COMMUNION STATEMENT

as amended on 22 January 2000

I The threefold order of bishop, priest and deacon, continued unchanged from the Apostles time, as the Preface to the Prayer Book Ordinal makes clear, is a sine qua non of Anglicanism. This fact has very largely determined and continues to determine the relationship of Anglican churches to other ecclesial bodies. Roman Catholics have denied the claim of the Anglicans to have continued those orders, and so have declared them null and void. The churches of the Anglican Communion also felt obliged to distance themselves from churches where the Apostolic Ministry is not valued or retained.

II But the Apostolic Ministry is not an end in itself. It exists to authenticate the teaching and sacraments which it ministers. Within the diocese the bishop is the originator, regulator, and guarantor of all ordained ministry. He is charged to uphold the Catholic Faith and to ensure the reliability and validity of the teaching given and the sacraments celebrated by his authority. To this end, all those who exercise a pastoral or parochial ministry in a diocese do so by licence of its bishop and are said toexercise their function on his behalf as his vicar or alternate.

III The ordination of women introduces into this time-honoured pattern of relationships and guarantees, already threatened by unbiblical teaching, a new element of doubt. Not only do the faithful people in every diocese not accept that the Anglican Church of Australia or its synods have the ecclesial authority to authorise bishops to make this change, but also the bishops themselves have expressed doubt about an action which they have nevertheless taken by affirming the principle of reception, in other words, that this is a time to work through the question of whether the ordination of women ... is to be received and adopted universally (Archbishop Rayner, Presidential Address to the 1995 General Synod, p. 2), or in the language of the English General Synod : that discernment of the rightness or otherwise of the decision to ordain women to the priesthood should be as open a process as possible. (Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993 Preamble 3 (a) (I)). Believing as we do that in the administration of the sacraments the Church is always obliged to take the safest course, a degree of separation from those whose orders result from this principle of deliberate experiment and declared uncertainty is inevitable.

IV The priests of a diocese act on behalf of its bishop, standing in his place. Every Eucharist celebrated by his authority is his Eucharist. The priests of a diocese act as alternates one of another because all act on behalf of the one bishop. It follows that if the bishop introduces into his college of priests those whose orders are in doubt, this fellowship and the guarantees it mediates are fractured. A priest who cannot in conscience recognise the orders of one ordained by his bishop cannot in conscience act on behalf of that person. He will seek fellowship with a bishop whom he can with integrity represent, and in whose college of priests he can wholeheartedly participate. A diocese is not merely an administrative territorial unit; it is also, properly and necessarily, a fellowship based on doctrinal agreement and sacramental assurance.

V Such a realignment inevitably involves a degree of separation, both for the laity and for clergy. But though our doubts about womens ordination (which those who speak of a period of reception clearly share) entail separation, they do not oblige us to any other conclusions about the general teaching or other sacramental acts of those who ordain women or receive them as priests. As the English General Synod said: The highest possible degree of communion should be maintained within each diocese (Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod, 1993, Preamble 3 (a) (ii)). Separation is not an end in itself, nor is it, in this instance, a judgement upon others. It is the necessary minimum expression of that rejection of experiment and uncertainty which naturally precedes a re-assertion of the unimpaired fellowship of laypeople, priests, and bishops which is the normative local expression of the Catholic Church.

VI By its very nature this regrettable but inevitable impairment of communion must be open and public. Just as Anglican Churches traditionally distance themselves from other ecclesial groupings who have not valued or continued the Apostolic Ministry as we have received it, so now a similar distancing is inevitable within our Church. But the degree of separation, though in every sense necessary, need not be acrimonious, as is demonstrated by our ecumenical relations with many of the Protestant Churches. Both parties to the separation will need to co-operate closely and pray for unity and a common understanding.