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The New Zealand bishop who leads the Anglican Communion's worldwide consultative council - the church's major forum - says churchgoers do not want to hear bishops talking about division and schism.
The Bishop of Auckland, the Rt Rev John Paterson, who has chaired the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) for five years, told the Diocesan Synod in Hereford, Britain: "Our ability to meet and to talk is in jeopardy at the moment."
Bishop Paterson is staying at Hereford before the Lambeth Conference meeting of Anglican bishops at Canterbury, southeast England.
The 10-yearly meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world comes amid wrangling over homosexual and female clergy and faces mass defections by conservatives.
The New Zealand bishop stressed the importance of the ACC as the only body with representatives from the episcopacy, the clergy and the lay people who sat in the pews every week, the London-based Christian Today newspaper reported on its website.
"The bishops are about to converge in Canterbury for the Lambeth Conference, but we know only too painfully that a good number of bishops will not be present," he said.
"How can we work through the issues that trouble us, the issues that divide us, if we are not all present in the same room, sitting around the same table, worshipping together in the presence of our Lord?" asked Bishop Paterson.
He complained that difficulties had been caused by bishops speaking only to other bishops before making decisions that affected the whole of the church.
"The great beating heart of the Anglican Communion, the wonderful lay people of the church, do not want their bishops to be talking about schism, talking about division, calling each other names, applying labels such as 'apostates' to people who don't necessarily think the same way about everything." "There are any number of tsunamis out there waiting to engulf the church, while so much of its attention is being taken by questions of human sexuality," Bishop Paterson said.
At Litchfield Cathedral, where other bishops are also awaiting the Lambeth Conference due to start tomorrow, Archbishop David Moxon, co-presiding bishop in New Zealand and Polynesia, predicted there would be no formal schism in the Anglican Communion.
"I think even as recently as the last couple of weeks we have not heard a move for formal schism."
- NZPA
