The ABC interview with ABP Aspinall is, I suppose, not particularly surprising.

This is his answer to Monica Attards disrect question on gay clergy:

MONICA ATTARD: So what is your position on the consecration of openly you know gay clergy?

PHILLIP ASPINALL: I have not declared a personal position about that particular issue and the reason I haven’t is because I think my responsibility as primate in the current climate is to try to find ways to enable the church to engage in the debate in a constructive way and move forwards towards a solution.

Were I to express a strong personal view one way or the other, all I would be doing would be adding to the polarisation in the current climate and I don’t think that would be helpful.

Not sure if this is deliberate politicised vagueness, plain spinelessness or concealing his real opinion.

Either way, she also has this little gem, related to GAFCON:

MONICA ATTARD: But they’ve done more than simply not agree to go to Lambeth haven’t they?

With all due respect, I mean they’ve issued a manifesto which essentially gives Archbishop Jensen a new authority of an assembly which has given him an authority, made him a kind of second primate of Australia have they not?

I say we vote him in…

Jeff, having aroused my curiosity, I went in search of his answer at :

ABC interview

PHILLIP ASPINALL: Well you’d have to ask Archbishop Jensen whether he sees himself in that light.

MONICA ATTARD: Well how do you see it?
PHILLIP ASPINALL: Well I see it as a group of people who share a similar set of convictions who’ve gathered together in a conference and produced a statement which sets out those convictions and they’ve also indicated that there’s a possibility that they, some of them at least will act outside the law of the church.
Now I think that does present us with some real difficulties if in fact that kind of action eventuates.

MONICA ATTARD: And what will be those difficulties do you think?
PHILLIP ASPINALL: A number of participants in the GAFCON conference have said that they believe that what they’re doing will help to bring order in a situation of chaos.
I think if they act in the way which has been indicated, they will add to whatever confusion and chaos exists at the moment and the former Archbishop of Canterbury; George Carey said as much himself back in the year 2000 and the year 2001 when these unlawful consecrations of bishops and unlawful interventions in the life of churches around the world first began to happen.

MONICA ATTARD: So Doctor Aspinall, what do you think the Jerusalem manifesto means for your authority here in Australia?
PHILLIP ASPINALL: I think the Australian church will basically continue to live its life in the way it has.

There is respect among the bishops in Australia and that was born out in our conference in April this year where after a lot of hard work and struggling with each other and robust exchange of views, we did come to a position of consensus about how we’d live together in the face of the consecration of women as bishops.
There are issues to be face in Australia, but as yet no-one in Australia has acted unlawfully as far as I’m aware and while the cannons of the church the constitution of the church continue to be respected by all, I think Australia will remain relatively peaceful.

MONICA ATTARD: And what’s to stop local parishes in Australia joining Archbishop Jensen and essentially ignoring you?
PHILLIP ASPINALL: Well that remains to be seen I guess Monica.
It’s one thing to support a statement which has been issued by a group and I imagine there would be quite a few people in Australia who would be supportive of the statement.
It’s another thing to say they’re going to break away and cease to be part of the institutional life of the church to which they belong.
It’s hard to see how that would happen and in fact Archbishop Jensen and others have said in GAFCON and since that this is not about a split, it’s not about creating a new church, it’s not about leaving the Anglican church behind, it’s, they’ve described it themselves in terms of a movement within the church.......

The whole interview makes interesting reading.

Watch out for those ‘cannons of the church’ ...

Chris Little - 08 July 2008 01:40 PM

Watch out for those ‘cannons of the church’ ...

They’re our big guns - looking nice and shiny, then making a big noise whilst blowing smoke in your face - and sometimes hitting their target !