Conger

Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.

Controversy marred the final days of the Archbishop of Armagh’s pilgrimage to Israel, following a blow up with Jewish settlers who took umbrage with the public display of crucifixes at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

On May 1, Dr. Alan Harper, Cardinal Sean Brady and the moderators of the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches of Ireland along with the Lutheran bishop in Jerusalem, Munib Younan, paid an unscheduled visit to the Wall following a visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

After passing through a security check point to reach the wall, a Jewish settler took exception to the cleric’s crosses, and blocked their way. An argument ensued in Hebrew between the settler and Bishop Younan that attracted police attention.

In an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE, Cardinal Brady said, “we encountered some difficulty in gaining access. There was a difficulty about us wearing our crosses,” he said. “We were under constraints of time … and we decided to move on.”

The rabbi of the Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz told the Associated Press that while members of all faiths are welcome to visit the Wall, they must not offend Jewish sensitivities. “They should have covered up the crosses to respect the place, just like Jews wouldn’t wear their ritual prayer shawls when entering a Christian holy place,” he said.

Following the incident, Israel’s Minister for Social Affairs Isaac Hertzog apologized to the four churchmen for the incident. The April 29-May 2 visit was an “opportunity to show the solidarity of churches in Ireland with people living in the Holy Land and especially the Christian community,” Dr. Harper said before his departure.

“By sharing our experiences of living through troubled times and listening and observing we hope to share an authentic message of peace and reconciliation which will offer hope in this awful situation,” he said.

St Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh played host to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for the Royal Maundy ceremony on March 20, the first time the service has been held in Ireland since its first recorded celebration in Knaresborough, Yorkshire by King John in 1210.

Accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, 164 pensioners, 82 men and 82 women, received a red purse containing an allowance for clothing and sustenance and a white purse containing silver Maundy coins with as many pence as the Sovereign has years of age.

Representatives of the four main Christian Churches: the Church of Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church nominated the pensioners to receive the alms, based upon their service to the church and community.

The Dean of Amagh, the Very Rev Patrick Rooke led the prayers and the lessons were read by the Duke of Edinburgh and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal Sean Brady.

The heads of the four main Christian churches were present at the service, as was former Archbihsop of Armagh, Lord Eames and the Church of Ireland bishops of Ulster.

The Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Alan Harper welcomed the Queen to a luncheon at the deanery following the service, saying her visit was “a day as momentous as any in the history of this ancient place.”

The Royal Maundy ceremony was a “profound act of religious worship, honouring and recapitulating the actions of our Lord himself at his last meal with his closest friends and followers in the Upper room in Jerusalem,” Dr. Harper said.

“The example of our Lord in washing the feet of those who called him ‘Master’ and ‘Lord’ before going on to institute for us the central act of worship of the Christian Church, the Eucharist, brings us close as we can hope to be to his intentions for us as we relive the events of his passion and sacrifice,” he said.

The Church of Ireland has criticized Northern Ireland’s education minister for excluding Protestant churches from the commission reorganizing the province’s post-primary education system.

“We now seem to be being specifically squeezed out of the process and I don’t think that members of the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian Church the Methodist Church and the other churches across Northern Ireland will be pleased to see that happening,” the Archbishop of Armagh Dr. Alan Harper said last week.

On March 4, NI education minister Caitriona Ruane announced that a child’s post-primary school will depend on the area in which it lives. A central and five regional coordinating groups with representatives from the education and library boards, the Roman Catholic Church, and Irish language groups has been formed to craft recommendations for the government in implementing the education reforms.

On March 10, Archbishop Harper and the leaders of the Methodist and Presbyterian churches released a statement expressing their “deep disquiet” over their exclusion from the reform committee. “The minimal nature of the assurance from the Department of Education that it will look at how the Protestant churches can be a part of the planning process” was inadequate they said and urged the school governors appointed by the Protestant churches be included in the process “by right.”

“On grounds of equality and for the enhancement of community confidence ” the Protestant church leaders urged the government to give them “specific assurance that their concerns will be fully addressed.”

Responding to Unionist objections to the reform groups’ makeup, Ms Ruane denied there was an intention to exclude the Protestant church and told the Assembly that there “must have been a breakdown in communication.”

The Dublin University Far Eastern Mission (DUFEM) has released a report on evangelizing Ireland’s growing Chinese population, concluding that many of the immigrants are open to Christian evangelism, but little is being done to address their pastoral needs.

Coming from an avowedly atheistical society, most Chinese immigrants do not know how to “do Church”, and are unfamiliar with the language and concepts taught by Christian Churches, the survey found.  Chinese immigrants have come to churches, however, that meet their needs for community, and by their perceptions of the place faith plays in the lives of their Christian friends or co-workers.

