The worldwide Anglican Church is considering radical organisational changes to prevent it from breaking up over the issue of gay bishops, a leading clergyman says.
Irish Archbishop Robin Eames, chairman of a commission established to steer the church through a crisis that has sharply divided its 70 million members, said divisions over homosexuality could lead to new arrangements.
Eames said the options under consideration include drawing up a formal constitution or transforming the Anglican Communion into a loose federation.
"In less than a year we have to address a situation that has never been confronted in the Anglican Communion, which is do you write rules?" Eames told a news conference on Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Church of Ireland's General Synod, its governing body.
"Do you, having written those rules, get agreement from those who don't want to be bound by those rules, and what does this say about autonomy, which is the principal basis on which the Anglican Communion exists?"
Eames heads the Lambeth Commission, which was set up last year by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in response to the church's biggest crisis since the ordination of women priests.
The crisis erupted in August when the U.S. Episcopal Church voted to appoint an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop. The move sparked outrage from conservative Anglicans, particularly in Africa, who believe the Bible condemns homosexuality.
"It is wrong for me to minimise the task that's in front of us," said Eames, who heads the Anglican Church in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland.
"Some of the things I've read in the media have worried me, because it makes me wonder do people realise how difficult this one is, how dangerous this one is?"
The Anglican Communion is made up of 38 autonomous provinces in 164 countries. As its head, the Archbishop of Canterbury is considered "first among equals" but lacks the authority that the pope has in Roman Catholicism.
Eames appealed to Anglicans not to break away before his group issues its report in the autumn.
"There are parts of what we are up to that I think will come as a great surprise to the Anglican Communion," he said.
"There are parts of what we are trying to find which will involve something akin to a radical look at how we relate to each other as provinces."