Update Monday evening
The brief note below about the Anglican Covenant may be misleading. To clarify, a decision in principle on whether or not to adopt the covenant will be made at the General Synod in 2012. Formal adoption requires canonical legislation, and it is this that will require a further two years. Full details are in the Paper from Faith and Order Board.
Update late Thursday:
Kelvin Holdworth reports that the Primus actually said more about the Anglican Covenant in his charge than was included in the official text, and gives a transcript, in What the Primus actually said.
The Scottish Episcopal Church is holding the 2011 meeting of its General Synod in Edinburgh from today until Saturday. There was a official preview published last month, General Synod 2011, and all the papers can be downloaded.
There are these official reports of the first day’s business.
Primus’ charge at the opening Eucharist
Brief summary of business General Synod – Thursday 9 June
There is also an official Twitter stream.
Kelvin Holdsworth is blogging from the floor of Synod.
The business included a paper on the process of considering the Anglican Covenant: Paper from Faith and Order Board. The process described in this paper was accepted by the Synod; this will involve making a final decision on whether to adopt the covenant at the 2014 meeting of the Synod, although a decision not to adopt it could be made earlier.
There is background information on the Scottish General Synod here.
The paper on adopting the Covenant feels as if there is already a recognition that the Covenant will fail to get canonical force needing a two thirds majority in its final stage.
Leaving the interesting possibility of Scotland accepting the Covenant in principle while not being able to give that lawful effect.
One wonders how the Standing Committee might judge this Yes/No outcome.
The Church of England, despite the advice that the Covenant will fundamentally alter its relationships with other Churches, fixed on a simple majority. Wales has had conflicting advice.
Yes to our Anglican family in Scotland–I agree, the ¨covenant dilemma¨ certainly requires further study– actually, I think the so called ¨covenant¨ needs to be dismantled and dismembered like any other dangerous weapon that when triggered goes off and maimes innocents…this ¨draft¨ of the Anglican covenant would no doubt blow the Anglican Communion apart and ought be buried in a nuclear waste dump to avoid a worldwide religious catastrophe.
I know people will say this is a crude stereotype..but in my experience Scots people are very canny and intelligent people. So they will know what to do with the Covenant.
Last time in 1638 the Scots accepted a Covenant they got rid of bishops, who had been imposed by James the first in 1610..
By the way what is the definition of “A welshman.. a Scotsman with all the generosity squeezed out!”
I think that “canniness” is the order of the day – not merely to develop some sort of strategy to “outsmart” any inimical forces in the Communion but to avoid the sort of tub thumping that would place us out of contact with people whose judgements and remedies we (I think it shall be shown in the long run) are uncomfortable with.
Canniness is under-rated
You can also listen to a live audio stream with an updating webcam at http://www.smallvoice.org.uk/synodfeed.