The divide in the Anglican Communion over homosexuality is being deepened by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' silence on tomorrow's consecration of Mary Glasspool as the Episcopal Church's second openly gay bishop, says author and journalist David Virtue of virtueonline.org

Writing in a May 10 editorial, Virtue criticized Williams' "total absence of any comment" about Glasspool's consecration, which the editor says will do "major league damage" to the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion.

"[The Episcopal Church] will proclaim her fit to be a bishop even though her lifestyle does not comport with Holy Scripture or the received teaching of 2,000 years of church history," he said.

Virtue pointed to Williams' recent comments to a gathering of Global South Anglicans where the archbishop said that, "All of us share the concern that in this decision and action the Episcopal Church has deepened the divide between itself and the rest of the Anglican family. And as I speak to you now, I am in discussion with a number of people around the world about what consequences might follow from that decision, and how we express the sense that most Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our common mind."

"So what have these discussions with a 'number of people' produced?" Virtue asked. "And whom exactly did he talk to and what sort of discipline or punishment will he prescribe, if he prescribes any? What will he propose if the consecration goes ahead?"

Furthermore, Virtue sees the responses of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to Glasspool's approval as all part of a "giant con game of high-sounding words and resolutions without actions and no punishment. And Rowan Williams' silence is complicit in letting it happen."

"It would appear that Rowan Williams, the alleged protector of that majority within the Communion, has closed his door to all but the faux 'listening process' and Western pan-Anglican post-modern sexual practices," Virtue says. "He wants, hopes and believes he can still hold it together. He can't, his day is done."

Meanwhile, a coalition of Irish church leaders are the latest to speak out against Glasspool's consecration, calling it "both wrong and disappointing."

 "The Episcopal Church (TEC) has taken this provocative step despite knowing the division and difficulties created by Gene Robinson's consecration in 2003. This shows a deliberate disregard for other members of the Anglican family and suggests that TEC does not greatly value unity within Anglicanism and indeed throughout the universal Church," a May 13 statement issued by the Church of Ireland Evangelical Fellowship, the Evangelical Fellowship of Irish Clergy, New Wine Ireland, and Reform Ireland, read.

"We wish to express our support for the many people within The Episcopal Church who feel alienated and hurt by this development. We stand in fellowship with them and with those who have separated from that Church for conscience's sake, many of whom now face legal proceedings and financial sacrifices as a result," they continue.

"Many Christians of all traditions and denominations will share our sorrow and see Mary Glasspool's consecration as a defiant rejection of pleas for restraint and, even more importantly, as a rejection of the pattern of holiness of life called for in Scripture and endorsed by believers over the centuries."