Wednesday, October 14, 2009

ANGLICAN PRIMATE CONSECRATED AND INSTALLED, COADJUTOR CONSECRATED IN JOINT EPISCOPAL ORDINATION




Her Grace, The Right Honourable and the Most Reverend Elizabeth Rowan-Leigh, Archbishop of Jamestown was consecrated a bishop in Anglican Apostolic Succession today. The ceremony was delayed until after the US March on Washington . The principal consecrator and co-consecrators are noted Anglican bishops worldwide with liberal theological perspectives concerning the ordination of women to Holy Orders and specifically the episcopate.
The ability to accept that the Sacrament of Marriage extends to all Lambda's Anglicans was necessary. At this time, the principal consecrator, a woman bishop, and two co-consecrators, two male bishops, held their names "in pectore and in camera" pending the acceptance of the Anglican Church of Lambda as an associate member of the Worldwide Anglican Communion...despite the fact that the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada has a liberal view on these matters.
In order not to create schism within the Church, the conservative Anglo-Catholics, who are liberal only on sexual theological issues on marriage, but do not accept the ordination of women and maintain an all-male clergy, had a separate consecratory ordination following the ordination of Archbishop Rowan-Leigh.
The Right Honourable and the Most Reverend Mark Upson-Downey was consecrated by gay but conservative Anglo-Catholic bishops and Old Catholic and Catholic Apostolic bishops as co-consecrators. The principal consecrator is also " in pectore and in camera" and is a renowned Anglo-Catholic Anglican bishop of a sister Anglican church, although not yet in communion with the Church of Lambda. Unlike Archbishop Rowan-Leigh, there are no women within the Apostolic Succession of Archbishop Upson-Downey. Later, Archbishop Upson-Downey was installed as the Coadjutor Archbishop with right of succession.
Under synodal agreement, the two major archbishops will be a liberal female and a conservative male, who will rotate the primacy and coadjutor archdiocesan responsibilities. This Anglican compromise mirrors the Lambda National Catholic Church, a liberal archdiocese, with the conservative Catholic Apostolic Diocese of Lambda in communion with it.

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