Low expectations for Anglican meeting

NEWRY, Northern Ireland - Leaders of the global Anglican Communion meet in a Northern Ireland retreat this week to continue a painful debate on gay bishops, a dispute in which no one yet discerns a solution.

Conservative bishops, particularly in Africa, are furious with the Episcopal Church for consecrating an openly gay bishop - the first in the church's history - and upset about the blessing of gay unions in parts of the United States and Canada.

"There will be no cost-free outcome from this," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams told the Church of England's governing body last week.

"To put it as bluntly as I can, there are no clean breaks in the Body of Christ."

Factions within the Episcopal Church also are divided over the issue, and leaders of the U.S. church are incensed with some bishops from other countries who have offered to act as shepherds for dissident American congregations. The 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of Anglicanism.

The communion, which claims 77 million members and has its roots in the Church of England, turned to Irish Archbishop Robin Eames to seek a solution.

Eames released a report last year that upbraided the U.S. church for naming V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire without fully consulting other members of the communion. He also asked bishops outside the United States to cease interfering in Episcopal Church affairs.

Frank T. Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, has apologized to other primates for the pain caused by the appointment of Robinson, who lives with his longtime male partner, but Griswold has not apologized for the appointment itself.

A recent report signed by four African primates and one from Asia blamed the crisis on "the dire state of the Christian faith within the Episcopal Church," and argued that precedents existed for bishops to reach outside their territories.

Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, one of the five who signed the report, said after Robinson's consecration that "the devil has clearly entered our church."

In his despairing assessment of the rift, Williams said last week it had "weakened, if not destroyed, the sense that we are actually talking the same language within the Anglican Communion."

"Not having a common language, a common frame of reference, has been one of the casualties of recent events and there is every indication that that is not going to get better in a hurry," Williams said.

The primates, or leaders of the 38 national churches that comprise the communion, are meeting this week at the Dromantine Retreat and Conference Center, a Roman Catholic facility near Newry.

The meetings beginning Monday are closed to the public.