Exclusive Interview: Primate of Traditional Anglican Communion on Life and Family ...

Life issues are “at the heart” of Christianity, said Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), in an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) on Friday.



“If we get the life issues right, then we get the Incarnation right, the nature of God right, the nature of Christian worship right,” he explained. “This is actually an entrance issue, not a side moral issue. It's the issue on which Christianity actually defines itself against the others.”

LSN spoke with Archbishop Hepworth in Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, where he made an overnight stop to address the local TAC parish, St. Aidan's. The Australian native came to Halifax as part of a worldwide tour that he began four weeks ago to encourage TAC communities to accept the Vatican's offer to Anglicans, issued in October, to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church.

Hepworth told LSN that the TAC's commitment to life is “total.” “It's one of our founding premises,” he said.

He continued by explaining that the TAC is “absolutely stark and clear on where we stand” on life issues because of the environment they have left in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Communion, he says, has come “to an extremely liberal position where many provinces are totally shaky on abortion, if not regarding it as compulsory. It is shocking the extent to which they've slipped – contraception, marriage, all the life issues are denied.”

But he also explained that the TAC has needed to be clear on life issues as part of its efforts for unity with the Catholic Church. “Our position is not to fight the Catholic Church, it's to fully absorb its teachings,” he said.

In both his interview with LSN and his homily to the parishioners of St. Aidan's, Hepworth spoke out against the practice of embryonic stem cell research, comparing it with cannibalism. “Killing embryos in order to harvest stem cells to make drugs is simply our form of cannibalism, and it's just as wrong as cannibalism,” he told LSN.

He described the experience of a tribe in New Guinea, which can still remember when war canoes would come down the river and take a young person to eat for strength before a battle, a practice which only ended in the 1960s.

“Using stem cell drugs derived from killed human beings in order to wave off disease is no different in the human attitude,” he said. “Same temptations everywhere, we just think our temptations are more civilized.”

The archbishop also commented on the controversial issue of the use of the morning after pill for rape victims, which has been permitted in Catholic hospitals by a number of dioceses in North America.

While the drug, known also as emergency contraception or Plan B, is designed not only to prevent conception, but also to act as an abortifacient in case conception has already occurred, the dioceses have argued that it is acceptable to administer it to a rape victim if the woman tests negative for pregnancy or if it can be established that she has not ovulated. But medical evidence has suggested that these tests are not conclusive at such an early stage, and that therefore even this use of the pill could result in the death of a newly conceived human life.

Calling the morning after pill “an abortion agent,” Archbishop Hepworth explained, “The Catholic mind, and I'm really trying to develop a Catholic mind the best I can at this stage, ... firstly says, you do not cure one evil by creating an even greater evil.”

“Rape is a profound evil, to be totally condemned, and I say that as somebody whose ministry is in Africa as much as anywhere else, and where rape is common and often leads to death because of AIDS,” he continued.

But, he said, “should there be a child born of that violence and evil, to kill that child is actually a worse crime than the rape.”

In this circumstance, he described the child as “a great good” and “a redeeming good.” “Christianity comes to Resurrection through the Cross, we must all pass that way. And so we must believe that God constantly weaves something beautiful out of something evil.”

According to the Archbishop, “this is the issue on which we show” that “we really believe that life begins at conception.” “If we really believe it's only a week or three later, or something, we won't be bothered,” he said.

Archbishop Hepworth's comments are backed up by the Vatican. In 2000, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) absolutely prohibited the use of the morning after pill, and this wasreiterated in 2008 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Dignitatis Personae. The then-head of the PAV, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, told LifeSiteNews in February 2008 that administering the drug to rape victims would be a second act of violence on top of the rape.

Archbishop Hepworth called the condemnation of the morning-after pill for rape victims “a very hard teaching,” noting that it was “the hard teachings of Jesus that people walked away from.” “The test of an apostle is whether he goes on teaching the hard teachings when people are walking away,” he said. “That for a bishop is the toughest thing he has to experience.”

He called on the Christian churches to confront rape and male dominance, which he said are still embedded in some cultures of the world. “We have been afraid to confront traditional behaviour, in just the same way as we've been afraid to confront traditional behaviour in countries like the United States and Canada and Australia within affluent middle class families, where contraception is the more thoughtless option and therefore the easier one.”

“How often have you heard sermons on contraception in the last 10 years?” he asked. “Outside the Anglican Catholics? We can do it because we're married, and they know damn well that we're talking from experience. It's one of the things that perhaps we bring to the Church.”

The TAC is part of a movement, beginning over 30 years ago, seeking to enact a reform of Anglican Christianity. The TAC was formed 25 years ago by Anglican bishops representing a number of countries throughout the world, and now spans 41 countries. According to Archbishop Hepworth, English is only the 7th most used language within the TAC.

Three years ago, Archbishop Hepworth presented Rome with a petition for reunification, passed unanimously by the TAC bishops. He also presented a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which had been signed one by one by every bishop as it lay upon the altar during a Mass for Christian Unity.

