Contents
- Home
- Synod: Daily round-ups
- News
- Primates' Meeting: Primates hold together, and issue a challenge to the US
- Primates' Meeting: Primates hold together, and issue a challenge to the US
- Primates' meeting: Responses
- Primates' meeting: The communiqué, the Covenant and fallout
- UK blamed for 15% of carbon output
- Not there yet, say authors of IARCCUM report
- Love life, live Lent — and laugh, texts suggest
- Wake-up call
- Dance at the cathedral
- From the ashes
- Please help train a priest
- Immigrants suffer, says RC report
- Londoners march against gun crime
- Conference hears of Iraqi gay persecution
- Briefs
- S. Carolina asks wary dioceses to reconsider
- Comment
- Letters
- Real Life
- Lent DVD course
- Greenbelt
- Features
- Faith
- Humour and crossword
- Pastimes
- Books
- Arts
- Media
- Gazette
- Grace
 back to News |
 previous story
|
next story 
|
Primates' meeting: Responses
 Hope: Archbishop Hutchison |  Upbeat: Bishop Idris Jones |
| THE CANADIAN PRIMATE, the Most Revd Andrew Hutchison, described the outcome of the Tanzania meeting as the best that could have been achieved.
“Some of us, if not all of us, have had to sacrifice something and hold our noses a bit, in order that we can move together and say this is something we can live with,” he said on Tuesday. “There really was the possibility of the whole thing coming apart at this meeting, and it didn’t; so I’m encouraged.”
The Canadian Church will not make its formal response to Windsor until its Synod meets in June, and so there was no discussion of its position. But, in a meeting where the Americans took the rap for informal blessings at local level, there was an admission that the issue was one that belonged to the whole Communion.
“There have been so many blessings of same-sex couples in other provinces, but in England in particular. It’s on a very wide scale, but all unofficial and all unauthorised,” the Archbishop said. “There’s a pretence that that doesn’t count, whereas Canada has been under the gun for officially discussing blessing a very few couples, and is vilified for that.
“I have always said that there is an element of duplicity and dishonesty here that needs to be addressed. The day will come when we need to address all of that together.”
Reaching consensus on the communiqué had consumed more time than had ever been imagined, but the result was the best that could have been achieved, Archbishop Hutchison said. “The Presiding Bishop [of the United States] has cautioned us that the tighter these constraints become, the more difficult it is for her to present this to the American House of Bishops.”
Dr Jefferts Schori had made the proposal for a Primatial Vicar last year; so it was not new to the Primates, he said. “She had made it clear from the beginning that she wouldn’t go into any American diocese uninvited, and if they weren’t happy with her ministry, she’d delegate.”
Primates from other parts of the world found it hard to understand the polity of the Episcopal Church in the US and how limited the jurisdiction of its Primate was, he said. “They are confused by the idea of being a Primate and not being able to put your foot down.”
The Archbishop felt that even Archbishop Akinola had moved towards a better understanding. “He was not the specific sticking-point [in reaching consensus], but, in the final analysis, he had some serious reservations about signing, as did some at the liberal end of the spectrum. But everybody has compromised and said this is something we live with.”
Having been a critic of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s handling of meetings in the past, he paid tribute to Dr Williams for exercising good leadership. “I was surprised and delighted — and careful to tell him so,” he said.
Archbishop Hutchison concluded: “I most sincerely believe the Holy Spirit is involved in this whole process, and, one way or another, whatever the outcome in the long run, we’re going to be stronger and better focused and much clearer about our mission as an Anglican family.”
THE PRIMUS of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Dr Idris Jones, was also upbeat about the outcome of the meeting. The Episcopal Church in the US had not been expelled, a separate province had not been set up, and the unanimity of the Primates was one of the considerable achievements, he said on Wednesday. The delay on the communiqué had been the “justifiable concern” of finding the right language, he confirmed, raising an issue that has come to the surface in previous meetings: the disadvantage to those Primates whose mother tongue is not English. For the first time, many of the materials will be translated into languages such as French, Spanish, and Chinese. Praying with the Primates in their own languages had been a very moving experience, the Primus said. Despite reports of undue pressure from the Global South, conservative Evangelicals had “simply told their story and the depth of their feeling”, he said. None had withdrawn from sessions to take advice, and although briefings were clearly happening between sessions, “lots of people were talking to lots of people.” He had the highest praise for the way Dr Jefferts Schori had conducted herself. “She is an absolutely wonderful person. She behaved with consummate grace and generosity throughout the whole meeting,” he said. “She is a model for us all, a gift to the Episcopal Church and to the Anglican Communion.” The Scottish Episcopal Church has made its own position very clear: its bishops were unanimous in judging that the US Church had responded adequately to Windsor, the Primus said. He had been very impressed by the report given to the meeting by Canon Phil Groves, facilitator of the listening process. “It is very exciting and could lead to a major contribution to the whole question of how not just the Anglican Church but the Christian Church responds to human sexuality in its broadest possible sweep,” he said.“The image I have in mind, looking at the proposals, is something like ecclesiological inoculation. We’ve introduced something into the Body of Christ which is new for us and the Anglican Church, with the intention that the body to whom it has been introduced will create its own health and response and rediscover its vitality for itself. The dose has been administered, and we won’t know for a little while whether it’s taken or not.” |
 Getting the point across: Dr Williams at the final news conference late on Monday Reuters |
THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury, at the late-night press conference on Monday, said he felt that the meeting “represented some steps in a very encouraging direction, but did not yet represent a situation in which we could say, ‘business as usual’.”
Archbishop Akinola had agreed to support the communiqué, Dr Williams said. He reiterated that the doctrinal position of Lambeth 1.10 on human sexuality had not changed. There had been a need to take seriously the fact that the response of the Episcopal Church in the US might not have been clear, but represented a willingness to engage with the Communion and an awareness of the difficulty that decisions had generated. “So how to work with that willingness and ‘stream of desire’?” he wondered. The second factor had been the “very substantial group of bishops and others within the Episcopal Church, perhaps amounting to nearly one quarter, who have spelt out their willingness to provide a ‘carefully worked-through system of pastoral oversight for those in the Church who are not content with the decisions of General Convention’”. |
| So, while the Covenant was being discussed around the Communion, this had been an attempt to “see if there is an interim solution that will certainly fall very far short of resolving all the disputes that are before us, but will provide a way of moving forward with integrity”.
Dr Williams described it as: “a system of pastoral care for the substantial minority in the Episcopal Church; an encouragement for them and others within the Episcopal Church in whatever desire they have to remain on stream in the Communion; and also, more importantly, a way of beginning to negotiate a way through the very difficult situations that have been created by the interventions from other provinces in the life of the Episcopal Church.”
On the interventions by foreign Primates, he said: “We accepted the good faith of those responsible for such interventions, and we heard some very moving testimonies about that. At the same time, they and we recognise that that can only be a temporary solution, and the preferable solution is to have some kind of settlement negotiated within the church life of the United States.”
The challenge to those who had intervened from elsewhere was “to see if they can negotiate their way towards an equitable settlement within the life of the North American Church”.
On the recommendations that property cases should be dropped, he said: “You’ll notice that we also suggested, to pick up an unfortunate metaphor that’s been around quite a bit, the kind of ceasefire in terms of litigation. . . None of us, none of us, believes that litigation and counter-litigation can be a proper way forward, and we don’t see that we can move towards sensible balanced reconciliation while that remains a threat in wide use.”
|
%231%23.gif "Army Chapliancy Blog © site")
