Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has warned that gay blessings and the ordination of women in the Anglican church had caused “chaos.”

“Fellowship,” Williams said, “is strained or shattered and trust destroyed.”

The Archbishop began to explain further, but then the world ended before he could finish.

• Anglican head warns of ‘chaos’ over gays and women [Montréal Gazette]

An amusingly bizarre rift over same-sex blessings in the Anglican Church has felt its latest tremor after a court decision late last month.

Harnessing the healing power of embittered legal conflict, four Anglican parishes sued the Diocese in May over a property battle stemming from a disagreement about same-sex blessings and other differences of very, very little significance. (The lawsuit was heartily endorsed by Jesus himself, purportedly.)

Well, now the court has reached its verdict. The land and buildings claimed by St. John’s Shaughnessy, St. Matthew’s, St. Matthias, and St. Luke’s parishes are rightfully the property of the Diocese, and the breakaway parishes can not seize them for themselves.

Having settled the property dispute, all sides have now decided to put their disagreements behind them and rejoin, strengthened by a renewed commitment to sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, and offering comfort to the less fortunate…

Hahaha! Ah, I’m just pulling your leg. They’re totally still exchanging petty insults and stuff.

• Court rules on same-sex church battle [BC Local News]
• Court denies breakaway parishioners [Canada.com]

As far as religions go, I suppose you could do worse than the Anglicans. They at least entertain discussions about how to best integrate their doctrine with reality. They bless gay couples, for example, and extend to them the same dignities as any other parishioner—including eligibility for ordination.

Of course, all this love and tolerance doesn’t sit too well with churchgoers who miss the unity that only old-fashioned judgment and condemnation can bring. Priests and bishops have split, some have been fired, the locks on church doors have been changed to keep out congregations with differing perspectives—they’ve even started suing each other. Yet, all this kicking and moaning hasn’t stopped the church from trying to stay as relevant as it can. What are bitter coots to do?

Well, the Vatican has a proposal: Join the Catholic Church! Be as rabidly anti-gay as you like! Heck, they’ll even overlook the events that caused the Anglicans to split from Catholicism in the first place (it was a disagreement over King Henry VIII’s denied divorce in 1534, for what it’s worth) and recognize differing Anglican traditions by creating a new legal entity.

Aw, isn’t that just the most adorablest thing ever? There’s just nothing like a common dislike of us gays to mend a 475 year old religious rift.

• Catholic Church reaches out to Anglicans [CBC News]

Same-sex blessings have been the epicentre of a bizarrely deep rift in the Anglican Church. Now the divisive issue has culminated in.. well, in pretty much the same way as all ridiculous issues: A court case.

Yes, the Anglicans are suing each other, as four parishes in British Columbia (St. John’s Shaughnessy, St. Matthew’s, St. Matthias and St. Luke’s, and the Church of the Good Shepherd) are scheduled to meet the Diocese of New Westminster in court next week over the ownership of four Anglican church buildings.

The Diocese locked out the parishes from their churches last year over disagreements about same-sex blessings, the appointment of a gay bishop, and other absurdly small differences in doctrine.

While both sides lament that it has come to this, they had failed to reach an agreement through a mutually selected, third-party mediator: Jesus.

• Vancouver Anglicans go to court [Canadian Christianity]

James over at Gay Persons of Color has dug up an unreal story about the Anglican Church of Nigeria and their formal proposal to jail anyone who participates in a gay wedding.

The proposed law, delivered to a parliamentary committee this week, would incarcerate gay couples who get married for five years, as well as any witnesses to the ceremony for one year.

Well…  Someone’s awfully cranky.

Many governments worldwide are actively homophobic, but jailing well-wishers who simply attend a gay wedding would, essentially, make it illegal not to be homophobic.

But perhaps there’ll be nothing to worry about. As James points out, the proposed law would be entirely moot—at least, according to the government. Just last month, Nigeria’s Minister of Foreign Affairs declared that an exhaustive, country-wide search for gays and lesbians had been carried out and that they “could not come across any Nigerian with such sexuality.”

• Nigerian Archbishop ‘wants gay wedding witnesses to be jailed’ [Pink News]

The  Traditional Anglican Communion, a group of Anglicans who abandoned the global Anglican church over same-sex blessings and the ordination of women, has decided to go back to their very early roots and re-join the Roman Catholic Church, if The Vatican will let them.

Anglicans spit from Rome in 1534 over their refusal to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII. Nothing like a common dislike of the gays to mend a 475-year old rift, huh?

• Traditional Anglican Communion wants to join Catholic Church [Daily Gleaner]