Sunday, September 16, 2007

Archbishop aims to heal Anglican rift over gays - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Archbishop aims to heal Anglican rift over gays




Heal the
homosexual priests, not the members. Think man.


Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will be in New Orleans this week in an attempt to pacify the increasingly fractured Anglican Communion.


LONDON (AP) — It wasn't just a friendly invitation.

U.S. Episcopal bishops, fed up with Anglican criticism of their support for homosexual priests, implored the Anglican spiritual leader to hear their side of the story — in person.

Starting Thursday, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will be in New Orleans for that private talk, hoping he can hold together the increasingly fractured world Anglican family.

"If anybody can do it, then somebody of the intellectual stature of Rowan Williams could," said Mark D. Chapman, lecturer in systematic theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford, England. "But it is a very tall order."

Archbishop Williams arrives in the United States facing the real danger that the global Anglican Communion could break up on his watch.

The communion, a 77-million-member fellowship of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England, has always held together members with conflicting biblical views. But debate erupted into confrontation in 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly homosexual bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Ever since, Anglican conservatives, concentrated mainly in developing countries, have pressed the Americans to promise not to consecrate another homosexual bishop. The 2.2 million-member Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States.

Unlike the pope, Archbishop Williams has no direct authority to force a compromise. Instead, he listens, prays and seeks to persuade. "It's eroding and exhausting," the archbishop recently told the National Catholic Reporter, an independent U.S. weekly.

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