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Archbishop fears
gay 'rupture' of Anglican church
 05 Mar 2006- The Archbishop of Canterbury has said he fears that
divisions over gay priests and gay bishops may tear the Anglican
Communion into two irreconcilable factions
Dr Rowan Williams warned that it may take decades to re-establish
relations if there was a split.
In an interview with Sir
David Frost for BBC News, he said: "If there is a rupture, it's going to
be a more visible rupture, it's not just going to settle down quietly
into being a federation.
"I suppose my anxiety
about it is that if the Communion is broken we may be left with even
less than a federation." Dr Rowan Williams has previously backed calls
for a moratorium on the election of gay bishops.
Speaking in Khartoum,
Sudan, during a one-week World Food Programme tour of the country, Dr
Williams also launched a scathing verbal attack on Guantanamo Bay,
branding the US prison camp an "extraordinary legal anomaly".
He said it set a
dangerous precedent to keep in custody people who had not been found
guilty or allowed access to proper legal channels.
"Any message given, that
any state can just over-ride some of the basic habeas corpus type
provisions, is going to be very welcome to tyrants elsewhere in the
world, now and in the future.
"What, in 10 years' time,
are people going to be able to say about a system that tolerates this,"
he said.
Dr Williams, who was
elected as Archbishop of Canterbury in July 2002, added that during his
time as head of the Anglican Communion he had made great efforts to
reach out to moderate Muslims in an effort to combat terrorism. He said
he believed terrorism was an "insult to God and man".
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