Carnley call for diversity: [3 All-round Metro Edition]
John Stapleton, Vanessa Walker. The Australian [Canberra, A.C.T] 19 Sep 2003: 5.
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Abstract
Primate Peter Carnley, the Archbishop of Perth, seen as a liberal within the deeply divided church, will be one of 38 primates attending the meeting with theArchbishop of Canterbury to try to avoid a schism in the church.
At a gathering of church members at St Albans at Epping in Sydney’s northwest last night, Archbishop Carnley said the crisis meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury should examine the question of the ordination of homosexual priests and the recognition of homosexual relationships, particularly by returning to the original scripture.
Full Text
THE head of the Australian Anglican Church has denied the worldwide communion is in decline, despite the crisis talks to be held in England next month.
Primate Peter Carnley, the Archbishop of Perth, seen as a liberal within the deeply divided church, will be one of 38 primates attending the meeting with theArchbishop of Canterbury to try to avoid a schism in the church.
Archbishop Carnley came to the evangelical stronghold of Sydney last night to tell the liberal minority they should take the church back for themselves, and renew the tradition of liberality.
He said one reason why the decline in members of the Anglican church was being slowed or reversed was the ordination of women, which was attracting more people to the church.
However, the Sydney diocese does not ordain women, unlike the church in most of the country. The controversial Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is one of the most vocal opponents in the worldwide communion of the ordination of women and homosexuals.
At a gathering of church members at St Albans at Epping in Sydney’s northwest last night, Archbishop Carnley said the crisis meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury should examine the question of the ordination of homosexual priests and the recognition of homosexual relationships, particularly by returning to the original scripture.
He said it was important for church people to concentrate on what united them and to act to establish “a hierarchy of truths”.
This would mean a love of God, a belief in the divinity of Christ and the indivisibility of the spirit bound them together. By understanding this, people could relate to the importance of the appointment of a gay bishop in the US.