Month: June 2006 (Page 1 of 2)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Anglican Communion Network

June 22, 2006

Contact: Jenny Noyes 412-325-8900

An Open Letter to the Episcopal Church USA

We, the Primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA), meeting in Kampala on 21st – 22nd June, have followed with great interest your meeting of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA in Columbus. We have been especially concerned by the development of your response to The Windsor Report, which has been reported to us quite extensively. This is something for which we have earnestly prayed. We are, however, saddened that the reports to date of your elections and actions suggest that you are unable to embrace the essential recommendations of the Windsor Report and the 2005 Primates Communiqué necessary for the healing of our divisions. At the same time, we welcome the various expressions of affection for the life and work of the Anglican Communion.

We have been moved by your generosity as you have rededicated yourselves to meet the needs of the poor throughout the world, especially through your commitment to the Millennium Development Goals.

We have observed the commitment shown by your church to the full participation of people in same gender sexual relationships in civic life, church life and leadership. We have noted the many affirmations of this throughout the Convention. As you know, our Churches cannot reconcile this with the teaching on marriage set out in the Holy Scriptures and repeatedly affirmed throughout the Anglican Communion. All four Instruments of Unity in the Anglican Communion advised you against taking and continuing these commitments and actions prior to your General Convention in 2003.

At our meeting in Kampala we have committed ourselves to study very carefully all of your various actions and statements. When we meet with other Primates from the Global South in September, we shall present our concerted pastoral and structural response.

We assure all those Scripturally faithful dioceses and congregations alienated and marginalised within your Provincial structure that we have heard their cries.

In Christ,

The Most Rev. Peter Akinola, on behalf of CAPA

Technorati Tags: Anglicanism, CAPA, ecclesiology, ecumenism, theology

The following is a selection of the general response of the Anglican Communion Institute (an orthodox think-tank) to the resolutions passed by General Convention today.

The fact that same-sex blessings were not addressed at all, in either B033 or in any other resolution, represents a devastating lacuna in General Convention’s response to Windsor. Given that the new Presiding Bishop-elect is a well-known facilitator of such blessings, this silence affords Bp. Jefferts-Schori at least a certain room to maneuver within Convention. But if in fact B033 cannot point up the inconsistency between its recommendations and the actual actions of its leaders, then it only proves its own uselessness. In any case, leaving both the Communion and members of the Episcopal Church to guess at the status of same-sex blessings within this church seems, under the circumstances of the last few years’ conflicts, to be a grave disservice to our common life and trust. While the need to use “the exact language of Windsor” in its resolutions was perhaps overblown, at least within a context of genuine desire to respond positively, General Convention’s refusal or failure even to address central elements of Windsor’s requests, with or without exact language, only testifies to the Convention’s own internal inadequacy to engage the Communion at the most basic level. It thus undercuts even the most generous reading of B033’s first resolve. Here, for instance, is what the Windsor Report actually asks with respect to same-sex blessings:

While we recognise that the Episcopal Church (USA) has by action of Convention made provision for the development of public Rites of Blessing of same sex unions, the decision to authorise rests with diocesan bishops. Because of the serious repercussions in the Communion, we call for a moratorium on all such public Rites, and recommend that bishops who have authorised such rites in the United States and Canada be invited to express regret that the proper constraints of the bonds of affection were breached by such authorisation. Pending such expression of regret, we recommend that such bishops be invited to consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion. We recommend that provinces take responsibility for endeavouring to ensure commitment on the part of their bishops to the common life of the Communion on this matter (The Windsor Report, par. 144)

It seems evident, therefore, that General Convention set aside a major element of the Windsor Report’s recommendations; and that the “invitation” to withdraw from representative functions in the Anglican Communion still stands – an invitation apparently now aimed at our own Presiding Bishop-Elect. It is hard to see why the Convention left their new leader hanging in this way.

{read it all}

Technorati Tags: Anglicanism, ecclesiology, ecumenism

“An analysis which I heard from my delegation, which

seems accurate to me, is that normally the moderates

in the middle vote with the left wing progressives

against the right wing orthodox. In this resolution,

however, the ends were played against the middle.

Neither the progressive left wing nor the orthodox

right wanted fudge: both have called for clarity one

way or the other. It was the moderates who wanted to

apologize without apologizing, to have their cake and

a chance, if the cards were skillfully played, to eat

it too. But they lost.”

{Read it all}

Despite the fact that I wanted the Episcopal Church to comply with Windsor and remain in the Anglican Communion, I’m thankful that people are at least seeking honesty–honesty in being wrong is better than lying about what one will or will not do in order to pacify others.

Technorati Tags: Anglicanism, ecclesiology, ecumenism, theology