Alan Perry, a priest at St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Montreal, says that to the outsider, it would seem the local synods are thumbing their noses at the mother Church.
But Rev. Perry, an expert on canon law, said there is a certain logic to what is going on.
“This is the Anglican Church at work in all its messiness,” he said in a recent interview.
The general synod, he said, was asked to “affirm” that the dioceses have the authority to allow same-sex blessings.
“The defeat of the motion did not enact the opposite,” Rev. Perry said. “There was no motion that said the general synod has the authority. There was no motion saying the dioceses do not have the authority. There was no motion to grant or deny authority to the dioceses. None of that happened. So what you’ve got is a legal vacuum.”
Last month, Rev. Perry wrote a piece for the Montreal Anglican, a monthly diocesan newspaper, on the issue. “General Synod has certainly left matters a little untidy, but the one thing it has decidedly not done is to defeat a local option of the blessing of same-sex unions. Words matter.”
As [url=http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/7024/#132555]Canuck points out at stand firm[/url]:
[blockquote]The Diocese of Montreal has lost 60% of its membership in the last 20 years, down from 33,000 to 13,000. In another 20 years I doubt if there will be anyone to bless. Same with Ottawa – already proposing closing 1/3 of its churches. And the beat goes on………. [/blockquote]
Alan Perry, you and your lot have failed the test of Gamaliel.
The Diocese of El Camino Real numbered approximately 38,000 people when +Shimpfky was consecrated, and when he left, that figure was down to 12,000 or so. It’s not surprising that the infection has spread so far so quickly.
Sadly, Alan Perry was part of a vigorous evangelical youth movement in the Diocese of Montreal twenty or more years ago. Would that, as we read in yesterday’s Epistle, he might have continued in what he had learned and firmly believed. There is a salutary lesson for all of us here.
This kind of legalism won’t win the liberals any points – not with the primates, not with the Canadian laity and not with the media (well, maybe with the Canadian media). To the ordinary person looking on, the GS said “no” to dioceses doing SSB’s, and these dioceses want to do it anyway.