The Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ meeting met for three days this week. The Anglican Communion News Service has issued these bulletins summarising the committee’s proceedings.
2012 Standing Committee Bulletin – Day 1
2012 Standing Committee Bulletin – Day 2
2012 Standing Committee Bulletin – Day 3
The Anglican Communion Covenant was discussed on Wednesday (day 1):
The Standing Committee received an update on the progress of the Anglican Communion Covenant. It was noted that eight Provinces had endorsed the Covenant to date, in some cases with a degree of qualification. They were the only responses received so far by the Secretary General…
There was general agreement that no timeframe should yet be introduced for the process of adoption of the Covenant by Provinces. The Standing Committee will return to this question following ACC-15.
An implication of the first paragraph is that the Church of England has not yet notified the Secretary General that the covenant was defeated in the dioceses.
Note: ACC-15 is the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council to be held in New Zealand from 27 October to 7 November 2012.
I found this line instructive: “The committee also noted that the President, Chair, and Vice-Chair all hold their offices other than as representatives of their Provinces.” If thy have no representative function and have somehow become dislocated from the Church that pays them – What are they doing on that Committee?! We know what bullet they are trying to dodge, but they will have to come up with something a little better than that. Something the ACO DID do well was the election of the rep for the Committee choosing the next ABC. Over at Fulcrum that sweet boy Andrew… Read more »
So long as the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury remains in office, there will be no official acknowledgement from the Church of England that his centralizing scheme has been rejected.
‘An implication of the first paragraph is that the Church of England has not yet notified the Secretary General that the covenant was defeated in the dioceses.’
This says everything! Closing one’s eyes to reality is not a good sign for the actuality of rejection of the Covenant process. Does the Church of England’s rejection mean nothing to the ACO and the ACC?
Maybe the HoB will ignore the voting and reinstate the Covenant again. Why not ? Look how the bishops have ignored and over-turned the Diocesan voting on women in the episcopate.
The Church of England bishops are becoming less and less credible. The fanciful notion of ‘apostolic succession’ has turned their corporate heads.
They ‘re not as good as they seem to imagine themselves to be.
To be precise: the Church of England has not formally rejected the Covenant — there has been no vote against it, no vote to reject it. What has happened is that there has failed to be a vote in favour of it.
No one was asked to reject it, we were asked to approve it and we refused to do so.
Does that mean, Simon, that the Measure could have been approved in some other format? Like, for instance, with no disciplinary element against Provinces that pursue the gospel in a way considered by them to be suitable for their own context?
The “No’ to the covenant sounded a teeny bit like a rejection of it – to me, a simpleton.