Founded in 1886 to send Church of Ireland missionaries to China, the DUFEM withdrew from mainland China after the revolution of 1948.  In recent years it has supported students at Hong Kong’s Ming Hua Theological College, and recently has set up an English language training programme at what before the revolution had been Trinity College in Fuchow.

The March 6 report on mission and evangelism opportunities for Chinese students and immigrants in Ireland stated that of the 60,000 Chinese residents of Ireland, roughly 75 percent reported having no religious beliefs, 10 percent were Christians, 10 percent Buddhists and five percent followed other faiths, or held syncretistic views.

Most Chinese immigrants had come in contact with Christian evangelists, and the majority of those surveyed reported having received Christian literature in Chinese.  However, few appeared to respond to proselytizing from those whom they did not know beforehand.

The majority who had responded to an invitation to attend a Church gathering seldom returned, the study found, as it did not meet their expectations of what “church” would be.  Many inquirers said social and cultural relationships brought them to churches, and that they were not initially interested in theological arguments, or faith issues—nor did the overwhelming majority perceive any difference between Catholic and Protestant churches

Existing Chinese ethnic congregations were the most successful in attracting new Chinese worshippers.  However, the report said that an invitation to attend Church would most likely be accepted if it were extended by a Chinese Christian or Irish Christian “who is known to the respondent.  Being a Christian known to the respondent may be even more important than the ethnicity (being Chinese) of the inviter,” the report found.

The report concluded that the key to successful evangelization of Chinese immigrants was to offer worship in a culturally and linguistically familiar format, to offer social and education services that helped connect new arrivals to the wider Irish culture, and through the conduct and example set by those known to the new arrival to be Christians.

The Church of Ireland has appointed a former Roman Catholic priest to serve as Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.

(Pictured Dean and Mrs Dunne)

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. John Neill appointed the Ven. Dermot Dunne, Archdeacon of Ferns to the post following the death of the incumbent in December. Educated at Maynooth Seminary, Archdeacon Dunne was ordained a deacon in 1983 and priest in 1984 in the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1995 he left the Roman Catholic Church and after study at the Church of Ireland Theological College was licensed as an Anglican priest in 1998.

Dr. Neill stated he Archdeacon Dunne was a “wise pastor, and very much a man of God. In his ministry, he is warmly supported by his wife, Celia whom we also look forward to welcoming into this Cathedral and Diocesan family. Dermot is taking on a challenge to build on and develop the work of those who have gone before, but he will be generously supported by a loyal chapter, board and the great team which is the Cathedral staff, and by the whole musical foundation.”

As Dean, Dunne will be the thirty-fifth Dean of Christ Church Cathedral since 1539, when the last Augustinian Prior, Robert Paynswick was made Dean under reforms initiated by King Henry VIII.

The appoint of Dean Dunne has created a mild sensation in the Irish press, with some newspapers highlighting his rapid rise through the Church of Ireland after leaving the Roman Catholic Church to marry as a symbol of Catholicism’s problems in Ireland.

The Irish Independent stated the decline in Irish Catholic clergy numbers was “now reaching catastrophic proportions. Last year 160 priests died while only nine men were ordained, and 228 nuns passed away with only two newcomers taking religious vows.”

It argued that if the current trend continued, the number of priests in the country would drop from 4752 to 1500 over the next twenty years. Mandatory clerical celibacy was driving potential priests into the arms of the Church of Ireland, the newspaper argued.

The Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Alan Harper along with the leaders of the four main churches of Northern Ireland testified last week before the Ulster Assembly Health Committee on suicide prevention strategies for Northern Ireland.

Dr. Harper, along with the leaders of the Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic Churches told the committee on Feb 7 that faith communities played an important role “in the managing of this major social problem.”

Their testimony comes one week after a report published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that the incidences of suicide in Northern Ireland were not related to where one lived, but how one lived.

The church leaders told the Assembly committee priests and ministers were “still dealing with the aftermath” of suicide long after the social service agencies had left the scene. The role of the church was “to demonstrate the love and compassion of God. This process begins with the first contact with the family, the funeral services and in many cases will continue for months and years,” they said.

They noted that “pastoral care situations are clearly indicating that people are not coping in the same way as other generations,” and told the committee they were working towards creating clergy training programmes to respond to the growing social phenomenon.

“Research has confirmed that suicide risk is very strongly related to both individual and household characteristics such as age, gender, marital status and socio-economic circumstances,” Dr. Dermot O’Reilly of Queens University, Belfast said in his report on suicide in Northern Ireland.

“What has been less clear is whether the characteristics of the area in which you live represent an additional independent risk,” he said. “”The study shows that variation in suicide rates between areas in Northern Ireland is entirely explained by the differences in the characteristics of the people living in these areas. Where you live doesn’t add to that risk.”

In reviewing the records of over 1.1 million people aged 16-74 counted in the 2001 census, the study found that 566 people committed suicide over the following five years. Of these three quarters were men and three quarters were less than 55 years of age.

