishops decline request from network for national talks.
Tuesday evening update
Vancouver Sun Anglican cleric against gay unions ignores plea to stay out of Canada
And, in related news:
Anglican Network in Canada Anglican Clergy deny charges and Statement by nine Anglican Network in Canada clergy to Bishop Michael Ingham
I think in the end one has to come to one of two views: that there is an Anglican Church, which has to be policed, or that Anglican Churches are autocephalous, which means that sometimes some are going to cross borders. The better arrangement is the latter, and that the Anglican Church of Canada ought to state that it does not recognise these ministries and probably these Churches. Tugging for the true affections of one man or his office does seem to be a scramble of someone who can change his mind one way or another, and then a successor… Read more »
More evidence that the tear in the fabric of the communion has already happened. At least we could act with British civility. ABp Venables read the letter on the internet and had this to say, “My number is there on the Anglican Communion network, I mean, this is only my humble opinion, but if somebody really wants to talk to me, they can pick up the phone and talk to me. Do you write a personal letter, between primates, on the Internet if you seriously want a personal dialogue?” Now apparently the ABp Hilz spokesman states that an email was… Read more »
A conservative campaign to split the Anglican Communion worldwide into nothing but a conformed, conservative religious entity now continues in Canada, just as it mainly started in USA with USA right wing funding. What is notable is not the conservatism as such, nor the funding as such, but the new preachments that believers cannot be anything but conformed and conservative if they are to be real Anglicans. So the tear in the fabric of our communion is real enough, but the major players in it are the conservative campaigners, not the target people they preach as their core excuses –… Read more »
How do people intend to work towards Our Lord’s prayer “that they might be one” even as they continue to rend his seamless garment further and further?
I would seem these tears have put an end to Christ’s prayers.
This would be the same Presiding Bishop Venables (not an archbishop at all, by the by) who signed a document at Dromantine saying that he would not engage in border crossing – and then flew immediately to Vancouver (which is in Canada, not Argentina) to provide support to Canadian schismatics.
The name Venables and the word integrity would not normally belong in the same sentence.
“More evidence that the tear in the fabric of the communion has already happened.”
What we (you!) need to understand, even if it be very painful, is that this tearing is i n t e n d e d.
It doesn’t happen just like that. It is not the consequence of too little consultation before consecrating +Robinson in 2003 or wimmin in 1978.
It is pre-meditated, it’s a power play.
The letter from the cautioned priests to Bishop Ingham is just more of the same old, same old presuppositional conservativist realignment back and forth. Conservative evangelical – if either of these words in their new realignment meanings even still connects with what we variously understood them to mean, previously – word games. It’s all a children’s war of words, as in: I am teflon and you are glue, whatever you say slips off me and sticks on you. Bravo to the USAs IRD for helping to start all this mess, deliberately, with considerable planning and effort over several decades. Sow… Read more »
drdanfee, Where is the substance here? Is there a real argument in these labels and cliches you throw out? I am trying to see where any of their statement misreperents what has been going on in this case (it does not even “label” or put down anyone). The statement from the evangelical leaders is moderate and to the point: 1. “We have been privileged to serve in the Anglican ministry for many years and it is our intention and prayer that we may continue in the Anglican ministry.” 2. “Further, it is our intention to remain members of the Anglican… Read more »
I don’t have a problem with people leaving but they can’t take the property with them. My father is an exRoman Catholic. When he left the church he didnt’ say, ” I want the money I gave over many years, back!”
The other half of this coin is how the remnants are treated. I’ve seen plenty of really nasty quotes and actions by the break away parishes in Virginia toward those former members who want to remain in the National Church.
Just pick up and go.
Please Ben W stop this spin! there is no Anglican church, only 39 different Anglican churches, BCP or no BCP.
No, there isn’t, Ben. Its just that they, and you, expect everyone to believe the same way as you. They don;t, and they won’t ( so exactly why they wish to stay in ‘communion’ with those who follow the conservative line is quite beyond me)
How does Venables get away with it? Southern Cone rejects women priests , but Southern Cone-Canada has them!
Jim Packer places himself under an Anglo-Catholic Charismatic bishop…who has ordained women priests…Gosh we live in unusual times.
I was ordained in 1979. I was gay when I was ordained and I was ordained by a bishop who was gay. I wasn’t in a relationship at the time and I didn’t ask the bishop whether he was – could have been impertinent, though in fact it was just ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’. The church into which I was ordained had over the centuries ordained many gay men, and some of them lived in relationship with another man. That was the common practice of the church. Since then, change has been forced on the church as a result of… Read more »
Bobin
I don’t think you quite get it – did you read the clear print? “We are not leaving the Anglican Church to become members of another church or to minister in another church, which is the concern of Canon XIX.”
Ben W
If the priests in New West were joining the Anglican Catholic Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church or another “continuing Anglican” sect, would you then be prepared to acknowledge that they are leaving this Church? If they were moving to Buenos Aries, Michael Ingham would provide the letters dismissory. They aren’t. They are proposing to stay right where they are, but to affiliate to another Church. Yes, another Church in the Anglican Communion, but another Church nonetheless. No less than Cantuar has said the only recognized Anglican entity in Canada is the Anglican Church of Canada. Hence, claims of extra-territorial jurisdiction… Read more »
No, Ben W, it appears that it’s you and the evangelical leaders who don’t get it: there is *no* “Anglican Church,” there are 39 independent national churches who share common descent from the Church of England, use some version of the BCP, and are members of the Anglican Communion. The secular media constantly get this wrong, but there’s no excuse for those in the church to do so. Some of the confusion is due to the fact that these 39 independent national churches are officially described as Provinces, so perhaps this designation should be rethought.
Yes, Colin, what you say above is accurate. The strange thing, though, is why the church has not been able to deal with change in this area, when so many other changes have not been so much trouble for it to cope with – notably women’s ordination, which is a much bigger change, particularly with regard to ecumenical relations. Women’s ordination made a block with Rome and the Orthodox which is far more insuperable than having out gay bishops would do, yet we were able to press ahead with that becuase we believed in it as the right, and progressive,… Read more »
No one seems to get it. The conservative Canadians have got women priests in to the Southern Cone through the backdoor.
If the Anglican network was really now part of Southern Cone, would it not be in violation of the canons?
Today ( 25 April) Jim Packer is appearing on a platform wit h his Anglo-catholic Bishop!
All his writings repudiate central doctrines about the eucharist that Bishop Harvey loves!
“All his writings repudiate central doctrines about the eucharist that Bishop Harvey loves!” Having been one of Bp. Harvey’s parishioners years ago, I note this statement with interest. I remember Sanctus bells, genuflection before the MBS, Benediction after Evensong on the first Sunday of the month, and +Harvey’s tales of being blessed by his visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, an icon of which he gave our parish a faculty for. I would really like to attend a Mass, sorry “Lord’s Supper”, that he would celebrate in the presence of +Venables or many other of his Network… Read more »
Ford, it well may be that their hatred of the LGBT community may allow for the formation of a new group that cherishes transubstantiation and altar calls in their quest for a more purified bigotry. That’s the scary part!