Updated Friday evening
First in the Church Times.
From last week: Pat Ashworth Dr Williams calls for ‘shared honesty’ and Gomez gives warning over Covenant
This week: ACC’s close vote delays debate on Covenant and ACC backs up Windsor moratoriums
Next, Ephraim Radner wrote at ACI The Wisdom of the Cross: Some reflections on ACC-14 and the Anglican Covenant.
And, in the CEN Defeat for Archbishop as Covenant draft is rejected by George Conger.
Friday evening update
Colin Coward has some comments on the reports in Dreaming of global cooperation in the Church.
Anglican Journal reports Canadian delegates to ACC hopeful about future of Anglican Communion.
Episcopal Life has a video titled ACC participants reflect on meeting.
I want shared honesty and mediated discussions between the Anglican world leadership and their lesbian and gay brothers and sisters whom they are shafting through the appalling and contrary policy of “gracious restraint” ……. about time we started doing a bit of demanding perhaps.
Gee I am really really really really tired of figures like Gomez or Radner glossing on about how they are doing the best for me, with their hard work to compromise their own views just barely making them able to even conceive that I as a gay person am really really really in the rooms with them, or – gasp – really alive and thriving beyond all their nasty conceptions about me, on the same planet. I am exhausted at times by Radner’s sense that his own keen superiorities are simply to be taken categorically for granted by all of… Read more »
What about the reflection by Dr Art Tickle Righter CDG ACI and mother?
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/05/dr-art-tickle-righters-baby.html
Radner seems to think that the Covenant Design Group is virtually another instrument of communion, and he seems to want to bypass the ACC or at least not allow it to have a deliberative voice (preferring, in retrospect he says, for the CDG to have solicited comments from the ACC, then to have the CDG revise the covenant, and then to send it off via Rowan directly to the Communion). I think the ACC is the most synodical of any of our instruments, and I don’t appreciate giving so very much power to committees or working groups that have been… Read more »
I think Joe makes some excellent points.
What Radner writes is sometime quite breathtaking!
However it might be borne in mind that the proposed Covenant along with the developed Common Canon Law published by Prof Norman Doe is envisaged by many as the 5th Instrument of Communion.
I am still awaiting clarification of the views stated at the ACC by the Archbishop of Canterbury in relation to homosexual clergy and just how they relate to the statements of his own House of Bishops. In England Clergy have the legal right to enter into Civil Partnerships and they have been accorded the ‘gracious’ privilege of doing so with their Bishops ‘support’ if they declare that their relationship is not sexually active. Dr Williams makes no such distinctions when he speaks at these gatherings, nor do the documents of the various Windsor Groups. How is this to be resolved?… Read more »
Thanks Pluralist, all Swiftian recalling … …it was our baby, several … tossed it around the nursery without as much as offering it a bottle of milk. … … There is no justification for what the ACC has done to my baby and they did not have the father’s permission – yes, the one in heaven, and me, as Mary, who sits alongside the father in heaven and gives him motherly advice. … …then you get Western parents with their fancy theories such as from Mr Spock and Captain Kirk, and the Americans even sent a woman … …No other… Read more »
You have been reading Swift, haven’t you?
No.
“Andrew Carey, noted for his consistent negativity to Archbishop Rowan, says he “read widespread reports of confusion and mismanagement.” He didn’t read my blog, did he, but only the reports by conservatives, those who spin everything negatively.” Colin Coward, C.A. – Why is it that most of the so-called “Press Representatives” at ACC14 were from the conservative end of the spectrum on Communion affairs? When one considers that people like the failed appointee to the Board of ACC, Mr Ashey, (who was then accorded status as an official Press officer at ACC14), have been accorded official status as ‘Press”, one… Read more »
I think the situation was the reverse, i.e. Mr Ashey was FIRST accredited as Press by an American lobby group, and THEN nominated as a Ugandan delegate to the Council.
As to your second question, I am not sure what external body would determine who was and was not an “official news organisation” but in practice it has not been difficult for lobbyists to get press status at church meetings.
Simon is right – Mr Ashey applied for press accreditation before he was nominated as a Ugandan delegate, but hadn’t been granted accreditation. He arrived at ACC14 and initially walked into the plenary conference room without any authority, but was later granted permanent visitor status. We were all distinguished by different colour ribbons – he was wearing blue for visitor, I was wearing white for media. You don’t have to work for an official news organisation to gain accreditation. I wouldn’t be accredited to write for the CA blog or newsletter if that was the rule. Those reporting ACC14 in… Read more »
I keep wondering whether the people who disagreed with the final resolution on the covenant have yet noticed that it got a majority vote – and that the procedures, however flawed, revealed the majority view. The louder voices suggest not (the majority do not claim to be confused – is there anyone who voted for the final outcome who has said they were?), but there are some who will be more astute about the context. On the other hand, have the people who voted for delay noticed how narrow the vote was? I believe so, on the whole, and there… Read more »
Thankyou Simon and Colin for clarifying my lack of understanding about Press accreditation at ACC14 and other meetings of the Church. It does seem that any lobby group is free to apply for accreditation and perhaps that is all for the best. I still wonder, however, whether Mr Ashey, with ‘Visitor’ Status (considering his having been rejected for membership of the Council by the JSC of the ACC) should be encouraged to ask questions at an official Press Conference? Are
“Visitors” classed as ‘Press’ in that situation?
“In coming to this conclusion with respect to the Covenant text, the ACC acted without any clear sense of its brief, or publicly articulated sense of its goals and processes in so doing.” – Ephraim Radner, A.C.I – Ephraim Radner, refers here to the decision of ACC14 to refer Section 4 of the proposed Anglican Covenant Document for further revision, before submitting the complete document to the Provinces for further discussion. In doing so, he intimates that the members of the Council were negligent in their proper responsibility to what he obviously considers the most vital section of the Covenant.… Read more »
I’ve received the following comment on what Colin writes concerning ribbons.
“Visitors had orange tabs – blue was for staff. So if you see pictures you can understand. Local volunteers wore green. Network people – such as Jenny Te Paa – also were wearing orange.”
And:
“All plenary sessions of ACC were open and so Mr Ashey attended as a visitor and anyone could have joined him. He did not have access to any other meetings.”
“Many of us are exhausted by this calling we have taken up, by the attacks it has engendered from all sides, and by the public indifference from Communion quarters to our work. We are friends of the Communion and its unity, as far as it can be maintained; yet some might think that such friendship is itself diseased.” – Ephraim Radner – In his final comments on what he chooses to call the ‘Negative’ aspects of ACC14’s rejection of Section 4 of the proposed Covenant Document, Radner here cannot hide his bitter disappointment that his work, and that of Archbishop… Read more »
“Anglican Mainstream leader The Rev. Dr. Chris Sugden noted the long drawn out process of provincial decision-making in some cases would seem to increase the likelihood that those dioceses who wish to sign might take steps to do so outside the province.” – Global South web-site – Here, again, is Dr Sugden of ‘A. Mainstream’, making statements that he really is not qualified to give – and on the Gobal South web-site, too. When will he and the re-Asserters realise that they no longer have a strangle-hold on the polity of the Anglican Communion? Their defeat at ACC14 should have… Read more »