Some areas of the province, such as north and west Belfast and parts of counties Armagh and Down, had been popularly branded ’suicide hot spots’ because of higher than average suicide rates.

However, Dr. O’Reilly’s research indicated that when individual characteristics were examined, the higher rates of suicide found in the more deprived and socially fragmented areas of province disappeared.

Buckingham Palace has announced that the Church of Ireland will host this year’s Royal Maundy Thursday service.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will travel to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh for the March 20 Office of Royal Maundy where 82 men and 82 women will be presented with “Maundy money.”

The recipients of the silver coins are local pensioners who have made a “significant contribution” to Church or civic life. They will be chosen by the leaders of Ulster’s four main churches: the Church of Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church, the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church.

The distribution of alms on Maundy Thursday has its origin in our Jesus washing of the disciples’ feet. The tradition of the Sovereign giving money to the poor dates from the 13th century. Gifts of food and clothing were also distributed by the monarch while James II was the last King to wash the recipient’s feet.

The number of recipients is by tradition set by the age of the monarch-who is 82 years of age. The Queen will be accompanied by the Choir of the Royal Chapel who along with the St Patrick’s Choir, will lead worship.

The Dean of Armagh, the Very Rev Patrick Rooke stated the selection of his cathedral was a “great honour for us in Armagh. We are excited and certain that this will be a memorable and special service for all those involved.”

This year’s service will mark the first time the service has been held in Northern Ireland, and only the second time it has been held outside of England. In 1982 the service was held at the Church in Wales’ St. David’s Cathedral in Dyfed.

The word “Maundy” is derived from the first antiphon traditionally sung at the ceremony: “Mandatum novum do vobis”: A new commandment give I unto you. John 13.34.

The Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, the Rt. Rev. Ken Good, has issued an appeal for information to help bring to justice the men behind the 1998 Omagh bombing.

“I believe it is not too much to expect that the conscience of someone who has vital information concerning this tragic low point in our recent history, might be sufficiently weighed down by the enormity of the damage inflicted that they come forward and admit to what they know,” Bishop Good said. “They themselves know that, before God, this is now what they have to do.”

Bishop Good’s appeal comes a week after a Belfast court acquitted Sean Hoey of Jonesborough, Co. Armagh of 29 counts of murder. The judge hearing the case at the Belfast Crown Court, Mr. Justice Weir was sharply critical of the police’s handling of the investigation, saying they had been guilty of a “deliberate and calculated deception.”
The verdict came at the conclusion of 56 days of courtroom testimony over ten months.

Following the not guilty verdict, Bishop Good said “The anguish and confusion etched on the faces of victims’ loved ones outside the Belfast Courthouse on Thursday were yet another vivid reminder of the awful human cost of the Omagh bombing.”

On Aug 15, 1998 the Real IRA, a splinter group of former IRA members opposed to the Belfast Agreement, detonated a car bomb in Omagh, Co. Tyrone killing 29 and wounding 220.

In 2001 the Republic of Ireland’s Special Criminal Court convicted a man of conspiracy for his role in the attack however the conviction was overturned in 2005 on the grounds that two Gardaí had falsified interview notes.

Bishop Good urged witnesses to come forward who had information, “no matter how small” and do what was “morally required of them and to make contact with the authorities. Even at such a late stage it will help the families of the Omagh bomb victims in their search for justice and truth, and this is the very least that they deserve.”

The Church of Ireland and the Protestant churches of Ulster have called upon the Northern Ireland Assembly to block government plans to remove church appointed governors from the boards of state primary and secondary schools.

Sacking church appointed school governors “will at a stroke remove the Christian ethos as of right from the controlled sector of education,” a coalition comprising the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodists churches said in a statement released on Dec 7.

Beginning in the 1930’s Ulster’s Protestant church schools passed into state hands, with the understanding that their Christian ethos would be preserved. Under the terms of the transfer, four out of nine school governor places were reserved for church nominees, and this right of representation was extended to all new schools built by the government.

However the government’s Review of Public Administration has proposed rescinding this right of representation on the grounds that it is discriminatory and contravenes the equality requirements of the Northern Ireland Acts.

Church places would only be reserved for schools that had been transferred by the churches to state control. However, the new regulations would not apply to Catholic maintained schools, the government said.

“Whilst a broad Christian ethos will be retained in Catholic schools, it will no longer be reflected in schools which pupils from the Protestant tradition will attend. Catholic schools will continue as of legal right to have faith representatives on Boards of Governors, however schools attended mainly by Protestant pupils, will be prohibited by law from having any official Church representation,” the coalition argued.

While supporting the rights of Catholic schools to “protect their Christian ethos”, the Protestant churches have asked the government to ensure “parity of treatment” with their Catholic counterparts.

A Roman Catholic priest who permitted a female Episcopal priest to read the Gospel at a funeral mass has been fired by the Archbishop of Baltimore.

