NYT: Anglicans to Seek Pact to Prevent a Schism

By JOHN F. BURNS
August 4, 2008

CANTERBURY, England — Nearly three weeks of discussion aimed at preventing a breakup of the worldwide Anglican Communion over homosexuality ended Sunday at a conference here with 650 bishops and archbishops agreeing to seek a new pact among all parties to the ecclesiastical controversy.

The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, announced a consensus to seek the pact, known as a covenant, in the absence of a formal vote at the Lambeth Conference, which meets in Canterbury every 10 years.

Archbishop Williams, the supreme voice of a church that is reckoned the third largest Christian denomination, after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox faiths, had decided ahead of the meeting to avoid resolutions and votes in hopes of preventing a schism that might well rupture worldwide Anglicanism more severely than at any time in more than 450 years. the rest