In October, the Vatican responded to the request, which had been made by other Anglicans as well, by offering a structure that would allow Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church while retaining much of their own patrimony.

The Vatican's offer, Hepworth said, “in every respect, gives us exactly what we asked for.”

Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), told LifeSiteNews (LSN) on Friday that the TAC is very clear on refusing Communion to pro-abortion politicians or anyone advocating an anti-life view.

“Anybody publicly espousing an anti-life stand against the clear teaching of the Church and the commandments would be immediately removed from any office, and certainly would be told they can't receive Communion,” he explained.

Hepworth made these comments in an interview with LSN while he visited Halifax, Nova Scotia as part of a worldwide tour encouraging TAC communities to accept the Vatican's recent offer for reunion with the Catholic Church.

While clear on his own community's approach to pro-abortion politicians, Hepworth emphasized that he “can understand the reticence of actually doing something beyond teaching the teachings of the Church.”

“Where the Church is deeply entrenched socially and politically, to discipline politicians is a very complex problem,” he said. “We might see it in simple issues, but in fact affecting the future and the life of the Church, bishops can ponder and be puzzled.”

“Since Vatican II, the Church has been squeamish about its ability to discipline its laity,” he continued. “This has been a moment at which the Church has tried to rediscover collegiality, the role of the laity, the ministry of the laity, and it causes some mental conflict to then have to say to somebody, quite publicly, 'you've abandoned the teaching of the Church and you are now being disciplined.'”

In disciplining laity, the Church runs the risk of being told 'stuff you', in the words of the Australian, as well as the possibility that priests will side with the lay person. “Then you've got public schism, and the Church fears schism more than anything, and I think rightly.”

But Anglicans are more accustomed to “disciplining their laity,” he opined, “because we're more used to lay roles.”

“If laity are going to have a role, they're going to tow the line,” he added.
Regarding refusing Communion to those “espousing an anti-life stand,” he said the TAC is able “to apply that rigidly because we're much smaller congregations.”

He noted that this is an issue for the Church throughout the world, including for the “small” TAC. His own chancellor in Australia is a member of parliament, and, according to Hepworth, “his voting record on life issues is absolutely impeccable.” Also, the attorney general for South Australia is one of his parishioners.

“Even the small TAC does have some dealings with senior politicians, and they would not go against us in these matters,” he said. “That because there are plenty of other churches for them to join if they don't want to observe the rules of this one, or go and be other Anglicans.”

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“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

The head of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), Archbishop John Hepworth, told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that it is “ludicrous” to suggest that God is present with same-sex couples in the same way as he is with husband and wife, and urged clear teaching on the true nature of human sexuality.

“Homosexual sexuality played out in a same-sex relationship is, in fact, totally destructive of the heart of Christian teaching because it's destructive of God as Creator, it's destructive of God as Teacher, and it's destructive of God as Redeemer,” he said.

“There is no space in Christianity for brute force condemnation, hate, and all that,” he continued. But, he said, “there is space within Christianity for absolutely, clearly teaching what Christ teaches. And if there's one thing the New Testament and the Old Testament are clear on, it's homosexuality.”
The archbishop spoke with LSN on Friday in Halifax, Nova Scotia before he addressed the local TAC parish, St. Aidan's, about the Vatican's recent offer to Anglicans for reunion with Rome. He began a worldwide tour over four weeks ago in order to encourage members of the TAC to accept the offer.

Archbishop Hepworth praised the treatment of homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is primarily dealt with in paragraphs 2357-2359. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church is absolutely perfect,” he said. “It teaches what the Church teaches, and it then goes on to teach us a pastoral approach.”

The Church has always taught that homosexuals “are blessed in other ways, are in fulfillment in other ways,” the Archbishop said. “We've got to be game to teach that. ... There are compensations that God gives for [disorder].”

“We just need to be much much more positive. If we simply condemn [homosexuality], we won't win, and we're not winning,” he continued.

“But we've also been very reticent to teach exactly how God is present within marriage. In fact, most couples think God has little to do with marriage.”

“I think we need to teach more deeply about that,” he added.
The archbishop described the union of husband and wife as “God's pathway for the world, in which the Creative God is closest to us.” True marriage, he said, is “a relationship open to creation, open to love, which is the love of God, which is the Spirit. This, in fact, is where God has chosen to dwell - within the family.”

He praised the pope for allowing Anglicans who reunite with the Church to continue ordaining married men because, he said, this “means there's a family at the heart of the parish, in all its frailty.”

“The charism of a family at the heart of a parish is necessary at the moment for the Church,” he argued, “because the family is under attack in more ways than it's been since the Roman Empire, which is the last period in world history when homosexuality was rampant and blessed by society.”

“It's not a question of individual rights or fulfillment. It's a question of God's presence in the world,” he continued. “Can we believe that God is present with a same-sex couple, God the Creator, God the Lover, God the Redeemer and Savior, in the same way as with a man and a woman who are married and dedicated to life and open to creation? And the answer to that of course is obvious. It's ludicrous.”

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“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”