The Church Times has this report by Pat Ashworth US contingency plan asserts diocesan autonomy and there is a second, related report Covenant is to be used as litmus test of Anglicanism.
The first article has moved on the CT website: please follow the above link, and then scroll down, in order to find the first article above!
Matthew Davies has written about it for ENS see Communion Partners statement challenges Episcopal Church polity.
The Chicago Consultation has issued this Response to Anglican Communion Institute statement.
The Living Church has a report, Bishops: Church’s Doctrine, Worship, Polity in ‘Grave Peril’.
Mark Harris who first broke this story, has written a second note, Cleaning out the Stalls.
“The statement argues that, in the ‘recent controversies surrounding the withdrawal of dioceses from the Episcopal Church’, the Presiding Bishop, Dr Katherine Jefferts-Schori, did not have the constitutional authority to speak on its behalf in civil-litigation cases. Church Times article by Past Ashworth 24 April ’09 from Pat Ashworth’s article it would appear that the ’14 conservative TEC Bishops’ have over-reached their own episcopal authority in trying to take on the established authority of the TEC Presiding Bishop and General Convention. Their relationshiop to the Anglican Communion is quite clearly contingent upon their membership of TEC, and not, as they… Read more »
“One of the statement’s endorsers, the Rev Ephraim Radner, is a member of the Covenant Design Group, the internationally representative committee that is writing and revising the covenant text” – Response from Chicago Consultation – The fact that Dr. Radner is an active member of the Covenant Design Group, while at the same time an advocate of ACNA’s insistence on the validity of diocesan independence from the TEC General Convention and the authority of the Presiding Bishop, should surely elicit some doubt about his being accorded membership of the C.D.G. For Radner to be in a position of executive decision-making… Read more »
I can only suppose they are out to completely destroy TEC and invent a church in their own restrictive and holier-than-thou image and likeness. I think this is by far the most dangerous move against the TEC.
“I can only suppose they are out to completely destroy TEC and invent a church in their own restrictive and holier-than-thou image and likeness.” That’s more than just a supposition. Haven’t there been statements, all kept hush-hush till someone uncovered them, that state that this is precisely their goal? Was there not a document a few years ago that they wanted to keep secret but that got leaked anyway, to their embarrassment, that gave fairly detailed plans for how this destruction and replacement were to take place? It’s been pretty obvious for quite some time, by their own admission, that… Read more »
…the Presiding Bishop, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, did not have the constitutional authority to speak on its behalf in civil-litigation cases….
Constitutionally, perhaps not. But the Canons charge the PB with “speaking for the Church as to the policies, strategies, and programs authorized by the General Convention” (which includes the Constitution and Canons itself) and to speak to the world “as representative of this Church and its episcopate in its corporate capacity.” I think these canonical charges cover testifying in court, as needed. (Canon I.2.4.a.1-2)
“Was there not a document a few years ago that they wanted to keep secret but that got leaked anyway, to their embarrassment, that gave fairly detailed plans for how this destruction and replacement were to take place?” Yes. The Chapman memo did precisely that. When it was revealed, there were basiclaly two responses. 1. Oh, they can’t be serious. That’s someone’s silly wishful thinking. Who knows where the extra candles are? 2. Oh, nobody can do any of those things. Just ignore it. I still can’t find the extra candles. And look where we got with that response? They… Read more »