Church in Wales clergy told to keep breakaway bishop at arm’s length
by Pat Ashworth, Church Times:
THE consecration of the Revd Stuart Bell as a bishop in the breakaway Anglican Convocation in Europe (ACiE) last week (News, 10 March), has prompted the Archbishop of Wales, the Most Revd Andrew John, to instruct his clergy not to receive communion at ACiE services.
ACiE, the umbrella group for the Anglican Mission in England and the Anglican Convocation in Europe, is allied to Gafcon. Bishop Bell was appointed bishop-elect in October last year, with primary responsibility for Wales, where he had been a cleric in Aberystwyth. His consecration was delayed while he honoured a previous commitment.
The Church in Wales passed a Bill in 2021 to allow same-sex couples to have their civil partnership or marriage blessed in church (). In a statement following the Church of England’s General Synod meeting last month, the Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE) described as “lamentable” the C of E’s decision to allow the blessing of same-sex marriages, characterising it as “the abandonment of the sufficiency and supremacy of scripture which has until now been the bedrock and rule of the Church of England.”
The statement went on: “We especially feel the pain of those who continue to make costly stands for godliness and have been abandoned by those who were meant to shepherd and protect them.”
Archbishop John told his clergy last week: “While many of us have held Stuart in enormous respect for his ministry, the Bench of Bishops cannot receive or accept his episcopal ministry, founded, as it is, on a repudiation of the Bishops’ own ministry and a breaking of communion with the Church in Wales.
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