A day after the final Communiqué from the Primates’ meeting in Alexandria, and the release of the Windsor Continuation Group’s report, there are a number of pieces appearing which try to make sense of the mixed messages being heard.
We’ve already linked to the Communiqué and the WCG report. Pat Ashworth, in the Church Times, has tried to set them all in context.
The real push out of the meeting (in terms of the internal conflict in the Communion) is a call for professional mediation between groups in the Communion who are acting in ways that are seen to be increasing the level of conflict. While the resolutions of Lambeth in 1998 on human sexual expression are reiterated, there’s also a strong call for the Listening Process to be taken seriously.
The statements from the meeting are attempting to be evenhanded. There’s stronger language criticizing the actions of the conservative parts than has been the norm previously.
From Ashworth’s article:
“Cross-border interventions by the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone and others have proceeded ‘apparently in contradiction of the 2005 Dromantine Statement’. In Canada, though, the moratorium on the authorisation of same-sex blessings is being observed in the majority of its 29 dioceses. Breaches of the moratoriums are considered to be ‘equal threats to our life in Communion’. The way they have been challenged or ignored raises the question ‘how can any decisions or recommendations be given authority or force in the life of the Communion?’
ACNA is named in the report as ‘a serious and unprecedented development in the life of the Communion’. If it wants to seek formal membership of the Communion, that presents ‘formidable problems’. One observation is: ‘The Windsor report set its face against the concept of parallel jurisdictions; it would be especially tragic if a generous accommodation of the new entity were to be seen as carte blanche for the new province to establish a presence in localities where no cogent theological basis for differentiation could be advanced.’
Instead, the group believes difference should be accommodated within the official structure. In seeking an undertaking from the Common Cause Partnership (the coalition of Episcopalians and breakaway Anglican Churches that set up ACNA) not to proselytise, the report makes clear: ‘WCG believes that the advent of schemes such as the Communion Partners Fellowship and the Episcopal Visitors scheme instituted by the Presiding Bishop in the United States should be sufficient to provide for the care of those alienated within the Episcopal Church from recent developments.’”
The last bit about the Pastoral Visitors being sufficient response for the disaffected within the Episcopal Church is surely going to be a challenging statement to those who have already declared to be woefully insufficient.
Read the full article here.