The leadership of Affirming Catholicism has given its reaction to the outcome of the meeting of Anglican Church leaders which ended with a communiqué yesterday, 19 Feb. The meeting held in Dar Es Salaam saw 33 Anglican leaders from around the world attempting to avoid a split in the Communion over the issue of homosexuality. The communiqué was signed by all the leaders present including the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA, the Most Rev’d Katharine Jefferts Schori, whose Church has been at the centre of recent controversy. The Director of Affirming Catholicism, the Rev’d Richard Jenkins, said:

We’re grateful that the Primates have shown a determination to look for ways to ensure that the Episcopal Church is fully included in the Communion and supported in healing its own internal divisions. The Primates fully welcomed Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori as one of their number and our supporters are delighted that she has been elected to an influential policy committee. The Anglican Communion needs the American Church in all its diversity as much as the Episcopal Church benefits from being part of a wider Communion.

In the communiqué the Primates emphasised the cost of this endorsement by asking that the Bishops of the Episcopal Church make clear by this September, their determination to prevent either the authorised provision of blessings for same-sex couples in their dioceses or the consecration of anyone in a gay relationship as bishop. In return conservative leaders pledged to stay out of Episcopal Church affairs and instead support attempts by American Anglicans to heal rifts by caring for conservative members with new home-grown structures of oversight. The Primates also gave the green light to a longer term solution to keep the Churches together by crafting a ‘covenant’ setting out their mutual interdependence, to be endorsed by all member Churches.

Sounding a note of caution amongst Affirming Catholics, the Chair of the Movement’s national Executive Committee, The Rev’d Dr Barry Norris said:

Organisations under threat tend to centralise. We are concerned that the Anglican Communion is in danger of creating an international curia made up solely of bishops which would exclude local parish experience and the voices of lay people from decision making. We must not give the impression that the only thing which holds Anglicans together is its bishops’ common condemnation of homosexuality. Anglican Christians are much more generous and diverse than that.

ENDS

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