WHATEVER the demands of American conservatives, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will want to resist setting up a parallel jurisdiction in America as a result of the row over gay priests.

But he may find he has no alternative if he wants to maintain some semblance of unity. In the past he has conceded that some of sort of realignment might be necessary Until now the Anglican Communion, much like the Church of England which gave it birth, has always managed to hold the Catholic and Protestant wings in balance, with the liberals balancing on the fence in the middle. The price is the lack of a discernible disciplinary procedure to deal with member provinces when doctrines go awry.

Dr Williams is in no sense an Anglican Pope. He has no authority to act against America. It would be considered extremely “un-Anglican” if he went even as far as the Pope did this week. In an extraordinary and unexpected intervention, the Pope sent a message via Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the Americans in Dallas assuring them of his “heartfelt prayers”, repeating twice the significant phrase “unity in truth”. This was one more indication of the depth of concern over the election of Canon Gene Robinson throughout the Christian world. It heralds a new holy alliance between the most extreme wing of conservative Anglican Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church that these same Protestants once scorned.

Dr Williams, who had not expected the Pope to raise the gay issue at a meeting where the pontiff was the host, was unsettled when a few days earlier, the Pope took him to task over the Anglican Church’s liberal agenda when the two met at the Vatican. Suspicions are growing that some liberal Anglicans had been hoping to get away with doing nothing at all next week, in spite of the strength of evangelical feeling.

The Archbishop of Cape Town, a rare liberal Anglican primate, has proposed that the primates set up a gay commission to draw up a framework for addressing human sexuality. This would be, in effect, kicking the issue into touch.

Another development that has aroused deeper suspicions among conservatives that they are going to be fobbed off was a memo given by accident to the Rev Paul Zahl, an episcopal priest in Alabama at a recent meeting of worldwide Anglicans to discuss the crisis. This memo outlined proposals for the meeting next week.

Written by an official of the Anglican Communion, it advised Dr Williams: “Whatever you do, don’t be swayed by the American traditionalists. They love to ‘make a fuss’.” It also argued against the option of creating a parallel province or jurisdiction.

All 38 provinces in the communion are autonomous churches and the only legal structure the communion has is the Anglican Consultative Council, a registered British charity. The primates and the members of the Anglican Consultative Council, appointed by each province, can vote to include a new province by a two-thirds majority. No mechanism exists for expelling a province or a diocese within a province.

One option open to Dr Williams would be to exclude Gene Robinson from the 2008 Lambeth Conference, to which all bishops of the Anglican Communion would traditionally be invited. He could also, in combination with the other primates, make a statement expressing dismay and concern about the actions of the American and Canadian churches.

Dr Williams and the other Archbishops might also try to persuade the American primate, Frank Griswold, to promote a scheme of parallel jurisdiction in his own province. Such a scheme could work along similar lines to flying bishops in England, ordained under the Act of Synod to be pastors to opponents of women priests.

Although they are disliked by supporters of women priests who regard them as an endorsement of prejudice, the creation of flying bishops, the brainchild of the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, saved the Church of England from schism over women.

A similar scheme in America might not only save the communion from schism over gays but might bring the many “continuing” churches set up in America over women priests back on board. The propagation of this idea is one of a few encouraging signs beginning to emerge that the Anglican Church might be pulling back from the brink.

In yesterday’s Church of England Newspaper, Andrew Carey, son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the most informed and influential commentators on the evangelical wing, wrote: “The genius of Anglicanism has been to hold together sharp differences between Catholic principles and Reformation ones.”

The challenge of the future might be to hold together the existing relationships while letting the structures die away, he wrote.

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