The firing has prompted outrage among parishioners and liberal church activists in the US, who charge Baltimore’s new Archbishop with seeking to tighten discipline within the archdiocese. While Anglicans and Roman Catholics have moved closer in recent years through the ARCIC process, highly publicized flaps over Eucharistic sharing continue to erupt.

On Nov 8, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien ordered Fr. Ray Martin be removed as pastor of the Catholic Community of South Baltimore. He further asked the priest to sign a statement recanting his error and apologizing for “bringing scandal to the church.”

On Oct 15 Fr Martin celebrated a funeral mass for a Baltimore community activist and invited a number of community clergy, including the Rev. Annette Chapell, vicar of the Episcopal Church of the Redemption to participate.

Ms. Chapell read the Gospel and received the Eucharist at the service, acts that violate Roman Catholic canon law.

Canon 757 of the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law states that the Gospel may only be read by priests and deacons. The sole exception to this rule is that “members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life can be invited to collaborate, in lawful ways, in the exercise of the ministry of the Word.”

Non-Roman Catholics are also forbidden to receive the Eucharist, as the church’s dogma states “that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Communion.”

The family of the deceased told the Baltimore Sun they were outraged. “It doesn’t sound possible that the church would take such a petty thing and ruin a man’s career.”

However a spokesman for the Archdiocese said Fr. Martin had been warned repeatedly about his liturgical laxness, and noted that on other occasions he had permitted dogs to enter the sanctuary, and had missed baptisms.

“I think that canon laws exist to protect the church from extremism. I don’t find that this is such an extreme situation,” Fr Martin told the Sun.

“I feel terrible that this is happening to him because, in compassion, he permitted me to participate in the service,” Ms. Chappell said.

On Easter Sunday 2006, three Roman Catholic Augustinian priests concelebrated the Eucharist with the Church of Ireland rector of Drogheda to commemorate the 1916 Rising and the Battle of the Somme.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh disciplined the three priests, who issued a statement saying that “having reflected on the seriousness of their actions,” they apologized to the Archbishop “unreservedly for the ill-considered celebration and give an absolute commitment as to future conduct in matters liturgical.”

PLANNED cuts in government programmes that would have brought the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in from the cold have been attacked by the Irish Primate.

In his first synod address as Archbishop of Armagh last week, the Most Rev Alan Harper called upon the UDA to lay down its arms as ‘the war is over.’ Whatever justification the UDA may have ‘pleaded for retaining weapons of lethal force, that justification no longer exists,’ he said.

The Irish church leader said that while the “pressing issues facing the community in loyalist areas” must be addressed “with very great urgency”, holding onto “weaponry will make any contribution whatsoever to addressing and solving those problems” all the harder.

“I do recognize that, after years of conflict and the experience of a culture of lawlessness and criminality, it is difficult to feel sufficiently secure and sufficiently respected to set your weaponry aside. However, weaponry has nothing to contribute to transforming the life of Loyalist communities,” Dr. Harper said.

However, the government had a responsibility to facilitate the transition away from violence. Plans to cut funding for the Northern Ireland governments Conflict Transformation Initiative (CTI) were misguided, Dr. Harper said.

The CTI, which seeks to lead the UDA and other protestant paramilitary groups out of violence through dialogue and social reform, has been threatened with a cut off of funds by the Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie who said on Aug 10 “to support and facilitate the UDA in moving away from paramilitarism towards some sort of normality would not have been my top priority for £1.2 million of scarce resources.”

However, Dr. Harper said the CTI had the “capacity to reach elements of the loyalist community who are hardest of all to reach.”

“The CTI was intended to be a process through which people who have been left behind, or have otherwise resorted to anti-social actions and engagements, can re-establish self respect, acquire life and work skills, re-connect with the true character of their cultural heritage, relate respectfully and peaceably with their Catholic neighbours and move on from the destructive and ultimately sterile ways of the past,” he argued.

Such an experiment was “worth pursuing,” he said, urging the government to continue its support for the peace process, while also appealing to the UDA “not to be deflected from the path of decommissioning” its weapons.

Front row … left to right.

The Most Rev Idris Jones, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church
The Most Rev Alan Harper, Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh
The Rt Rev Ragnar Persenius, Bishop of Uppsala
The Most Rev John Neill, Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin
The Rt Rev Martin Wharton, Bishop of Newcastle
The Most Rev Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales
The Most Rev Jukka Paarma, Archbishop of Turku (Finland)

Second row:

The Most Rev Anders Wejryd, Archbishop of Uppsala
The Most Rev Janis Vanags, Archbishop of Riga
The Most Rev Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
The Rt Rev Mindaugas Sabutis, Bishop of Lithuania
The Most Rev Olav Skjevesland, Bishop of Agder and Telemark, (Norway)
The Most Rev Karl Sigurbjornsson, Bishop of Iceland
The Rt Rev Erik Norman Svendsen, Bishop of Copenhagen
The Most Revd Andres Poder, Archbishop of Estonia
The Rt Revd Carlos Lopez Lozano, Bishop of Spain

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams met in Dublin last week with the leaders of the Porvoo Communion of Anglican and Nordic Lutheran churches for private talks.  However Dr. Williams’ Irish excursion did not bring him a change of scene as the vexing issue of gay clergy followed him to Dublin.

