The Most Rev. Peter Carnley, primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, is no stranger to the problem of authority in Anglicanism.

Last year the synod of the Diocese of Sydney voted to allow lay people to preside at the Eucharist (Archbishop Harry Goodhew of Sydney vetoed it). Archbishop Carnley also served on the Eames Commission, appointed following the 1988 Lambeth Conference to help the Anglican Communion maintain the highest degree of communion in the face of disagreement over women in the episcopate.

So when he spoke at the General Theological Seminary Oct. 2 about his forthcoming book, Progressive Orthodoxy, he went straight to the heart of controversies in today's Communion.

"Frankly the problem for Anglicans at the universal level is the integration of leadership to achieve coherent thought," Archbishop Carnley said to nearly 100 professors and students. He referred to the 1998 Lambeth resolution that called for restructuring the four instruments of the Communion into a more integrated system.

Overwhelmingly passed at Lambeth, it called for the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) to become a more representative Anglican Communion Council that would include a House of Primates. The Archbishop of Canterbury would remain the "spiritual leader" and the meeting of all Anglican bishops at Lambeth every 10 years would be "more connected to the life of the Communion."

"We are not just a federation of independent churches," he said. "We call ourselves a 'Communion.' That means we have to struggle to reach unity of heart and mind."

Archbishop Carnley also addressed the consecration of two American bishops in Singapore who would provide oversight of conservative parishes in the Episcopal Church.

"These so-called renegade bishops have nothing to do with canonical structures," he said. "It is a matter of discipline, and those who consecrated them should be rapped on the knuckles."

To the archbishop, Anglicans are not big on dogma but excel in worship. "Our respect for the mystery of God is expressed in worship rather than definitions or moral directives," he said. "Anchoring theology in the mystery of God means that religious truth is sufficient for the practical purposes of life but does not tell us everything."

Debra Wagner