The Anglican bishops of Ottawa and Montreal have taken decisive steps toward allowing the blessing of same-sex unions in their dioceses, a move certain to further undermine the fragile cohesion of the world’s third-largest Christian denomination.
The two bishops have made known their intention to proceed, despite a moratorium on the blessings agreed to at last summer’s Lambeth Conference in England, the decennial gathering of bishops of the nearly 80-million-member Anglican Communion.
The Canadian church already is further along the road to authorizing same-sex blessings than any other branch of the communion, a decentralized body of 38 national and regional autonomous churches, or provinces.
And the ABC and the official instruments of the AC did–nothing. The silence speaks for itself.
The revisionists are pressing forward. Will the covenant heal the rift?
[blockquote] Prof Stephen Noll, Vice Chancellor of Uganda Christian University told CEN the “most important requirements of a workable covenant are doctrinal substance and disciplinary efficacy. The drafts to date have fallen short on both counts.” Both Dr Thompson and Prof Noll argued that the exclusion of theologians and leaders of the Gafcon movement weakened the credibility of the document. “If the Covenant Design Group truly wishes to be inclusive, it needs to sit down with the leadership of the Fellow- ship of Confessing Anglicans and seek to incorporate the principles of the Jerusalem Declaration into the Covenant,” Prof Noll said. “Any hope” for the future of the Anglican Communion, Dr Thompson said, “lies with those faithful bishops and other leaders whose voices could not be heard at Lambeth because they had chosen to gather in Jerusalem.
“The St Andrews Draft of An Anglican Covenant, and the Lambeth Commentary on that draft, are institutional responses to a situation that can only be resolved by much, much more,” he concluded. [/blockquote]
From [url=http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2008/10/30/gafcon-leaders-dismiss-futile-covenant-draft/ ]here[/url].
“but nothing in church canon law requires him to have permission of his fellow bishops before proceeding” This is not quite true. As the canon law is currently written, marriage is defined as the union between a man and a woman. Until that changes (a theological rationale for which was to be brought to GS 2010), he is bound not by his fellow bishops, but by canon law.
canon law which I believe needs to go through at least two GS before it can be changed.