Word: communion
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...cuff approach to politics. The former mayor of New York and current Prime Minister of Italy also have the same beef with Pope Benedict XVI and the rules of the Catholic Church. Both political leaders are divorced and remarried Catholics, which shuts them out from receiving Holy Communion because of longstanding Church doctrine that forbids divorce. The ban, however, has not stopped either Berlusconi or Giuliani from receiving communion - and getting caught on camera doing so, with much tsk-tsking from the Church...
...Berlusconi, a media mogul who boasts about his Casanova talents, is publicly pushing for Benedict to change the Communion rules for remarried Catholics. A story in the Italian daily he owns, Il Giornale, recounted how the 71-year-old Prime Minister last Saturday passed up Communion, but asked the local bishop at the chapel near his villa on the island of Sardinia to reconsider the standing rules. Bishop Sebastiano Sanguinetti reportedly responded: "Go tell that to someone higher than me." There was no indication that Berlusconi had raised the matter when he met the pontiff earlier this month...
That potential boycott and Akinola's strong language this week will make it much harder for Williams to ignore the fact that a sizable chunk of his Communion, particularly from Africa and conservative dioceses of North America, is no longer interested in discussing questions of how the Communion will deal with homosexual bishops and the blessing of homosexual unions, and appears ready to act unilaterally to get its way. Failure to deal with the conflict could result in a shift in the Communion's center of power away from its English roots and toward its growing, disgruntled churches...
Some observers, however, caution against too much doomsaying. The GAFcon statement, they point out, does not necessarily mean that Communion will break in half in the near future. For one thing, the document expresses the GAFcon bishops' intention to break specifically with churches like the Episcopal church in the U.S. and the Anglican Church of Canada, which make gay bishops or support such decisions - and does not call for secession from the worldwide group. Indeed, the conservatives say they would prefer that the Communion either become a looser confederation than it currently is or be "realigned" along more conservative principles...
...will be counting very carefully the number of bishops who actually shown up in Jerusalem for the conservative conference on Monday. But even if the group does not manage to force Williams' hand in Lambeth, its statement marks a seemingly irrevocable step toward either a split or a redefined Communion that could have a huge impact on the already turbulent state of Anglican religion...