Posted on 07/27/2009 12:44:55 PM PDT by SmithL
LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --
The Anglican Church may have to accept a "two track" communion in which believers can hold different opinions about gay clergy and same-sex unions, the Archbishop of Canterbury said Monday in a bid to keep the church unified.
Rowan Williams outlined his thoughts on the future of the deeply divided church on his Web site a few days after the U.S. Episcopalian church authorized bishops to bless same-sex unions and research an official prayer for the ceremonies.
The move dismayed more traditional members of the Anglican Church, and Williams, the church's spiritual leader, is now trying to keep the communion unified.
He wrote that "a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole," but suggested there may have to be a "two-track" model where the church allowed different viewpoints on certain issues.
He said there could be "two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out, but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion."
The 77 million-member Anglican communion is the third-largest grouping of churches worldwide, behind Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches.
The Episcopal Church caused an uproar among some Anglicans in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, and Williams has struggled since to keep the church from splitting.
Anglican leaders had pressed Episcopalians for a moratorium on electing more gay bishops, and asked the church not to develop an official prayer for same-gender couples.
But the Episcopalian Church noted last week that a growing number of U.S. states that allow gay marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships, and gave bishops in those regions discretion...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
fyi
C’mon in and believe whatever you want. If you don’t believe in God, all the better.
Heh heh. Losing a lot of members, eh? Trying to have your cake and eat it too, eh? What’s next different communions for those who do or don’t believe in Christ?
When they die the proponents of this obscenity can half go to heaven and half go to hell..... the upper half.
a euphemism for "compromise."
I am not a good Catholic I suppose, but then we are all only as good as we want to be. Practically no one follows all the concepts of any Church. I do go to Mass and try to be faithful to God and obey His Commandments.
When the Catholic Church starts marrying same sex couples ,ordaining women Priests, having openly homosexual Bishops living with their lovers, They have seen the last of me.
To me Catholics who voted for Obama knowing his stance on abortion are only wasting their time coming to Catholic Church, they may as well attend some other religion that teaches human sacrifice.
Cafeteria Christianity:
Choose from the Menu which beliefs fit your lifestyle
If the authority of the church begins to accept sin,I too will go elsewhere. I am not talking about liberal bishops and priests doing their own thing. People who want to live the truth will seek the truth-Jesus and the holy gospels.
“the Archbishop of Canterbury said Monday in a bid to keep the church unified.”
How is creating something which amounts to 2 seperate churches keeping it unified - Fancy playing with words does not make it true.
Mel
“in a bid to keep the church unified”
Why bother? It’s too late now. Let the parishes decide if they are Anglican or Flavor of the Day and they can divvy up the property accordingly. God only knows into what the Episcopal church is going to morph. Oh, yeah, God. That would be on Tuesdays... SARC Sheesh.
Right about now sounds like an appropriate time for a schism.
I like it. Then the pagans can be accomodated, and the atheists, and pretty soon the Episcopal Curch will be unitarian/universalists.
Sad to see a church destroyed over something so tawdry.
Once you let go of God and scripture and life-transforming faith then it doesn’t much matter what name you put over the door of your church.
Pointy rooftops and studied religiosity don’t cut it.
So one track will teach “The Ten Commandments” and the other “The Nine Suggestions”.
No. You need to tell these people, in love of course, to hit the road. What "mission" are you going to cooperate on, if you disagree on something so basic? What exactly do you plan to convert people to, in your missions?
Let God lead, and however many people you lose you will win more later because you will stand for something. You are saying goodby to that portion of the church that is not only dying but determined to die. They don't need to be accommodated, they need to be evangelized; they were never believers in the first place. Treating them as fellow believers is your first mistake.
If you are winning souls, winning souls into a dying and lost church is a pointless enterprise. Let God lead, and your church will grow by leaps and bounds, there is tremendous hunger out there. But the hunger is for truth and for God, not some washed up husk of a once-respectable denomination.
“What “mission” are you going to cooperate on...”
Um. Converting San Francisco to the new effeminate Jesus of course. The new Jesus is nicer than the old Jesus. (sarc)
Then it is time to turn to the church fathers:
Pope Saint Felix III
"Not to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress it; and indeed to neglect to confound evil men, when we can do it, is no less a sin than to encourage them."
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
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Humor: The Anglican Blue
Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
Of course. The technical term for this in Episcopal-speak is "pluriform truth."
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