Church needs to get 'closure' on gay row, says report to Archbishop of Canterbury

The Anglican Church in the US has given all the "necessary assurances" demanded of it by Archbishops from around the world in the row over homosexuality, according to a report to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

In the report, the policy committee at the heart of the Anglican Communion's structures, said the warring parties in the Anglican Church should now "move towards closure" on the issue that has taken the Church to the brink of schism.

The Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and the Church's primates said in their report, published last night, that it was satisfied by reassurances from the US bishops last week that they would exercise "restraint" in the ordination of any more gay bishops, and would not authorise same-sex blessings.

"The Communion seems to be converging around a position which says that while it is inappropriate to proceed to public rites of blessing of same-sex unions and to the consecration of bishops who are living in sexual relationships outside of Christian marriage, we need to take seriously our ministry to gay and lesbian people inside the Church and the ending of discrimination, persecution and violence against them," the committee said.

However, hopes of "closure" appeared as remote as ever last night as at least one senior conservative Archbishop said that he was "disappointed and grieved."

Archbishop Mouneer Anis, Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, refuted the claim that The Episcopal Church had changed its position since the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson in 2003. He said any change represented merely a "superficial shift". Significantly, Archbishop Anis is a member of the Joint Standing Committee that produced the report, but it was published last night without his signature, an illustration of how the divisions in the Church go right to the very top.

A blogger on the Thinking Anglicans website summed up the mood in the evangelical camp with his comment that if Dr Williams attempts to force the report on the Anglican Communion, "he will be pouring petrol on the flames of schism."

Church needs to get 'closure' on gay row, says report to ...  Times Online, UK