While a spokesman for the Church of Ireland told The Church of England Newspaper there would be no formal statement of the gathering of Anglican and Lutheran bishops, sources familiar with the deliberations, held every two years, tell CEN that issues of common national and ecclesial concern were raised at the gathering.

The Lutheran Churches of the Porvoo Group: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are sharply divided over the Swedish church’s decision to authorize rites for the blessing of same-sex unions.  The Swedish move has opened a split within the Lutheran World Federation akin the divide in Anglicanism, with the Lutheran Churches of the Global South threatening to break with their Northern counterparts over the issue of gay blessings and clergy.

The controversy intensified last week when on Oct 2 by a vote of six to five, the Church of Norway’s Bishops’ Conference voted to recommend to the church’s general synod that non-celibate homosexuals be permitted to serve as bishops, priests and deacons.

The moderator of the Norwegian Bishop’s Conference, Bishop Olav Skjevesland of Agder and Telemark, who attended the Dublin meeting, voted to reject the licensing of gay clergy. 

The Church of Norway has three openly gay ministers serving in parochial ministry under the license of their bishops.  The issue will now go before the Church’s Nov 12-17 meeting of General Synod for resolution.

In 1995 and 1997 the Norwegian Synod stated that people in registered same-sex partnerships could hold lay positions in the Church, but could not be ordained as clergy.

On Sept 13 the Church’s National Council stated that it believed the consensus within the church over gay clergy had shifted in the past ten years.  It recommended that Synod revise the church’s canons, allowing bishops the local option of whether or not to ordain and license gay clergy.

The National Council encouraged dialogue saying that “many members of the church are touched directly by this issue and that there are many who feel that their place in the church is at stake.”

“Church leaders should work continuously on attitudes and forms of communication, so that fellowship in the church is felt to be open, clear and inclusive,” it said

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has begun soliciting the views of the primates as to whether the Sept. 25 statement from the House of Bishops adequately responds to the primates’ request for clarification on The Episcopal Church’s stance on gay bishops and rites for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Archbishop Williams has begun telephoning and writing the primates, seeking their views. However, his trip to Armenia and Syria, and the opening of the Church of England’s House of Bishops meeting on Oct. 1, has hindered a speedy response to the New Orleans statement.

Public statements from some of the primates indicate a split of opinion along factional lines, with some declaring the statement adequate, while others have dismissed it as dishonest and non-responsive to the primates’ request.

Archbishop Alan Harper, Primate of Ireland, said the “American bishops have gone a considerable way to meeting the reasonable demands of their critics.”

Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld, the acting primate and vicar general of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, said he welcomed the decision “for the simple reason it gives us more space and time to talk to each other.”

The Primate of Australia, Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane said he believed the bishops had “responded positively to the substance of [the primates'] requests.”

Other primates were more critical. “What we expected to come from them is to repent. That this is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and repentance is what we, in particular, and others expected to hear” from the House of Bishops, said Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, Primate of Kenya.

The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, said the bishops’ response fell short. The primates had given The Episcopal Church “one final opportunity for an unequivocal assurance” that it would conform “to the mind and teaching of the Communion,” he said, and the bishops failed to do that. The primates are unwilling to accept further “ambiguous and misleading statements” from The Episcopal Church, he said.

Published in The Living Church.

Reactions to the US House of Bishops New Orleans statement amongst the Primates have broken along factional lines, with conservatives denouncing the statement as insubstantial and dishonest, while liberals have praised its candor and modesty.

The divergent views of the adequacy of the US response to the Primates request for clarification of American church practices towards gay bishops and blessings further complicates the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hopes of forestalling a schism within the Communion.

Straightened finances and fears of a boycott by the primates of Wales, Ireland and Scotland to an emergency primates’ meeting to discuss the American response to the primates’ Dar es Salaam communique, has led to Dr. Williams telephoning the Communion’s primates to try to find a common mind.

Whether the primates’ round robin will produce an amicable resolution appears to be further hampered by the different world views of the players in Anglicanism’s great game. Aides to the Archbishop told The Church of England Newspaper during his meeting with the American bishops in New Orleans that Dr. Williams hoped to find the right combination of words that would satisfy the church’s disparate factions.

However, leaders of the Global South coalition have demanded not words, but action from the American church, and have little trust in the veracity of American promises of good behavior. Leaders of the liberal wing of the US Church and across the Communion are also divided, with some arguing that truth must not be subordinated to expediency while others hope their place within the councils of the church can be saved through the artful use of semantics.

The Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Alan Harper of Armagh lauded the American response, saying the American “Bishops have gone a considerable way to meeting the reasonable demands of their critics.”

Archbishop Harper noted the “generous agreement” of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori “to put in place a plan to appoint Episcopal visitors for dioceses that request alternative oversight” and stated that while the bishops had declined “participation in the ‘Pastoral Scheme’ offered by the Primates,” they had “at least” recognized the “useful role” of the Communion in these debates.

Dr. Harper stated this seemed to be a “balanced and relatively generous response in a very delicate area of inter-provincial relationships.”

Bishop David Beetge of the Highveld, the acting primate and vicar general of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, said he welcomed the decision “for the simple reason it gives us more space and time to talk to each other.”

The Primate of Australia, Archbishop Philip Aspinall of Brisbane said he believed the US had “responded positively to all the requests put to them by the Primates in our Dar es Salaam communiqué.”However, he went on to damn the American Church with faint praise saying “Certainly they have responded to the substance of those requests.”
However the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Peter Jensen was not as sanguine. “At first reading, the statement from the TEC bishops does not seem to say anything new,” he noted. “The situation may not then be changed in any way.”

The African churches were stronger in their condemnation. “What we expected to come from them is to repent. That this is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and repentance is what me, in particular, and others expected to hear coming from this church,” Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi said.

The Assistant Bishop of Kampala, David Zac Niringiye told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme Uganda believed the statement was inadequate as it was “not a change of heart”, but a temporizing solution.The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola stated the US response fell short of what was required. The primates had given the US “one final opportunity for an unequivocal assurance” that it would conform to the “to the mind and teaching of the Communion.”

He said the primates were unwilling to accept further “ambiguous and misleading statements” from the US Church. “Sadly it seems that our hopes were not well founded and our pleas have once again been ignored.”

Meanwhile the Anglican Mainstream group said they were disappointed with the response because it failed to address the specific questions asked of it by the Primates’ Meeting in February, and backed the Common Cause College of Bishops. In a statement they said: “The first two points — on the election of non-celibate gay and lesbian bishops, and on public rites for blessing same-sex unions — suggest that the TEC House of Bishops has agreed not to walk further away from the rest of the Anglican Communion for the moment.

“However, the TEC House of Bishops gives no indication of being prepared to turn and walk back towards us so that we may walk ahead together, and in reality same-sex blessings are continuing.

“Moreover, there is no response to the Primates’ request to suspend all legal action.”

The Church Society also rejected the House of Bishops statement saying it demonstrates TEC has ‘abandoned orthodox Christianity’.

The First Minister of Northern Ireland, Dr. Ian Paisley has announced that he will step down as head of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.

The 81-year old DUP leader on Sept 9 stated he would not stand for reelection as moderator. Dr. Paisley, who helped found the denomination in 1951, has been criticized by church members as “soft” by forming a power sharing government with Sinn Fein.

For the first time in several decades, Dr. Paisley faced opposition for reelection as moderator. He came under fire from some Free Church ministers for accepting the power sharing deal, with one charging he had abandoned Biblical principals by permitting “murderers in government.”

Writing in the newsletter of his Martyrs Memorial Church in southeast Belfast, Dr. Paisley counted such comments were “the ploy of Satan to attack those whom God has appointed and specially anointed as leaders in His work.”

However, in a statement released by his office after a marathon session of the church assembly last weekend, Dr. Paisley said he was stepping down voluntarily and would serve out his term through the end of January.

The Archbishop of Armagh’s attack upon conservative Evangelicals last month as Bible worshippers who put Scripture above Christ was false and a “sanctimonious fraud”, Reform Ireland has said.

In a sermon delivered at Clonmacnoise on July 22, Archbishop Alan Harper stated that “Bibliolatry is a boulder threatening to obscure the dynamic and contemporary truth of the resurrection. It is also the mother of dogmatic fundamentalism. Love for the scriptures is tainted when scripture and not God becomes the object of worship.”

These charges were “fraudulent” the conservative pressure group said in an Aug 23 statement and were a “classic piece of PR rhetoric” without “substance” or “truth”.

The “subtext” to the Archbishop’s sermon was the Anglican Communion’s sex wars, they said.

Archbishop Harper “erroneously accuses those who would wish to hold to a historically orthodox view of human sexuality of being worshippers of the Bible, that we are ‘bibliolaters’,” they said.

Those crying “bibliolatry,” conjuring up the “straw men” of religious fundamentalism, were actually “covering their own aberrant view of Scripture. The peril that menaces the body of Christ is not exalting the Scripture over the Son, but exalting human reason over both Scripture and Son,” they argued.

