Anglicans discipline liberals

The meeting in mid-February in Newry, Northern Ireland, attended by 35 of the 38 top bishops from across the globe, asked the US and Canadian churches to ‘voluntarily withdraw’ from a key ecclesiastical body for the next three years and to ‘consider their place in the Anglican communion’.

Some orthodox leaders had wanted tougher action to be taken, but the primates were advised by lawyers that there was no legal process by which any of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces could be suspended.

Deeply alarmed

The crisis erupted after the Anglican church in the US chose as bishop a practising homosexual who had left his wife and daughter to live with another man. The Canadian church also generated controversy by authorising ‘same-sex blessings’.