US Church asked to apologise over gay bishop

AN Anglican church commission sharply criticised the US Episcopal Church yesterday for consecrating a gay bishop and called on the church to apologise and refrain from promoting any other clergy living in a same-sex union.

The report of the commission headed by Irish primate Robin Eames also proposed that the 38 national churches that constitute the Anglican Communion sign a covenant expressing their support for what it called current Anglican teachings.

The report also called on conservative bishops including some from Africa who have offered to forge relationships with disaffected Episcopal congregations to desist from such activities, apologise and affirm their desire to remain within the Anglican Communion.

In consecrating Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire last November, the report said, the Episcopal bishops "acted in the full knowledge that very many people in the Anglican Communion could neither recognise nor receive the ministry as a bishop in the church of God of a person in an openly acknowledged same-gender union."

The report also invited the Episcopal Church "to express its regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached" in Robinson's election.

Until there is an apology, the report says, those who took part in consecrating Robinson which would include Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold should consider whether to withdraw themselves from functions of the Anglican Communion.

It also invited the Episcopal Church to call a moratorium on promoting any other person living in a same-gender union to the bishopric "until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges."

The Lambeth Commission is dealing with a deep split among and within Anglican national churches caused by Robinson's election and the decision of the western Canadian diocese of New Westminster to bless gay relationships.

A coalition of conservative US Episcopalians affirmed on Saturday that it had split from the national church and formed four new congregations, partly because of last year's consecration of the gay bishop.

They plan to align themselves with a foreign bishop who shares their views and meet in private homes in the states Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The 17-member Lambeth Commission consists of senior church figures and theologians headed by Dr Eames, the Archbishop of Armagh. It was set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to try and ward off a schism in the church.