Reform Ireland stated it was “disappointed” that Archbishop Harper had “chosen an act of worship as an opportunity to attack those who believe what Scripture teaches.” He may deny the Bible’s “inspiration, inerrancy and sufficiency but in so doing he is worshipping human reason,” they argued.

Division is a worse sin than heresy, the Archbishop of Armagh said in a sermon preached in Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly, Ireland, this week.

In a sustained attack on conservative Evangelicals, on July 22 Archbishop Alan Harper condemned “bibliolatry”, arguing it contributed to the “present madness” within the Anglican Communion.

Taking has his text, Mark 16.2, the rolling away of the stone from the entrance to Jesus tomb, Archbishop Harper said, “the Spirit of the Living God in Christ Jesus will not be incarcerated within categories of action and thought devised or advocated by the human lust for conformity. Such shackles have been consistently shattered by God who is a God of grace and love, not of law and ordinance.”

Truth was not fixed, he argued, but changed over time, he said, as the work of the Spirit was to “overthrow conventional expectations and to announce new vistas of perception and truth. The Christian should actively hope for and expect new vistas of perception, new encounters with the unfolding truth of God in Christ.”

He said the “impediment” of “Bibliolatry: the business of mistaking the Word of God for a mere text,” blocked the working of the Spirit. “The activity and therefore the unfolding revelation of God go on beyond the written text. Such activity includes the actions of those who, in Paul’s words and theology constitute “the Body of Christ”, the Spirit filled entity, changing and deepening its experience of the love of God over 20 centuries,” Archbishop Harper said.

“Bibliolatry” was a “boulder threatening to obscure the dynamic and contemporary truth of the resurrection. It is also the mother of dogmatic fundamentalism. Love for the scriptures is tainted when scripture and not God becomes the object of worship,” he argued.

A “second boulder,” he noted was “division and disunity within the Body” of Christ. The “wounds of the past” sectarian divisions were slow and hard to heal he said.

By setting boundaries to the faith, “we consciously limit the horizon of our own vision and experience,” he argued. The proposition that “one may never sacrifice truth for unity” was a “simplistic mantra” that obscured the true argument.

Arguing that truth arose from a dialectical engagement between competing viewpoints, Archbishop Harper said “disunity guarantees that access to a fuller knowledge of the truth is consciously inhibited.”

“I am coming to believe, with William Temple, that division is a greater sin even than heresy!” he concluded.

His comments come as the Archbishop of York warned conservative church leaders that if they boycott next year’s Lambeth Conference they would be effectively resigning as Anglicans.

Lord Eames has tabled a series of questions to the Home and Foreign Offices before Parliament asking the government to answer questions on the abduction of Madeleine McCann and other child disappearances.

On June 14, Foreign Office Minister Lord Triesman responded to Archbishop Eames’ question of how many British children “have been reported missing while abroad since 2000″ by first noting that the “majority of cases” had involved abduction “by a parent or guardian of the child.”

The FCO began compiling statistics on parental child abduction in 2004 and was “aware” of 406 cases since that time, of which “149-37 per cent-were resolved satisfactorily.” Lord Triesman went on to say “these statistics cannot provide a full picture of the international child abduction from the UK, as many cases are not brought to the attention of the” government.

The Home Office responded to further queries by Archbishop Eames on June 18 concerning the case of Madeleine McCann. “We are confident that the level of co-operation between the Portuguese and UK police authorities is satisfactory, and we have been assured by the Portuguese authorities that they are doing everything possible to find Madeleine and return her safely to her family,” Home Office minister Baroness Scotland of Asthal said.

The UK had lent support to the Portuguese investigation “at their request” and the Association of Chief Police Officers had been co-coordinating UK support.

She stated she was unable to answer Lord Eames’ questions about the number of missing children in Britain of non-UK subjects, saying the Home Office did not break down these figures by nationality.

The former Archbishop of Armagh, Lord Eames will chair an independent task force charged by the government with examining Ulster’s sectarian ‘Troubles’. Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain said the consultative group would confront the “violent legacy” of the past 40 years and would put forward recommendations for building a united province.

“This consultative group provides a platform for people to express their own views on how to address the violent legacy of the Troubles which impacted on so many across all sections of society,” Mr. Hain said on June 22.

“The question is how Northern Ireland might approach its past in a way that heals rather than poisons, that enables everyone to focus on building a shared future, not looking constantly over shoulders to a divided past,” he added.
Lord Eames said it was “hugely important for the future to deal properly with the past”. If left unaddressed, Northern Ireland’s “collective memory” could dictate its future.

“I just hope and pray, and pray earnestly that what we are going to do will help to put that into its proper prospective,” he said.

Lord Eames’ co-chair will be Denis Bradley, the former vice chairman of the Policing Board, and five other members including Willie John McBride, former captain of the British and Irish Lions rugby football team.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern welcomed the news saying “we have an unprecedented opportunity now to lay the foundations of a peaceful, prosperous and shared society on this island for the generations to come.”

