Jul 30, 2008 / 01:18 am
In hopes of preventing a total schism in the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has proposed a new group with the power to punish Anglican churches that break rules on ordaining homosexual clergy and blessing same-sex “marriages.” The group, called the Pastoral Forum, will also have the power to discipline traditionalist churches that cross provincial borders to ordain bishops in other provinces.
The Windsor Continuation Group, which was formed to consider questions of Anglican unity, proposed the Pastoral Forum in a document released on Monday.
The document, which characterized itself as a collection of “preliminary observations,” said there has been a “breakdown of trust” within the Anglican Communion, where many fear wider issues are not being addressed. The group charged that “active fear-mongering, deliberate distortion, and demonizing” have been spread through modern technology.
These and other problems in the communion, the document said, has led to a “diminishing sense of communion” that must be addressed by Anglicans recognizing “the Church in one another” and also recovering a common understanding of both the meaning of a global communion and the role of bishops within it.