Church Planting For The 21st Century - The Christian Challenge

ishops; Chislett’s ACA bishop removed him from his parish.
Nevertheless, he has had an active episcopal ministry since
his consecration.
In an apparent sign of tensions within the ACA, Bishop
Davies continues to support joint FIF/TAC efforts to provide
alternative oversight, and hosted a reception for Bishops Robarts
and Entwistle, but did not join in their consecrations, in
accord with a pledge to brother ACA bishops. He also told the
latter that Bishops Chislett, Robarts and Entwistle may now
perform only occasional priestly functions in his diocese.
HOWEVER, the chairman of FIF-International, the
Church of England’s Bishop of Fulham, John Broadhurst,
sent a letter of support for the consecration of Robarts and
Entwistle. “It has long been clear to me that the treatment
afforded to members of Forward in Faith-Australia by the
[ACA] has left you with little option but to pursue the course
you have chosen,” Broadhurst wrote the two men. “It is,
then, my fervent hope that your future ministries will be
richly blessed as you endeavor to serve all faithful Anglicans
throughout Australia and that we will continue to work in
close collaboration in the years to come.”
In testimony last February before the Bishop of Rockhampton’s
committee examining provisions for ACA members opposed
to women’s ordination, Fr. Robarts stated that assurances
of a “tolerable pluralism,” dialogue, and a “respected place in
our church” for traditionalists had proved “patently false.”
FIF-Australia’s National Council nominated Robarts and
Entwistle for the episcopate following the refusal of the
Diocese of Perth to make provisions for those opposed to
women’s ordination. In November 2005, the organization’s
National Assembly endorsed the consecration of both men to
serve FIF-Australia congregations in the southern and western
parts of the nation. (Earlier supported for the episcopate by
FIF-Australia, Chislett tends the northern region.)
In consecrating the two new bishops, Archbishop Hepworth
was assisted by Bishop Chislett; Bishop Stanley Goldsworthy,
sometime Anglican Bishop of Bunbury; and two
bishops from TAC’s Church of the Torres Strait (islands off
northeast Australia): Bishop Tolowa Nona, SSC, and Bishop
Sania Townson.
With these consecrations, “it will now be possible to provide
episcopal ministry for hurting and marginalized Anglican
Catholics throughout Australia, gathering them into regions,
and resourcing them for their life and witness in Christ,”
Chislett said.
A FORMER DEAN of Perth, Bishop Robarts, 74, served
several parishes in the ACA, and was vicar of Christ Church,
Brunswick, in the Diocese of Melbourne at his retirement in
2003. In September 2003 he was invested with the Medal of
The Order of Australia “For service to religion particularly
through the Anglican Church of Australia.” A native of Britain,
Bishop Entwistle, 66, served Church of England parishes
and various chaplaincies for 18 years before becoming chief
Anglican chaplain of the Western Australia prison service. In
April, he resigned as vicar of St. Patrick’s, Mount Lawley,
Western Australia, to take up his new post. Both bishops are
married. n
Sources included FIF-Australia, The Church of England Newspaper, The Patmos Review
ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS and Pope Benedict XVI during their November
encounter in Rome. Photo: Anglican Communion News Service/J. Rosenthal
Williams, Pope, Acknowledge
“Obstacles,” But Sign Declaration
Report/Analysis By Lee Penn
“Serious obstacles” stand in the way of unity between the
Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, the Archbishop of
Canterbury and Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged at their
November meeting in Rome.
Yet Archbishop Rowan Williams also made a “joint declaration”
with Benedict that appears to set him alongside Rome,
and against liberals in his own communion, on church-dividing
moral issues.
The visit was a continuation of a long era of ecumenical
discussion that began when Paul VI and Archbishop Michael
Ramsey met in 1966. But the dialogue has been jeopardized
by the ordination of women priests and bishops in some of the
38 Anglican provinces and the consecration of a gay bishop
in the U.S.-based Episcopal Church.
Archbishop Williams, in his first formal audience with Pope
Benedict XVI, expressed his desire for reconciliation, and
awareness of the barriers to it. He said he was ready “to hear
and to understand” the Pope’s concerns about the Anglican
Communion’s direction.
And the Pope, while signaling a desire to continue ecumenical
dialogue, bluntly told Williams: “Recent developments,
especially concerning the ordained ministry and certain moral
teachings, have affected not only internal relations within
the Anglican Communion but also relations between [that]
Communion and the Catholic Church.” The current Anglican
discussions of these matters, which are of “vital importance
to the preaching of the Gospel in its integrity,” will “shape
the future of our relations,” he went on.
“It is our fervent hope that the Anglican Communion will
remain grounded in the Gospels and the Apostolic Tradition
which form our common patrimony and are the basis of our
common aspiration to work for full visible unity,” Benedict
continued. “The world needs our witness and the strength
which comes from an undivided proclamation of the Gospel...
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