Mr. Hain said the government will not, however, tell Northern Ireland how to respond to the Troubles. “Only the people themselves can try to answer that question,” he said.
The committee is set to publish its conclusions by the summer of 2008.

Lord Eames, the former Primate of All-Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh has been appointed a member of the Order of Merit in the Queen’s birthday honours list.

The leader of the Church of Ireland from 1986 to 2006 and the Anglican Communion’s trouble-shooter in chief, Lord Eames along with the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Thomas Berners-Lee, and the President of the Royal Society Lord Rees of Ludlow were named to the 24 member Order. Founded in 1902 by Edward VII, the Order of Merit honours exceptional achievement in the arts, sciences, and civic life and is in the sole gift of the sovereign.

The current Archbishop of Armagh, Alan Harper applauded the selection of Lord Eames, saying he received the news “with the greatest delight.”

“Everyone who knows of the work of Lord Eames or has been a colleague over the years will fully applaud the appropriateness of this recognition of the contribution he has made. Even though Lord Eames retired from office as Archbishop of Armagh on 31st December 2006, he continues to serve as a working peer in the House of Lords. He brings to that work not only immense experience but also the particular perspectives of a person whose life has been devoted to serving the people of Ireland,” Archbishop Harper said.

Lord Eames will be invested with the award in October.

The General Synod of the Church of Ireland has rejected a reform bill that would have reapportioned the number of delegates among the dioceses, reducing the imbalance between North and South.

Meeting in Kilkenny from May 8-10, delegates voted 252 to 155 to kill Bill 4 reducing the number of lay and clerical delegates from 660 to 590 and distributing them among the dioceses on an equal basis.

The Church of Ireland’s General Synod was established in 1870, with representation dived among the dioceses by the number of cures, with each cure or parish grouping allotted one clergy and two lay delegates. However the current delegate apportionment has not been changed since the creation of Synod.

Demographic changes in Ireland have resulted in a discrepancy between the dioceses, with the more conservative Northern dioceses under represented in comparison to the more liberal Southern dioceses. With a church population of 3,783 the Diocese of Limerick & Killaloe fields 42 synod delegates, while the Diocese of Connor (Belfast) with 105,000 members has 96 delegates.

According to 2003 figures released by the Church of Ireland, the five Ulster dioceses have approximately 280,000 members and 342 seats in Synod. The seven southern and western dioceses have 64,000 members and 306 seats in Synod.

The Bill submitted by Canons B J Courtney and S M Neill sought to redress the imbalance, while allowing a review of membership every nine years, and granting the smaller dioceses a fixed minimum of delegates.

In other business Synod learned from its pension board that due to a shortfall of funds the clergy retirement age has been upped to 67 from 65, effective January 2009.

In his first Presidential Address to Synod following his election as Primate of All-Ireland, Archbishop Alan Harper of Armagh called upon Synod to rethink its structures. “We should ask ourselves hard questions about what we do and the way that we do it, Archbishop Harper said.

“General Synod does and should have an important role in furthering the mission of the Church but it isn’t working as well as it should and could,” he noted.

“Whether by age or accident the Synod is now failing effectively to communicate its message in ways that resonate with the needs of the 21st century,” Archbishop Harper said.

There was “a lack of clear understanding” of how policy was made for the Church, a “lack of defined short term priorities,” a “fatal” disconnect between legislative “decision making on resources” and a “lack of clarity on who makes the ultimate financial decisions and what criteria are used in making those decisions,” he said.

Archbishop Harper urged reform, asking Synod to consider, “In the light of our mission statement for the 21st century what are the principal areas of concern in church life, what is the relative order of priority of each, and what are the best structures for dealing with these concerns, in order to respond faithfully to our calling in Christ Jesus?”

The experience of overcoming sectarian division through a commitment to dialogue is a gift the Church of Ireland can bring to the Anglican Communion, ACC Secretary General Canon Kenneth Kearon tells The Church of England Newspaper.

Speaking to the CEN on April 28, Canon Kearon stated he is optimistic the divisions within the Communion are on track towards an amicable resolution. Director of the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College, Dublin before his appointment as ACC secretary general in 2005, Canon Kearon sees parallels between the Northern Ireland peace process and resolution of the doctrinal divisions within the Anglican Communion.

Read the full article at The Church of England Newspaper.

Meeting at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin on Jan. 10, the bishops of the Church of Ireland elected Alan Harper, Bishop of Connor, as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. Born in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England, Archbishop Harper will become the 104th in the succession of abbots, bishops and archbishops of Armagh since St. Patrick.

The archbishop-elect served his curacy in Ballywillan in the diocese of Connor in Ulster; subsequently he served as a parish priest in Londonderry and Belfast before being consecrated Bishop of Connor in 2002. He will take office as primate and be translated to Armagh on Feb 2.

Read in all in The Living Church.