Tuesday, November 03, 2009

What is full Communion?


http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/news/communion/what_is_full_communion/

[sydneyanglicans.net] 3 Nov 2009--The Synod of the Diocese of Sydney passed the following motion in October 2009:

Synod –
(1) welcomes the creation of the Province of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) under the leadership of Archbishop Bob Duncan and notes the GAFCON Primates Council’s recognition of the ACNA as genuinely Anglican and its recommendation that Anglican Provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA and –
(a) therefore expresses its desire to be in full communion with the ACNA, and
(b) furthermore, requests that Standing Committee seek to have a motion brought to the General Synod affirming that the Anglican Church of Australia be in full communion with the ACNA,
(2) welcomes Archbishop Duncan’s assessment that the recent Vatican offer of a Personal Ordinariate ‘will not be utilised by the great majority of the Anglican Church in North America’s bishops, priests, dioceses and congregations’ and urges all Anglicans to reject the Vatican’s proposal, and
(3) asks the General Synod Standing Committee to –
(a) bring the Anglican Covenant to the September 2010 General Synod in such a manner as to enable each diocesan synod to consider the document, and
(b) bring a motion to the General Synod noting the publication of the Jerusalem Declaration and to encourage its study as a means to Anglican identity and cohesion.

Bishop Duncan of the ACNA subsequently announced on 30 October:
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) welcomes the affirmation from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney (Australia) that it is in full communion with the ACNA.
Of course the resolution of synod does not expressly state that the Diocese of Sydney is in full communion, but merely “expresses its desire to be in full communion.”

Why the fudge? Well the Diocese of Sydney is part of the Anglican Church of Australia, whose Constitution defines those with whom we are in communion.
This Church will remain and be in communion with the Church of England in England and with churches in communion therewith so long as communion is consistent with the Fundamental Declarations contained in this Constitution.

However, at a practical level, what does full communion mean? It generally means that an ordained person can move from one church to another, without being re-ordained. By way of contrast, an Anglican minster would need to be re-ordained if he were to become a Roman Catholic priest, since the two churches are not in full communion.

Note: In order to hold a license in a diocese of the ACNA, the canons of the ACNA, however, require an Anglican minister from outside of the ACNA to subscribe without reservation to the Common Cause Theological Statement embedded in Article I of the ACNA constitution and accept its Anglo-Catholic position on episcopacy, its dilution of the authority of the historic Anglican formularies, and its establishment of John Henry Newman's ahistorical, fanciful approach to the Thirty-nine Articles as its norm for interpretation of this formulary.

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