Consecration of gay criticized

LONDON — An Anglican commission sharply criticized the U.S. Episcopal Church on Monday for consecrating a gay bishop and called on the Americans to apologize.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church quickly expressed regret for the turmoil set off by the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire but did not apologize for the church's decision to confirm the appointment.

The commission, led by Irish Anglican leader Robin Eames, stopped far short of demands from conservatives to expel the U.S. church and made no recommendations about whether Robinson should be removed.

It urged the Episcopal Church to refrain from promoting any other clergy living in a homosexual union and proposed that the 38 national churches constituting the Anglican Communion sign a covenant expressing their support for what it called current Anglican teachings.

The report also called on conservative bishops — including some from Africa — who have offered to forge relationships with disaffected Episcopal congregations to desist from such activities, apologize and affirm their desire to remain within the Anglican Communion.

It further urged those archbishops and bishops who have intervened with Episcopal churches to seek an accommodation with the Episcopal bishop or bishops involved.

In consecrating Robinson last November, the report said, the Episcopal bishops "acted in the full knowledge that very many people in the Anglican Communion could neither recognize nor receive the ministry as a bishop in the church of God of a person in an openly acknowledged same-gender union."

The report invited the Episcopal Church "to express its regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached" in Robinson's election. Until there is an apology, the report said, those who took part in consecrating Robinson — which would include Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold — should consider whether to withdraw themselves from functions of the Anglican Communion.

It also invited the Episcopal Church to call a moratorium on promoting any other person living in a same-gender union to the bishopric "until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges."

Griswold previously expressed regret for the turmoil and withdrew as co-chairman of an Anglican ecumenical body. "We regret how difficult and painful actions of our church have been in many provinces of our communion, and the negative repercussions that have been felt by brother and sister Anglicans," Griswold said Monday.