The Anglican Church of Australia (ACA) would “automatically” cease to be in communion with the Church of England if the Appellate Tribunal determined that the C of E was “inconsistent” with the Australian Church’s “Fundamental Declarations”, a report to the Sydney synod by the diocese’s doctrine commission suggests.
The Appellate Tribunal is the church’s highest court, and the Archbishop of Sydney, the Most Revd Kanishka Raffel, is a tribunal member.
The report says that the Church of England could be ruled “inconsistent” if it “rejected the scriptures as ‘the ultimate rule and standard of faith’ or if they ceased to ‘obey the commands of Christ and teach his doctrine’”.
The ACA, the report continues, “has no legal power to declare whether it is in or out of communion with any other Church in the [Anglican] Communion, other than the Church of England. Nevertheless, serious breaches of gospel communion do exist within the Anglican Communion, and ‘impaired communion’ or ‘broken communion’ accurately describes this doctrinal reality.”
Sydney diocese report warns of ‘impaired communion’ with Church of England https://t.co/NdVQObNCNP
— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 6, 2024
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