“We affirm our passionate desire to remain in communion”. This is the motive that has led the bishops of the Episcopalian Church of the USA – American arm of the Anglican Communion – to halt the further consecration of gay candidates to the episcopate and to the priesthood, and also to interrupt the practice of blessing homosexual unions. Announcement of the stop to gay ordinations in the USA is contained in a communiqué issued on 25 September by the House of Bishops of the Episcopalian Church at the end of a meeting in New Orleans in which the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had also taken part. Williams had flown to the USA in the attempt to heal the rift that had been created in the Anglican Communion following the ordination of a self-confessed gay bishop, Gene Robinson, to the diocese of New Hampshire. The Anglican provinces of the southern hemisphere – in Africa, Asia and South America – have always declared their firm opposition to homosexual unions and ordinations, and ever since the question has been at the centre of a heated debate that has jeopardized the unity itself of the Communion. To save the Communion, the American bishops have therefore agreed “not to permit the consecration as bishop of candidates whose lifestyle may represent a challenge to the church and cause a rift in the communion”. The American bishops ask the provinces of the Anglican Communion to undertake a “listening process” on human sexuality, also including homosexual persons, in the period between now and the Lambeth Conference in 2008.
