Church may give new powers to Archbishop
The Archbishop of Canterbury may be granted new powers under secret proposals to force rebel Anglican churches into line, reports The Times newspaper.
The planned changes in church law would apparently give Dr Rowan Williams the power to intervene in the affairs of churches outside England for the first time since the Church was established by Henry VIII.
The proposals, which would have to be agreed by the Churchs separate provinces, have already aroused suspicions that they will turn the Archbishop into an Anglican version of the Pope suggests the newspaper.
The powers are proposed in a legal document presented to the 37 Anglican primates who met at Lambeth Palace last week.
At present, the Archbishop of Canterbury has moral authority amongst bishops but no juridical authority.
The new proposals could lead to new powers being granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to his fellow primates, through the legal adoption of mutually agreed ius commune, common law, into the canon law of individual Anglican provinces.
The paper emphasises that any new powers would be used only in exceptional circumstances. There is no hidden aggrandisement policy on the part of the Archbishop and his advisers, a senior source told the Times. But the present divisions are acute and need to be addressed urgently.
The new role will be worked out by the commission Dr Williams agreed to set up last week to consider his own role in maintaining communion within and between provinces when grave difficulties arise.
According to the paper presented to the primates, the aim would be to give the Archbishop of Canterbury power to intervene in the internal affairs of another province for the sake of maintaining communion within the said province and between the said province and the rest of the Anglican Communion.
The author, a senior canon lawyer, cites the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution which called for a commission to be set up to work out when it would be appropriate for the Archbishop to exercise an extraordinary ministry of episcope (pastoral oversight), support and reconciliation with regard to the internal affairs of a province other than his own.
In the paper he writes: To date, no such commission has been established, and it is possible that this may be one of the reasons why provinces and individual primates may have been tempted to take the law into their own hands.
Canon John Rees, Joint Registrar of the Province of Canterbury, who has been involved with the new Network of Legal Advisers set up by the Anglican Consultative Council at its meeting in Hong Kong in 2002, said the intention was not to create an Anglican Pope.
My hunch would be that the Anglican Communion, having such a heavy emphasis on provincial autonomy, would have little or no stomach for that sort of supra-provincial structure.
The Archbishop of Canterbury may be granted new powers under secret proposals to force rebel Anglican churches into line, reports The Times newspaper.
The planned changes in church law would apparently give Dr Rowan Williams the power to intervene in the affairs of churches outside England for the first time since the Church was established by Henry VIII.
The proposals, which would have to be agreed by the Churchs separate provinces, have already aroused suspicions that they will turn the Archbishop into an Anglican version of the Pope suggests the newspaper.
The powers are proposed in a legal document presented to the 37 Anglican primates who met at Lambeth Palace last week.
At present, the Archbishop of Canterbury has moral authority amongst bishops but no juridical authority.
The new proposals could lead to new powers being granted to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to his fellow primates, through the legal adoption of mutually agreed ius commune, common law, into the canon law of individual Anglican provinces.
The paper emphasises that any new powers would be used only in exceptional circumstances. There is no hidden aggrandisement policy on the part of the Archbishop and his advisers, a senior source told the Times. But the present divisions are acute and need to be addressed urgently.
The new role will be worked out by the commission Dr Williams agreed to set up last week to consider his own role in maintaining communion within and between provinces when grave difficulties arise.
According to the paper presented to the primates, the aim would be to give the Archbishop of Canterbury power to intervene in the internal affairs of another province for the sake of maintaining communion within the said province and between the said province and the rest of the Anglican Communion.
The author, a senior canon lawyer, cites the 1998 Lambeth Conference resolution which called for a commission to be set up to work out when it would be appropriate for the Archbishop to exercise an extraordinary ministry of episcope (pastoral oversight), support and reconciliation with regard to the internal affairs of a province other than his own.
In the paper he writes: To date, no such commission has been established, and it is possible that this may be one of the reasons why provinces and individual primates may have been tempted to take the law into their own hands.
Canon John Rees, Joint Registrar of the Province of Canterbury, who has been involved with the new Network of Legal Advisers set up by the Anglican Consultative Council at its meeting in Hong Kong in 2002, said the intention was not to create an Anglican Pope.
My hunch would be that the Anglican Communion, having such a heavy emphasis on provincial autonomy, would have little or no stomach for that sort of supra-provincial structure.
I wish I could bring you up to scratch as to what really happens in Anglicanism. Conservatives form groups within the tradition, often in full communion with Canterbury, and just lobby and the "voters" just support those groups. This liberalism has really boltered the ranks of the traditionalist groups, in fact, it's been a blessing for us. Furthermore, the great bulk of the communion is hardly liberal. The African Churches alone could form the backbone of what could be called the core of traditional Anglican belief and practice. It's booming over there. My own bishop confirmed thousands in Africa in one two week trip recently. He came back and praised God for the African Church. 
