Anglican Mainstream

South American province opens arms to dissenting Canadian parishes Second retired bishop offers alternative oversight

De Santis staff writer Nov 22, 2007

An Anglican province in South America said on Nov. 22 that it will accept conservative Canadian Anglican churches that are in “serious theological dispute” with their dioceses or with the national church. Such disputes have become more acute recently over differing views on homosexuality.

A second retired Canadian bishop, Malcolm Harding, formerly of the Manitoba diocese of Brandon, announced at the same time that he has relinquished his licence to minister in the Anglican Church of Canada and has become a bishop in the Province of the Southern Cone under Archbishop Gregory Venables.

Both announcements came at the start of a two-day conference convened by the Anglican Network in Canada, a group of parishes and individuals that disagree with the more-liberal stance on homosexuality taken by several Canadian dioceses and by the national church.

 

“The cards are being called in. We are doing something that will be history. After hoping the church would turn around and repent, we say ‘enough’ and with humility and sorrow but also a great sense of exultation and joy, we go forward,” said Bishop Donald Harvey, formerly of the diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador and the first Canadian bishop to join the Southern Cone. His defection was announced Nov. 16.

Conservative leaders told the 250 attendees that the Network, as a member of a North American conservative coalition called Common Cause, is setting up a new Anglican structure for disaffected churches. “We have the higher goal of becoming a parallel province in North America,” said Rev. Trevor Walters of the diocese of New Westminster. He noted that a meeting of bishops last September “outlined a 15-month timetable to create a separate ecclesiastical structure in North America” that could replace the Anglican Church of Canada or the Episcopal Church in the U.S.

He said that could occur if those churches failed next year to sign an international covenant, or statement, of agreed points of faith. “We might become the rightful inheritors of Anglicanism in North America,” he said.

At a news conference, Bishop Harvey, who is the moderator of the Canadian network, said some parishes might be able to leave the Canadian church immediately, “others might want to wait until their annual vestry meetings and vote on it there; some may say ‘we support you fully’ but we cannot separate now, but wait for us.” Parishes would have to apply for membership in the Province of the Southern Cone, he said.

The network has about 500 individual members and 16 member parishes, said Canon Charlie Masters, national director of the network. The Anglican Church of Canada has a total of about 2,800 congregations and about 641,000 on parish rolls.

The organization is considering setting up a headquarters in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga, he said. Some member parishes have not been contributing financially to their dioceses and the network is asking that its affiliates contribute 10 per cent of parish revenues to the network, said Mr. Masters.

Network leaders will be asking Canadian Anglican leaders for a 90-day “period of grace” during which there would be no disciplinary action against priests or parishes that explore affiliation with the network, said board member Cheryl Chang.

However, Bishop Harvey acknowledged that his plan to ordain on Dec. 2 (within the 90-day period) two priests in the diocese of Vancouver-based of New Westminster might be seen as confrontational, “but ordinations in New Westminster are a minor blip on the screen,” he said. (Anglican tradition and canon law prohibit bishops from ministering outside their dioceses without permission.) Mr. Walters said the ordinations are pastoral, rather than political, acts since one of the candidates has been waiting four years for ordination.

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