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Some have claimed that General Synod’s refusal to authorise same-sex blessings will allow the Anglican Church of Canada to escape criticism from the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion. That appears doubtful. General Synod also decided that same-sex blessings do not conflict with the church’s “core doctrine” and took no action to stop the Diocese of New Westminster from conducting SSBs, as it has been doing since 2002.
Moreover, newly elected primate Fred Hiltz dismissed the idea that New Westminster should stop a practice which was never approved by the ACC—and has now been officially rejected.
Bishop Fred Hiltz, the national church's newly elected primate, officially took up his office Monday. He suggested that the New Westminster diocese be allowed to continue in spite of Sunday's vote.
If not, he said, "it would create a pastoral crisis for that diocese and those parishes where authority has been granted for the blessing of same-sex relations.
"They've been given authority to proceed and it will be taken away for them. It would create a dilemma," Hiltz said.
Apparently, (certain) General Synod decisions do not have to be respected if that creates a "dilemma".
As I said yesterday, the situation is as clear as mud. A newsletter e-mailed from Anglican Network in Canada points out that, when it comes to same-sex blessings, the Communion primates have insisted on clarity, not mud.
The Anglican Church of Canada now stands in precisely the same place as the Episcopal Church in the United States – and we can expect the same response from the rest of the worldwide Communion. Like the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada has not “mended its broken relationships” with the Communion, as described in the Primates’ February 2005 Communiqué from Dromantine, and could potentially precipitate schism in the global Church.
In a recent statement – known as the Dar es Salaam Communiqué – that was unanimously endorsed by the Primates in February 2007, the Primates asked the Episcopal Church to “make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions… unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion”. They also reiterated the Church’s teaching on sexuality: "In view of the teaching of Scripture, [the Conference] upholds faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union, and believes that abstinence is right for those who are not called to marriage".
The statement went on to say, “At the heart of our tensions is the belief that the Episcopal Church has departed from the standard of teaching on human sexuality accepted by the Communion in the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 by consenting to the episcopal election of a candidate living in a committed same-sex relationship, and by permitting Rites of Blessing for same-sex unions.”
The Primates went on to decry the very ambiguity that has now been created in the Church in Canada by the decisions of General Synod. “…we believe that there remains a lack of clarity about the stance of The Episcopal Church, especially its position on the authorisation of Rites of Blessing for persons living in same-sex unions. There appears to us to be an inconsistency between the position of General Convention and local pastoral provision. We recognise that the General Convention made no explicit resolution about such Rites and in fact declined to pursue resolutions which, if passed, could have led to the development and authorisation of them. However, we understand that local pastoral provision is made in some places for such blessings. It is the ambiguous stance of The Episcopal Church which causes concern among us.”
The Anglican Church of Canada has now adopted a stance very similar to that of The Episcopal Church. There is no reason to think that the primates will react to Canadians any differently than they did the Americans.
Notes on sources:
- The quotation from Anglican Network appears in the e-mail version of the newsletter, but not the online version.
- For some reason, the Fred Hiltz quotation was removed from the CBC story linked by Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal. A web search turned up the original text at Yahoo! News Canada.
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