The Anglican Bishop of New Westminster says the division over homosexuality in the Canadian church is now “a full-blown schism” and a conservative Anglican faction has hinted at an announcement this week on the formation of a breakaway body.
Right Reverend Michael Ingham, whose Greater Vancouver diocese became the first Anglican jurisdiction to formally authorize the blessing of same-sex unions, reacted forcefully to a retired Newfoundland bishop’s intention to come into the diocese and ordain priests who oppose the blessings.
Diocesan turf-poaching is the biggest bureaucratic sin in the decentralized Anglican Communion, the world’s third largest Christian church. Authorizing same-sex blessings may represent a theological difference of opinion, but one bishop taking his episcopal authority into another bishop’s diocese is clearly a schismatic act.
Bishop Ingham also warned 10 priests in his diocese who are pastors of conservative parishes that he will discipline them if they take part in the ordinations planned by retired bishop Don Harvey.
[blockquote]Authorizing same-sex blessings may represent a theological difference of opinion, but one bishop taking his episcopal authority into another bishop’s diocese is clearly a schismatic act.[/blockquote]
How pray, is authorising same-sex blessings not a Communion tearing act?
Is he all there?
1, these people are totaly self serving.
Katherine Jefferts Schori readily points out that Episcopalians (and ACoC-ers) are better educated than the general populace. Then the likes of her and Ingham try to foist this ludicrous hypocrisy on the laity. They think that it will fly? How insulting. How embarrassing.
Ingham’s approach to this problem is called tolerance and inclusivity.
We cannot too much admire his application of these TEC principles, can we? Larry
You can steal other people blind if you constantly tell them that the other person is the crook!
The irony here is almost too much to take. Ingham, the original “God is doing a new thing” and “I have to follow what I think over and above what everyone else in the Church thinks” person is upset that another bishop is following the dictates of his (and not Ingham’s) conscience. I think Ingham broke my irony meter with this statement.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
[blockquote] Ian Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School, a seminary in Cambridge, Mass., repeatedly testified that the Anglican Communion is a “family of churches,” and therefore, not divisible into factions.
“We”re not a global church,” he said. “It”d be hard to create a division because it presupposes an intact whole.”[/blockquote]
So waht is Ingham upset about?
I’m beginning to think if you’re uberliberal long enough, you lose your irony detector.
Well, look at the bright side, Ingham can get a an invitation to this event either in lieu of, or in addition to Lambeth:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01798b.htm
NOTE that lesser clergy and laity participate as well. Which, given the news on Kate, David, and the poor academic caught using the word division and trying to change its meaning in court, in Virginia, certainly bodes well for the attendance figures.
The truly difficult matter will be deciding who among the various levels of the participants gets to be “primass inter pares”. Now there is a division requiring Solomonic wisdom.
It’s good to hear that Bishop Ingham has finally emerged from the remote cave in which he has dwelt lo these past four years, discovering his church in schism. Sometimes, there’s just no getting through to the highly perceptive.
I hope these statements were admitted as further evidence of “division” in the Virginia trial.
My prayers are for the 10 conservative priests; May God give them the grace to support +Harvey and the grace of patient endurance as they are (disciplined?) persecuted by their bishop.
I must say that the expression “primass in pares” is first rate and should be included in the Bitter Lexicon. Ambrose Bearce would have loved it. Larry