The Church of Ireland primate Archbishop Robin Eames has said the Anglican Communion "can never be the same again" after the controversy over gay bishops.
Chairman of the Lambeth Commission, which published the Windsor Report last week, Archbishop Eames writes in The Irish Times today that "the machinery of this Communion needs fixing".
The report followed a decision to consecrate a gay man as Bishop of New Hampshire in the US last year and the approval of a blessing for same sex unions in the Canadian diocese of New Westminster.
It called on both dioceses to apologise for their actions and asked that they agree to a moratorium on further implementation of their decisions.
It also rebuked archbishops and bishops of other dioceses for their "uninvited interventions" in other provinces of the Communion related to these issues.
Between now and the international meeting of Anglican leaders in London in February, Anglicans "may well ask how much they are prepared to pay if schism is to be avoided", Archbishop Eames writes in his article today. The past year has seen the world-wide Anglican Communion face a crisis of mounting proportions, he says.
Meanwhile Dr Nigel Biggar, professor of theology at Trinity College Dublin, has suggested the same-sex issue "should be allowed join the distinguished list of moral matters on which Anglicans have long disagreed without feeling obliged to turn their backs on each other".
In the current issue of the Church of Ireland journal Search, he writes: "We worship together in spite of our differences over whether the free market is the best way to meet the needs of the poor, over whether abortion should ever be permitted and under what circumstances, and over whether the US and its allies should have invaded Iraq."