From the National Catholic Reporter:He has been warning some of his colleagues, he said, that “the underlying issue is not going to go away.” Acts and decisions by one province have an impact -- and sometimes a cost -- elsewhere, and it is “an illusion” to imagine otherwise. “If we’re going to be in any sense a global communion and not just the loosest possible federation of local churches, then not only do we have to ask about primacy, we have to ask about structures of responsibility.” And he detects “a very strong groundswell of opinion in many quarters” toward that conclusion.
Maybe, but the Episcopal church in the United States took no such global view when it ordained Gene Robinson to the episcopate. Indeed, the presiding bishop at the time, Frank Griswold, announced that “we thought it was a local matter.” For the American Anglicans, whhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifat they have done in ordaining Robinson, according to the procedures laid down in their church’s constitution, is a legitimate prophetic action in the cause of justice and human rights. They have always regarded themselves as the cutting edge of the communion, and since the foundation of their church in the wake of the American Revolution, have understood their General Convention to be juridically independent.
Williams, as always, sees both sides of the question. “I do accept that there are moments when people say, truth before unity. I understand why the Reformation happened, why in the 1930s the German church divided so violently, where the only unity that could have survived the acceptance of Hitler’s racial laws was a unity which absolutely undermined the integrity of the church.” He commented: “Clearly some people in the United States have seen this as that sort of moment. I don’t.”
Read the whole thing here.
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