Continued from here.
Paul Feheley Anglican Church of Canada A study in contrasts
Colin Coward Changing Attitude Primates meeting Day 5 – Are Primatial attitudes changing? and Primates meeting Day 6 – Deeper Communion; Gracious Restraint
ENS has Bulletin: Primates support ‘pastoral visitors’ to assist in healing Anglican divisions.
Episcopal Café has its first comments on the communiques here. And its first comments on the WCG report are over here.
Christopher Landau of the BBC has Split Anglicans call in mediators.
Reuters Anglicans remain split on gay issues at meeting
Marites N. Sison Anglican Journal No consensus on separate North American Anglican province
George Conger Living Church Communion ‘Deeply Divided’ But No Schism, Archbishop Williams Says and earlier, Primates Focus on Conflicts and Crisis
Rachel Zoll Associated Press Anglicans seek extended moratorium on gay bishops
ACNS has now released the audio recording of today’s press conference, and it can be found at Primates Press Briefing 5th February 2009. The text summarising the briefing is reproduced below the fold.
Matthew Davies ENS Primates support ‘pastoral visitors’ to assist in healing Anglican divisions
CANA has issued a statement, CANA Responds to Primates’ Communiqué.
Daniel Burke of Religion News Service has written Anglican Leaders Take Dim View of Rival U.S. Church. It includes these quotes:
…The Rev. Peter Frank, a spokesman for ACNA, said he would take a wait-and-see approach to the primates’ statement, which also calls for a “provisional holding arrangement” for the new church.
“There are no real surprises here,” Frank said. “We’re waiting for words to move into action before we judge.”
Added ACNA Bishop Martyn Minns, “We didn’t go into this meeting expecting to get permission. We basically went in and said `We’re here’ and, in my mind, they acknowledged that.”
Ruth Gledhill Archbishop plans ‘mediated talks’ with conservatives
Primates Press Briefing 5th February 2009
At the press briefing the Archbishop of Canterbury said the spirit of the meeting had been very constructive and while people might not have changed their minds on key issues there had been a willingness to listen and to try to find accommodations for each other.
The Archbishop of Canterbury went on to outline the main items from the meeting including the report of the Windsor Continuation Group which contained three main elements as outlined in the communiqué:
1) The need for a shift of focus in the life of the communion from autonomy of provinces with communion added on, to communion as the primary reality with autonomy and accountability understood within that framework.
2) A set or recommendations about the instruments of communion and how they should work. All four; the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates Meeting, The Anglican Consultative Council and the Lambeth Conference need some looking at as to whether their present structures of working are adequate to the situation.
3) The current situation in North America and the coalition of the Anglican Church of North America out of the common cause partnership. The continuation group report notes the enormous difficulties of parallel jurisdiction but also recognizes the desire of these groups to be Anglicans and be in relationship with the Anglican Communion. The recommendation was that the Archbishop of Canterbury convenes a professionally resourced mediation process. In addition there was support for the appointment of a pastoral forum and pastoral visitors who can act as consultants in situations of stress and conflict.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams also spoke about the Primates statement on Zimbabwe and of hearing harrowing first hand reports from the region and from Zimbabwe itself.
He also talked about the statement on the situation in Sudan and about the brief statement on Gaza, calling for greater support for humanitarian effort and support for ceasefires.
“Paragraph 8 confirms that there has been ‘honest exchange and mutual challenge at a new and deeper level…’ and paragraph 9, that matters ‘are not as clear-cut as some portray.’ Honesty and mutuality must be a mark of the encounters with LGBT Anglicans which will continue to evolve in the coming decade” – Colin Coward, C.A. – This assessment by Colin Coward seems to offer a larger degree of hopefulness to the LBGT community for a substantive outcome from the Primates’ Meeting. There appears to be a move towards the ‘listening process’ which was required by successive Lambeth Conferences, but… Read more »
Far too optimistic in my view. How is ACNA supposed to exist except to proseltyse? How are parts of the Communion not to take authority to themselves when the Primates’ Council sets itelf up and does just that? What on earth is the FCA? And as they do compete, so Changing Attitude supports clergy who bless same sex couples, and there will be more same sex clergy including bishops. They are still hooked on centralisation instead of letting go and letting be, and see where things go.
““We welcome the Primates’ unanimous reaffirmation of the entirety of Lambeth 1:10 as the Church’s teaching on human sexuality although we are disappointed that they were not unanimous in their call to repentance for those who continue to defy this teaching.” – Martyn Minns, CANA – This is a predictable response by Minns, the Nigerian-Bishop emissary to the ACNA community. In it, he expresses disappointment that there was not a ‘unamimous call to repentance for those who discontinue this teaching’ – on human sexualty. What Minns has not recognised is the fact that no-where in the communique was there reference… Read more »
Minns reminds me of that old joke about the optimistic boy frantically clawing through a pile of manure and shouting “I just KNOW there’s a pony in here somewhere!”
ACNA Bishop Minns said:”`We’re here’ and, in my mind, they acknowledged that.”
Oh, oh… Is that what it is all about? Being acknowledged?
Makes one question the whole thing – religion included.
In the 1930s an agreement was reached between the Church of England in South Africa and the Church of the Province of South Africa. However it floundered at the last minute over this very question of expansion.
I also feel that another pre-requisuite should have been that the ACNA withdraw from all their legal suits against two legitimiate provinces.
Why no criticism of Southern Cone..with its puppet dioceses in three countries ( Canada , the US and Brazil)causing legal action.
Fr Ron
“This is a predictable response by Minns, the Nigerian-Bishop emissary to the ACNA community. In it, he expresses disappointment that there was not a ‘unamimous call to repentance for those who discontinue this teaching’ – on human sexualty.”
Yes, but by the same token, he admits that there is no “mind of the communion” on this issue. Which is a huge step in the right direction.
It may turn out, strangely enough, that the conservative realignment campaign among global Anglicans is a sunami wave that will exhaust itself over long time, breaking on the rocks of the flood of modern changes that will inevitably occur in multiple domains, and continue to have mainly destructive conservative realignment sunami effects upon the outsiders it defines and touches so destructively. That those believers who bother to read science and critical modern scholarhip in one hand and the scriptures plus traditions in the other, eventually concluding in a variety of ways that they must correct and/or resposition starting assumptions, methods,… Read more »