Category Archives: Anglican Communion Alliance

Canon lawyer declares Canada’s same-sex marriage local option invalid

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After the defeat of the same-sex marriage vote at the 2019 general synod, the Anglican Church of Canada scrambled desperately to find a way to do the very thing that they had voted not to do. Their ingenious canon lawyer, David Jones, came up with the bright idea that, since the existing marriage canon didn’t prohibit same-sex marriage, there was nothing stopping dioceses performing them. This is known as the local option. The existing canon doesn’t say the ACoC can’t marry someone to a sheep, either, but we won’t go there.

The ever-tenacious Anglican Communion Alliance has enlisted the support of another canon lawyer – Professor Mark Hill from the CofE – to offer his opinion. He says Jones’ memo on the subject is “inaccurate and misleading” and anyone performing same-sex marriages should face disciplinary charges. Duelling canon lawyers.

I admire the ACA for their stamina in resisting the tsunami of heretical tripe erupting from the ACoC but will it make any difference? None whatsoever. If Canadian Anglican clergy admitted that same-sex marriage was not marriage at all, half of them would have to get a divorce.

The document from the canon lawyer can be found here, and a useful summary here.

FOR SOME TIME now several diocesan bishops within the Anglican Church of Canada have been allowing – and even sometimes personally performing – same-sex marriages and have authorized liturgies for such rites. They have based their right to do so on a Memo issued in June 2016 by Chancellor David Jones Q.C., the top legal advisor to the Primate.

Now a top canon lawyer in the global Anglican Communion has filed a 10-page Legal Opinion that not only argues that the Chancellor’s Memo is “inaccurate and misleading” but goes much further, stating that disciplinary charges under Canon XVIII currently could be brought against any cleric who solemnizes a same-sex marriage or any person who purports to authorize a liturgy for such a rite.

Justin Welby wants another Primates meeting

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From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has quietly asked the primates of the Anglican Communion to reserve the week beginning Monday, October 2, 2017 for the next primates meeting. In an email sent by staffers at the Anglican Consultative Council to the primates and moderators of the church on 27 July 2016, the ACC stated that date had “been selected as the date for the next Primates’ Meeting. The meeting will take place in Canterbury. We will write with a formal letter of invitation in due course but I would be most grateful if you would now confirm this date in your diary.”

In the January 2016 Primates meeting, sanctions were imposed on TEC for authorising a liturgy for same-sex marriage. The Anglican Church of Canada managed to escape the sanctions because Fred Hiltz pointed out that the ACoC had not yet approved a change to the marriage canon. That changed in the July synod when the motion to amend the marriage canon passed; even though another vote has to be taken in 2019, some bishops are proceeding with same-sex marriages – they planned to do so even if the vote failed. Does this mean the same sanctions will be applied to the ACoC at the next Primates meeting?

Does it really make any difference one way or the other? Since the sanctions were completely ignored by TEC and by anyone who had any authority to impose them, including Justin Welby, the answer is “no”, the sanctions were an empty gesture designed to do nothing more than maintain a mirage of unity and reconciliation.

Conservative Primates who pressed for sanctions in January were bamboozled yet again; there was no good disagreement only good deceit – well executed liberal deceit, that is. It is time for the Primates to wash their hands of Canterbury’s conniving and formalise the division that has been eating away at he Anglican Communion for decades.

Anglican Communion Alliance statement on the Anglican Church of Canada’s intent to vote on same-sex marriage

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You can read the whole statement here on page 5. It would be remiss of me not to mention that, to reflect the importance it assigned to the missive, the Anglican Journal has given the ACA’s statement a prominent column in the letters section. Still, at least it was published.

The statement makes a good point: if we attempt to bless something that God doesn’t, we are not doing those who supposedly are being blessed any favours:

The ACA doesn’t view the preparation for changes to the Marriage Canon as a loving gesture towards those with same-sex attraction. To bless and even sanctify what God has not blessed is to lead people in a direction that cannot promise flourishing.

Moreover, the ACA has noticed that the ACoC, after years of vehemently denying that it intends to marry same sex couples, is now talking about marrying same-sex couples:

We are thankful for the pause that slows down the move to adopt sexual innovation in the process dictated by a canonical change to doctrine. We draw attention to the shift in emphasis from “blessings” to “marriage” that occurred incrementally without discussion and is now before us.

Having spent decades in conversations, consultations, dialogue and faux-Bantu indabas with the ACoC about same-sex blessings, the ACA is now proposing a radical new strategy to combat the drift towards same-sex marriage: conversations, consultations, dialogue and faux-Bantu indabas:

We endorse heartily the four-part amendment of the Rt. Rev. Dr. Stephen Andrews, Bishop of the Algoma, to Resolution C003 to change Marriage Canon XXI to accommodate same-sex marriage, and we look forward to participating in the “broad consultation” process that determines if a theological rationale exists for gay and lesbian marriage. May God’s grace and truth be our guide.

According to the ACA, the Diocese of Toronto's gift of $250,000 to the Diocese of New Westminster was a tithe

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As I mentioned here, “the Diocese of Toronto’s Bishop Colin Johnson has paid Bishop Michael Ingham $250,000 for being the Canadian test case in the building dispute between the ACoC and ANiC. …. the ruling sets a Canadian precedent, effectively guaranteeing that the ACoC will be able to hang on to church properties – so that they can close and sell them.”

Rev. Dr. Murray Henderson from the Anglican Communion Alliance, a conservative group within the Anglican Church of Canada, has made a rather extraordinary statement about what he calls this  “tithe” to New Westminster:

I further advocated at the Council Meeting that the announcement of the gift make it clear that this was not our taking a stand on the issue of same sex blessing, but strictly a matter of paying our fair share as a diocese and parishes which are interested in maintaining our ownership of our property. The Archbishop made this clear in his announcement last Saturday.

It is evident he does not wish the Diocese of Toronto’s payment to be a condoning of same-sex blessings – even though the diocese is actively engaged in performing them – but, rather, wants to pay a “fair share” of the litigation cost of ejecting worshipping congregations from buildings for which they have a use to place them in the hands of dioceses who are allowing them to stand empty.

It’s not entirely clear to me whether it is worse to bless same-sex couples or turf fellow Christians out of their buildings but evidently, it is to Rev. Henderson: how far would he take it, one wonders? Would he be content to see all parish buildings stand empty so long as his diocese retains ownership of them and has not taken a “stand” on same-sex blessings – even though, to the un-blinkered it obviously has?

Not only does the ACA statement illustrate the impotence of struggling conservatives in the ACoC but it bodes ill for any plausible possibility of a conservative come-back within the church. To make it worse, I fear Rev. Henderson has strained out a gnat (albeit a big hairy one) and swallowed a camel.