Defection threat over gay clergy
Mike in Cairns
By Vanessa Walker
December 23, 2003
ONE of the nation's most prominent Anglican priests has converted to
Catholicism over dissatisfaction with gay and women clergy, as a delegation
of conservative Anglicans goes to the Vatican for talks that could lead to
more defections.
Discontent with the direction of the church has resulted in the Dean of
Ballarat, William Edebohls, to convert to Catholicism.
Father Edebohls, who is married with children, was ordained a Catholic
priest in Melbourne's St Patrick's Cathedral last month and is now assistant
priest at St Peter's Church in East Keilor. The Pope allows married priests
who convert to Catholicism to be dispensed of the rule of celibacy and to
continue living with their spouses.
Another priest, the rector of All Saint's Church in Brisbane, David
Chislett - who belongs to the Anglo-Catholic or high-church wing of the
Anglican Church - visited Rome in October to meet Vatican representatives in
"the early stages of explorations to a conversation".
The group he represented, called Forward in Faith, has a number of parishes
in Australia and believes the 1992 ordination of women priests and the
appointment this year of Gene Robinson, who is in a long-term gay
relationship, as the bishop of New Hampshire in the US, are heretical
innovations.
Father Chislett said that as the Anglican communion continued to fracture
around the questions of homosexual clergy, pro-Vatican Anglo-Catholics would
"recluster". The Anglo-Catholics, like the low-church Evangelicals, split
around the ordination of gays and women.
Father Chislett said if the number of Anglo-Catholics who were dissatisfied
reached critical mass, in the long term they could convert as a group - an
option preferred by the Vatican.
"They may want to leave the Anglican communion and consider converting to a
sensible but recognisably received faith," Father Chislett said.
"We are in a state of volatility and transition. There is a sense of
disconnectedness and dismay for many. These are not sexist but doctrinal
issues."
The Australian response to tensions within the church came as the leader of
the worldwide Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams,
last week announced the terms of a commission set up to find a solution to
the gay clergy impasse. The commission will meet in February and June and
report back by September next year.
Since the abandoned elevation of gay but celibate Canon Jeffrey John in
Reading, England, and the successful installation of Bishop Robinson in
November, nine of the 38 Anglican provinces around the world have declared
themselves to be in "impaired" or "broken communion" with all or part of the
Anglican Church, called the Episcopal Church in the US.
The Uniting Church in Australia is also facing internal rebellion over the
issue of gay clergy.
Conservatives who oppose the July decision to allow gay ministers at the
discretion of individual presbyteries have rejected a three-point compromise
by the church leaders.
Evangelical Members Union head Mary Hawkes said the offer of a year's
consultation and report in time for the next national meeting in 2006 was
not enough.
FROM The Australian
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8242848%255E28101,00.html
Craigmudgeon
I cannot help but wonder if there is more to this than meets the
eye. While gathering research for an article on the reappearance of
Paul Cameron within the lesbian and gay parenting debate in New
Zealand, I was contacted by a Singaporean gay man, who emailed me
asking me if there was anything I could tell him about Paul Cameron.
When I asked why, he told me that fundamentalist/Pentecostal elements
had cited Paul Cameron in the context of debate over there.
Is the hardcore fundamentalist lobby trying to use this to attack and
destroy the Anglican communion, using its useful idiots in Third World
Anglican churches? And as the latest idiocies in Australian
Anglicanism, it's a shame that the opponents of gay and female
ordination did nothing whatsoever to bring Peter Hollingworth to
account over his disgusting neglect of child sexual abuse within the
church, as Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane. Most Kiwi Anglicans have
written the Aussies off as backward weirdos, way back. Nothing they do
or so surprises them, according to one vicar of my acquaintance.
Craig