A RETIRED Anglican archbishop has been disciplined after he broke the rules of his Church and formally blessed a lesbian marriage.

Archbishop Terence Finlay, the retired Metropolitan of Ontario in Canada, has had his licence to officiate at marriages suspended after he blessed the same-sex ceremony of two close friends of his family.

The father of one of them had been one of his theology professors and he has known her since she was a child.

The disclosure has surprised some traditionalists and liberals because the Archbishop, who retired in 2004, made headlines in the 1990s for dismissing a priest who was in a homosexual relationship.

He has said more recently that he has arrived at a new understanding of homosexuality. He told the publication Anglican Journal: “I’ll be quite clear that it wasn’t done as a publicity stunt to make waves.”

The Archbishop has been admonished and had his licence to officiate at marriages suspended until the end of this year by the Bishop of Toronto, the Right Rev Colin Johnson.

The action of the New Westminster Diocese in the Canadian Church in authorising same-sex blessings has helped to contribute to the crisis now facing the worldwide Anglican Church.

The communion is on the brink of schism over the issue after the American Church elected an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in New Hampshire in 2003. Its first woman primate, the Right Rev Katharine Schori, a pro-gay liberal, will be consecrated in the National Cathedral in Washington next month.

She will be the first woman ever to sit alongside the other 38 primates of the Anglican Church when they meet in Tanzania in February.

A new primate will also be elected in Canada next year, and the favourite to succeed the Most Rev Andrew Hutchison is the Right Rev Victoria Matthews, an orthodox Anglo-Catholic.

The latest dispute in the Anglican Church comes as a senior bishop in the Church of England has accused the Government of “undermining” its stance that civil partnerships are not equivalent to same-sex marriage.

The Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, has written to clergy in his diocese in an attempt to help them to deal with the pastoral difficulties posed by the new civil partnership legislation.

Since December same-sex couples have been entitled to the same legal rights as those enjoyed by married couples.

Clergy throughout the country have been advised by the Church’s bishops that there will be no authorised liturgy for blessing same-sex couples. They have also been told that, although clergy who enter into civil partnerships have to give assurances that they are celibate, they cannot demand the same from lay members.

In a robust attack on the Government, Dr Chartres says that the bishops drew up their guidelines “at a time when the Government was officially giving assurances that they did not intend to introduce same-sex marriage by another name”. He adds that he would have been more convinced if the law had embraced those excluded from legal and financial privileges, despite a commitment to a relationship of care, perhaps for a parent or sibling.

He says that the situation has now changed. “Government spokespersons have undermined the official line and one minister has even erroneously suggested that the legislation permits the dissolution of a civil partnership. This is untrue but it has further clouded the picture.”

The Bishop also criticises the Church’s own stance, set out in the 1991 document Issues in Human Sexuality, as incoherent and “demeaning to the laity”. The document demanded abstinence from its clergy but effectively permitted sexual gay relationships for laity.

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