One-third of Canada's Anglican bishops yesterday publicly opposed Vancouver Anglicans' decision to allow their priests to bless homosexual unions, calling on Vancouver's bishop and his diocese not to implement the practice.
That bishop, Right Rev. Michael Ingham, widened the growing rift in Canada's third-largest Christian denomination, saying he saw no purpose in withholding implementation after four years of debate and study of the issue.
The bishops who object, he said, are mostly from rural dioceses operating in a different social context than urban dioceses. He asked them to have the courtesy to allow his diocese to administer to its own pastoral needs, the same courtesy he said he hoped urban bishops would show to rural and small-town dioceses.
Vancouver, like most big cities, has a large homosexual population.
The 13 opponents said the motion is in conflict with the church's moral teachings and tradition and beyond the authority of a local diocese and bishop. It was approved on the weekend by the governing synod of the Diocese of New Westminster, which includes most of B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
The opponents said the New Westminster decision "will likely send shock waves around the 70-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion" and "cause confusion for a local expression of the church to purport to bless that which Anglicans globally and nationally have decided they cannot bless."
In the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, some dioceses and local bishops have informally permitted their priests to bless same-sex unions for years. But the New Westminster diocese's action, which has the consent of Bishop Ingham, is thought to be the first formal authorization.
Right Rev. Ronald Ferris, Bishop of Algoma in Northwestern Ontario, said bluntly: "It's not possible for them to take the position they've taken. It's not right. The work of the church is to teach and lead people within the universal teaching of the church and not to develop an independent position of their own."
Right Rev. Donald Harvey, Bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, said the church's national House of Bishops decided in 1997 not to approve same-sex blessings and voted against allowing them to be a local option. At the time, Bishop Ingham abstained from supporting the policy.
Bishop Harvey asked Canada's Anglican Primate, Most Rev. Michael Peers, to convene an emergency session of the House of Bishops, which is not scheduled to meet until October. A spokesman for Archbishop Peers said it would not be appropriate for him to respond through the press.
The opposing bishops represent nine dioceses in the four western provinces, the North, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Algoma in Ontario.
At the heart of the issue are three questions, the answers to which are either unclear or in dispute:
What is the autonomous authority of a local diocesan synod and its bishop within the Canadian and worldwide Anglican churches?
Does the blessing of same-sex unions touch on doctrine -- the official teaching of the church -- or is it merely a liturgical rite a local bishop can implement (as a legal opinion to the New Westminster diocese says it is)?
How should the words of the Bible be interpreted: as immutable for all time or as having meaning that evolves with the evolution of human culture? Some scriptural passages appear to proscribe homosexuality, just as there is a scriptural passage forbidding tattoos and another that says women should be silent in church.
All the more reason to strengthen the border between the US and our Gay loving neighbors