The Porvoo churches may be in full communion, but they are suffering something approaching a full communications breakdown. Or so it would seem. Blame the UK postal strikes?
Wednesday I posted a story that I titled “ABC issues slap in face”. The post was based on the report in a Swedish newspaper that no members of the Anglican churches of the Porvoo Agreement had accepted invitations to attend the upcoming consecration of Eva Brunne, a partnered lesbian, elected to Bishop of Stockholm.
There have been several incremental developments to the story. The original post as written together with those addenda is here.
Today Thinking Anglicans took up the story, explaining its evolution. Do read it here.
Pending further developments this is where we are left:
(1) The leader of the Church of Sweden says:
(a) “We send invitations to those with the highest rank. That’s why the Archbishop of Canterbury received an invitation, but no one expected him to say yes.”
(b) the Church of England will be represented — by a bishop’s chaplain;
(2) The Church of Ireland Gazette “understands”:
(a) “that while the Church of Ireland and the Church in Wales received invitations, both of which were turned down, no invitation was received by the Scottish Episcopal Church or the Church of England.”
(b) “that none of the Anglican Porvoo Communion Churches (the Church of Ireland, the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Church in Wales) will be represented at the 8th November consecrations of two new Swedish bishops – Dean of Uppsala, the Very Revd Tuulikki Koivunen Bylund for the diocese of Härnösand, and the Revd Eva Brunne for the diocese of Stockholm.”
The invitations were sent, but not received? Are we to believe that no Anglican bishops will be in attendance due to the UK postal strike?
In other news, the Church of England has managed to stay on top of the news that the Church of Sweden has approved same-sex marriage. The measure went into effect November 1.
Addendum.With thanks to the first commenter below, Kelvin Holdsworth reports (scroll down) from Scotland “the Swedes invite Anglican bishops to their consecrations in rotation – sometimes, Irish bishops, sometimes Welsh bishops, sometimes English bishops, sometimes Scottish bishops. Seems that this time around it was not our turn.”