BishopAccountability.org
	Primed for Change By Andrew West The Australian [Australia] July 11, 2005 IF you saw Phillip Aspinall in the street - without his purple shirtfront and pectoral cross, but with his unkempt hair, squinting eyes and glasses - you might mistake him for a computer programmer. That's because Archbishop Aspinall began his working life tapping in data for the Tasmanian education department. He didn't last long, so strong wasthe lure of religious life. Two decades later, he is the new leader of Australia's four million Anglicans, elected on Saturday as primate of the Australian church. At 45, he is the youngest man to have held the job, a factor that does not surprise his old friend Robert Forsyth, the Anglican bishop of South Sydney. "He has a gravity and presence that belies his age," says Forsyth, as if to hint that Aspinall has always been prematurely middle-aged. The Australian public better knows Aspinall, as the man who in effect brought down former governor-general Peter Hollingworth in 2003. It was Aspinall, then still a relatively new prelate of Brisbane, who set up an official inquiry into the church's handling of sexual abuse allegations, including during the period when Hollingworth was archbishop. The inquiry's finding that Hollingworth had allowed a confessed pedophile priest, John Elliot, to remain in the ministry so long as he avoided contact with children, ended Hollingworth's vice-regal career. "Let me say that I find no joy whatsoever in criticising Dr Hollingworth," Aspinall said at the time. "However, I believe it is incumbent on me, as Archbishop, to express my firm view that to allow Elliot to remain in office, following his admission of child sexual abuse, was a serious error of judgment." Forsyth says his friend's resolve in commissioning a report that damned a man who was not only governor-general but a senior Anglican figure was a significant test of character. "That was a very painful matter for everyone, but Phillip dealt with it without fear," Forsyth tells The Australian. "It was a very tough task for a young man in his first big job running a diocese but he didn't wimp it." The Hollingworth episode helped steel Aspinall for a controversy that would engulf him personally. Soon after the Hollingworth report in May 2003, Aspinall fronted a press conference to confront and deny "distressing, damaging and false allegations about me that have been circulating for more than a year and a half". According to the unfounded allegations, Aspinall, when he was 22 and field director of the the Anglican Boys' Society in Tasmania, had arranged for an 18-year-old man to sleep with a priest, who later assaulted the teenager. The archbishop defused the accusations with an emphatic denial, producing two witnesses to support him; by inviting the Tasmanian police commissioner to investigate; and by engaging a retired Queensland Supreme Court judge to probe the claims. The judge ruled there was no case to answer. "I don't know what else I can do about the matter," he comments yesterday, resignation in his voice. "But I can say that I will not allow those stories to deter me from continuing to take positive and constructive action about sexual abuse. The victims need all the help and care we can muster and the church must become more proactive [in fighting the abuse] than in the past." While Aspinall has been the church's most visible authority figure trying totackle clerical abuse issues, as primate he will now have to address thebroader issues of the worldwide Anglican communion. His Sydney counterpart, the intellectually formidable Peter Jensen, whom Aspinall narrowly beat for the primacy, has predicted -- and lamented -- the evolution of "two Anglicanisms". One would be theologically liberal, embracing not only women priests and bishops but also ordaining and consecrating bishops who were practising homosexuals, as many US dioceses have done. The other Anglicanism, and the one with which Jensen would possibly like to align the Sydney diocese, would be biblically orthodox and based around dioceses from Africa, Asia and South America. Aspinall will have a large say in determining the direction the Australian church takes. "Sometimes there might even be irreconcilable differences," he concedes yesterday. "But surely we can still deal with each other with respect." He has argued in favour of women being consecrated bishops. While he accepts that other local dioceses disagree, he believes the difference is not insurmountable -- at least not as insurmountable as the divide over homosexual clergy and same-sex marriage. The Sydney diocese is effectively now in what Anglicans call "impaired communion" with the US province of New Hampshire, which consecrated a practising homosexual, Gene Robinson, as bishop. The Episcopal Church of the US, as American Anglicans are known, and the Canadian Anglicans, who have blessed gay unions, have also been excluded from one of the church's key international bodies. "The principle that I intend to pursue is to preserve and foster the unity of the church as much as I can," Aspinall says. "Some people see truth and unity in some kind of tension and, it's true, they can be. People, quite properly, do not want to sacrifice the truth for the sake of unity. "But if the church fractures, it's very hard for a fractured organisation to convey the unity that God has created in the life, death, ministry and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So only as a very last resort, should we allow the unity to be diminished." But beyond the ecclesiastical machinations in far-off lands, Aspinall realises his first priority is to stem the haemorrhage of Anglicans away from their church. According to the latest data from the National Church Life Survey, attendances at Anglican churches fell during the past decade by 7 per cent, although in Sydney's more evangelical diocese attendance was up almost 10 per cent. Aspinall is an Anglo-Catholic, one who marries a liberal theology with a more orthodox form of worship. But he acknowledges that as his own Brisbane diocese expands on the back of large population growth expected in Queensland's southeast corner, he may have to look south of the border for some inspiration. "We can learn a lot from what has been happening in Sydney this past decade," he says. "We have to be putting in place evangelism initiatives; that is getting a clear grasp on what the Gospel is and getting it out there to people who have not cottoned on to it until now." The primate, with his affection for the traditional episcopal vestments -- the cope, the mitre, the bishop's staff -- is even willing to look at the growing popularity of the Pentecostal churches. He may not embrace the rock bands, the dry ice, the strobe lighting and arm-waving of churches such as Hillsong, headquartered in Sydney's northwestern suburbs, but he admits to being in awe of their ability to attract so many young Christians. "We can learn from the Pentecostal churches," he acknowledges, "but they can also learn from us. We say how on earth do you get so many young people into churches. But they say to us that we have had people worshipping in our parishes for 50 and 60 years. How do we nurture such faithfulness? "But while we can learn from each other, don't wait for a [Christian rock] CD from me."