(ACNS) One week after a proposal to allow dioceses to individually permit women’s ordination to the priesthood was turned down by the Tenth Synod of the Province of the Southern Cone, the Diocese of Uruguay has voted to seek another jurisdiction with which to share its ministry.
The vote in the Province had been by a specific request of the Diocese of Uruguay and sought to allow a diocesan option in the matter, rather than Provincial wide adoption, so that the diocese could proceed to minister within a very difficult agnostic milieu. Uruguay felt that after a nine year hiatus since the last vote for approval, a patient wait would be rewarded. That was not the result and so the Uruguayan Synod took this measure to move away from the Province.
The extraordinary diocesan Synod was held November 12 in the capital city of Montevideo and the motion to quit the Province was proposed by the Diocesan Council and passed with a simple majority vote in orders according to the Uruguayan canonical process. Bishop Miguel Tamayo then informed the Primate, Hector ‘Tito’ Zavala, Bishop of Chile, the other Bishops and the Executive Council.
The diocese requests that permission for transfer from the Province take place within the year and that if this is not possible an appeal would be made to the Anglican Consultative Council to arrange for oversight, following Provincial canons. Uruguay has been a diocese within the Southern Cone since its formation in 1988.
It will be interesting to see if the ACC will allow the transfer. The objective of the Diocese of Uruguay agrees with the Anglican Agenda (TM) so the ACC would be prone to allow it. BUT if it does, then the gate is open for Dioceses in TEC to seek to transfer.
Would depend in no small part on the constitution of the province, Marie, and then only if the Southern Cone refused either to allow the realignment or to reconsider its decision on womens’ ordination, which might also settle the issue.
The key phrase here is “following provincial canons.” The canons of the Southern Cone explicitly allow for a Diocese to transfer out of the Province, and explicitly involve the ACC in the process. The canons of TEC do not. If you’ll rmember, there was some considerable argument that Recife & Ft Worth & San Joaquin’s “transfer” to the SC didn’t even conform to the process spelled out in the SC canons.
The more I look into this the more odd it seems.
The Anglican Church of Uruguay seems quite small – according to a profile from 2005 put together by the Canadian Diocese of Niagara here but that is a significant improvement from the position in the 70’s. Interestingly in 1979 as a young man, I met Andrew Couch who was on his way having trained at St Martins-in-the-Fields to start at the Cathedral in Montevideo. I remember him saying how very difficult things were for Anglicans in a predominantly Roman Catholic culture there. It looks like he got Spanish-speaking congregations going. The current bishop Miguel Tamayo came to Uruguay in 1995 with sponsorship from the Anglican Church of Canada and was made bishop in 1998. I can certainly believe that the church in Uruguay does operate in a difficult environment, but suspect that it is more Roman Catholic, where there would not be an expectation of women priests, although this may certainly be an expectation of some of its sponsors.
The Church of Uruguay lists partnerships with the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, and with the Anglican Church in Cuba. The Anglican Church in Cuba is curious, because it is an extraprovincial jurisdiction under a metropolitical council of inter alia the Primates of TEC, the Anglican Church of Canada, the West Indies, and the new province of Central America. It turns out that Bishop Miguel Tamayo is a Cuban and has also been acting as interim bishop of Cuba, although he will be stepping down at the end of this month.
So, it is all very curious, and as with many of these things, it does not take much scratching to find the links with the liberal North American Provinces, and their money.
But I wish the Diocese of Uruguay well, I do believe they are in a very difficult situation.
A bit more googling shows that certainly a companion diocese relationship was formed with the Diocese of Niagara in Canada in 2005, and another major contributor is USPG, although that has been cut back.
I think the church in Uruguay needs our prayers, and I hope they do not get drawn into controversy, which is the last thing they need in their current state.
We could have some border crossing by the TEClub.
There is a very helpful [url=http://covenant-communion.net/index.php/site/articles/in_praise_of_the_diocese_of_uruguay/]article[/url] over on the Covenant site: “In Praise of the Diocese of Uruguay.”