The Windsor Continuation Group (WCG) is making waves at Lambeth. Essentially they have proposed that the trajectory of the Covenant idea lead to a form of Covenant that will include a process of punitive or coercive judgment. The end result would be the development of an Instrument of Communion with teeth.
The Windsor Continuation Group has been making reports to the bishops at Lambeth. Reports I and II are now in hand. They are billed as "preliminary observations" as if that would cushion the blow, but the content has been anything but preliminary. Additionally a report on principles of canon law has been added to the mix. Matt Kennedy has a good effort at a verbatim of a press conference on the Principles document. You can read it HERE. These reports have been billed as "discussion starters" but they have an air of certainty about them.
The front edge? "This thing will get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it." (A quote in the movie "The Hunt for Red October" from a naval officer played by Fred Thompson.) If Anglicans don't stare this one down we will have everything we never wanted - foreign lords spiritual, tribunals, and most of all an Anglican patriarchy. It will be a mess.
Now some background.
First, remember what the charge to the Group is and who is on it. This is from my post on Preludium 2/13/08:
(Quoting the Lambeth Palace announcement of the WCG) "The WCG will address outstanding questions arising from the Windsor Report and the various formal responses from provinces and instruments of the Anglican Communion.
The members of the group are:
The Most Revd Clive Handford, former Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East (chair)
The Most Revd John Chew, Primate of South East Asia
The Right Revd Gary Lillibridge, Bishop of West Texas
The Right Revd Victoria Matthews, former Bishop of Edmonton
The Very Revd John Moses, former dean of St Paul's, London
The Most Revd Donald Mtetemela, Primate of Tanzania
They will be joined as a consultant by:
Dame Mary Tanner, Co-president of the World Council of Churches
and assisted by:
Canon Andrew Norman of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Staff andCanon Gregory Cameron of the Anglican Communion Office."
My comment at the time was that
"This has all the makings of a disaster."
I posed a set of questions about the Windsor Report: "(i) How did this report come to be an idol, (ii) how soon can we consign it to a less deified place in the scheme of things in the Anglican Communion? and (iii) when will "Windsor compliant" be an expression known only to those who delve into the arcane?"
Of course the WCG was not about to ask those questions.
What they have done, however, is reopen a discussion about the Appendix to the St. Andrew's Draft of the Covenant. They did so by suggesting the formation of something called "The Faith and Order Commission."
The Appendix has been widely criticised as another effort to get a coercive legal system and process in place to deal with the "resolution of Covenant disagreements." It is a complex piece. I comment on it HERE.
Section six of the Appendix says this:
"6.1. When the Archbishop of Canterbury decides to refer the matter to a Commission in the Communion, he shall choose which Commission in consultation with the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.
[NOTE: This is without prejudice to the entitlement of any other Instrument of Communion requesting the Archbishop to set up Commissions or to any other Instrument of Communion likewise setting up such Commissions.]
6.2. The Commission shall engage in study of the issues involved in the matter, bringing in expertise as needed, and shall evaluate the acceptability of the act or proposed act of any Church involved.
6.3. Within eighteen months of the referral, the Commission shall submit its evaluation to an Instrument of Communion other than the Anglican Consultative Council as determined by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Having considered the evaluation, the Instrument shall issue a request to any Church involved.
6.4. If a Church accepts the request, the Instrument of Communion to which the evaluation is submitted shall certify as soon as is convenient that the matter is closed subject to Articles 3.2.1, 3.2.4 and 3.2.5b of the Covenant.
6.5. If a Church rejects the request, the Instrument of Communion to which the evaluation is submitted shall send the request and rejection to the Anglican Consultative Council which shall process the matter in accordance with Paragraph 8."
The notion of a "commission" is not well spelled out in the Appendix, but it would appear that the WCG has found a way of amplifying that commission's form and status by suggesting the establishment of a "Faith and Order Commission" on an equal level to the four instruments of communion.
What the WCG is proposing is a permanent place to lodge the issues of Communion and Covenant disagreements. While the Faith and Order Commission might have other matters to consider - positive commentary on the ways in which we are ordered as Anglicans - its ultimate role seems to include producing the beginnings of Anglican Communion wide standards, codified in a way that would make it clear just what being a part of the Anglican Communion entailed, what was required in the way of Covenant obedience, and how correction or punishment might be effected.
Here is what Preliminary Observations II has to say, "The Common Principles of Canon law Project ( Anglican Communion Legal Advisers Network) gives a sense of the integrity of Anglicanism and we commend the suggestion for the setting up of an Anglican Communion Faith and Order Commission that could give guidance on ecclesiological issues raised by our current ‘crisis’." In other words, the combination of some form of Covenant that has binding character and some sort of body (the commission) that can recommend to some body the course of action to be taken will constitute what is now being talked about as "the fifth instrument of unity."
Hold on to your autonomy, it's hard to sing without it.
All you described is bad enough, but what about the statement that the Anglican Consultative Council, being composed of representatives from the laity and the clergy as well as bishops, would not be able to represent the Communion well, so the primary leaders should be the primates -- because they are more in touch with the BISHOPS of their provinces. I hope our bishops at Lambeth and our friends there will raise hell about this.
ReplyDeleteI am utterly opposed to regressing to prereformation structures of episcopal authority because the only outcome is the death of that unique gift to Christendom that is Anglicanism by creating a narrow definition of who is pure enough to come to Christ's altar and who is to be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
ReplyDeleteIf it does come to that (God forbid), I guess the only good thing that COULD come from it is that the theological thugs who push for such a thing might have to dance to the music they are creating in those structures: i.e. the denial of the existence of entire classes of people, the advocacy of incarceration (and attendant abuse and death) for little more than a state of being, for evasion of responsibility for insighting members of the group of which you are president to a murderous rampage of those of a different faith tradition, of unabashedly advocating the Donatist heresy by refusing the receive Holy Communion with and from those which nothing more than prejudice says are not pure enough - all of which betrays such a shallow faith, if not outright denial of Jesus, by the violence inherent in the thoughts, attitudes, words, and actions.
It will only work if it works both ways. Ain't holdin' my breath because recent history reveals that, for advocates of such processes and procedures, the only acceptable way is the way of exclusion and jetisoning of Anglican and, indeed, Christian history. The best thing to come of such a commission and whatever it produces would be its demise.
I suspect that this comes from too much time in Anglican Roman Catholic conversations. I'd always hoped that the Roman church would come to see Anglican, particularly Episcopal Church, polity as preferable to Rome's top down style, but it looks like the influence is in the other direction. This is regrettable. Let's hope cooler heads in Lambeth prevail.
ReplyDeleteRelax and BREATHE, people.
ReplyDeleteI really don't think TEC bishops (the vast majority), and our many allies (especially Canada, Scotland, New Zealand, South Africa, many in the CofE, etc) will go along w/ this.
Having ram-rodded B033, the bishops know the RESTIVE "Never Again!" spirit of TEC's clergy and laity---we WON'T STAND for this cr*p, and they know it!
More than that, I'm noticing a pattern of Crisis-Crisis-Crisis!!! instigated every 48 hours or so at Lambeth...
...and then the sky DOESN'T fall.
Eyes on the prize, folks. Don't believe the hype---stick w/ the Gospel! :-)
Hold on to your autonomy, it's hard to sing without it.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I care much for a choir whose members sing autonomously.