Latimer Fellowship New Zealand reports that according to a New Zealand newspaper this weekend, the Bishop of Auckland, the Rt Revd John Paterson has licensed a former Priest of the diocese who is not only a celebrant for same-sex Civil Unions, but who is also about to be “married” in a civil union himself.
It is little surprise to conservatives in the Anglican Church that such a story should appear on the very weekend that the Bishop of Dunedin ordained a man who he openly admitted was in a same-sex union. For there are already signs that an orchestrated campaign is beginning to emerge which seeks to take the New Zealand church out of the Anglican Communion and align itself instead with the radical American Episcopal church.
The case reported here will only deepen the crisis into which the New Zealand Anglican has been plunged by the Dunedin ordinations and will have further international ramifications.
For the Bishop John Paterson is currently serving as General Secretary of the Anglican Consultative Council (one of the international “insturments of unity” within the Anglican Communion), was on the commission that produced the Windsor Report (2004) and was the New Zealand Archbishop who was part of the Dromantine Statement (2005) produced by the Primates of the Anglican Communion.
Although Bishop Paterson has previously declared that no Priest in his Diocese should either register as a Civil Union Celebrant or conduct same-sex blessings, he as refused to discipline at least two Priests to have conduct such blessings in what the Bishop calls their “private” capacity.
This has been met with astonishment in many quarters of the church who find it hard to believe that the public and private duties of a Priest can ever be separated according to Anglican Church rules.
In the case reported this weekend, the former Anglican Priest, Keith King, who left his Auckland parish in 1999 when he came “out” as a gay man (leaving his wife of 30 years and 3 children) has made a “part-time return to parish duties” as assistant priest in the Grey Lynn parish. In between times he has been living in the Waikato Diocese, where the Diocesan Bishop, Archbishop David Moxon, had refused to grant him a license to officiate.
However, his return to Auckland marks a return to licensed ministry as assistant Priest. The Vicar of the parish is the Revd Hugh Kempster, who embarrassed his Bishop two years ago by declaring that he was going to “test the church” by publicly conducting Civil Unions of gay couples.
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