Updated Monday morning
In a lecture given yesterday, the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, says
When the Archbishop issued his invitations [to Lambeth], he made it clear as I said that their basis was Windsor and the Covenant as the tools to shape our future common life. …. After a summer and autumn of various tangled and unsatisfactory events, the Archbishop then wrote an Advent pastoral letter in which he reiterated the terms of his initial invitation and declared that he would be writing to those bishops who might be thought particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant to ask them whether they were really prepared to build on this dual foundation. Those letters, I understand, are in the post as we speak, written with apostolic pain and heart-searching but also with apostolic necessity. I am well aware that many will say this is far too little, far too late – just as many others will be livid to think that the Archbishop, having already not invited Gene Robinson to Lambeth, should be suggesting that some others might absent themselves as well. But this is what he promised he would do, and he is doing it. If I know anything about anything, I know that he deserves our prayers at this most difficult and fraught moment in the run-up to Lambeth itself.
Emphasis added. Just who might the Archbishop of Canterbury think would be particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant? There have been clear boundary crossings by Archbishops of several provinces.
Read Wright’s lecture here. A tip of the hat to Pluralist. See his post on the lecture here.
Monday morning update Simon Sarmiento at Thinking Anglicans has done a comparison of what Williams said in his Advent Letter with what Wright says. Williams: “I intend to be in direct contact with those who have expressed unease about this, so as to try and clarify how deep their difficulties go with accepting or adopting the Conference’s agenda.” Wright: “[Williams] declared that he would be writing to those bishops who might be thought particularly unsympathetic to Windsor and the Covenant to ask them whether they were really prepared to build on this dual foundation.” Go to Simon’s post and decide for yourself what the meaning of “unease about this” might be.