The previous report on this: AMiA will negotiate with ACNA was updated with a link to one additional letter last Thursday.
Other correspondence has now emerged, and can be found here: Communique from House of Bishops of Rwanda. The original letter is dated 9 December, but was issued with a covering letter from two AMiA bishops, only on 16 December.
From the covering letter:
We also have delayed sending these letters because we needed to clarify with the Rwandan HoB the second bullet point in the letter to clergy and churches. While AMiA affiliated congregations are under the pastoral oversight of Archbishop Rwaje, they are also affiliated with the U.S. non-profit corporation, The Anglican Mission in the Americas. As a result, churches have had a type of “dual citizenship” with Rwanda and the AMiA. Unfortunately, while many of us had been led to think differently, the churches in the AMiA have never been canonically resident in the Anglican Province of Rwanda or anywhere else in the Anglican Communion. We are currently working with the Rwandan HoB to discern ways to rectify this for those congregations that desire a true membership in the Anglican Communion. At the same time, the canonical status of the clergy is clear. If you are clergy in the AMiA, (other than the 8 active bishops who resigned*) you are canonically resident in PEAR.
“If you are clergy in the AMiA (other than the 6 active bishops who resigned*) you are canonically resident in PEAR”
It does seem from this new development, that dual membership of AMiA and PEAR has gone ‘pear-shaped’.
Ah well, stranger things have happened, but not many
What is PEAR?
PEAR is the ACNA-ized version of la Province de l’Église Episcopale du Rwanda (PEER), which is the official name of the Rwandan church.
In recent years they seem to have replaced Episcopal with Anglican, at least for English-language consumption.
PEAR is the acronym for La Province de l’Eglise Anglicane au Rwanda. I do not think the shift from PEER to PEAR had anything to do with ACNA.
See http://www.pear-hq.org.rw/history.htm
Simon, I find it interesting that the website has apparently not been fully updated. (Looked for a French version to compare, but couldn’t find, despite their French-language trailer.) Both here “On October 18th, 1979 the church adopted the name of “Eglise Anglican au Rwanda (EER) Anglican church of Rwanda” and more strikingly here “Significant to note, in an extra-ordinary meeting held at St.Etienne Biryogo on November 27/ 2007, the College of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Rwanda reached a resolution to change the name of the church from the Province of the Anglican church of Rwanda to the Province… Read more »
The Rwanda website is obviously for “foreign”, i.e., North American, consumption. The fact that it exists only in English, even though the primary language of the province is French, is the give-away. It also gives quite a bit of space to AMiA, and relatively little to domestic matters.
The image of colonial puppet-masters comes to mind. (as with the comments on the Sudan thread as to who is behind Abp. Deng Bul’s statement)
Sorry – something got dropped out in my comment above. It should say that in the 1979 event, the name doesn’t match the acronym, and in the 2007 event, the ‘from’ and the ‘to’ names are shown as identical. To me, that looks weird, and as if the information on the site is (accidentally or deliberately) incomplete.