The world’s last Gothic cathedral to be completed will be consecrated in Brisbane on Thursday.

St John’s Anglican Cathedral was designed by English Victorian Gothic architect John Pearson in 1889.

But it was not until 2009 that the third and final stage of its construction was completed – at a cost of almost $40 million.

The medieval-style construction began in 1906, with the first stage completed in 1910.

The second stage ran from 1964-68 and the third and final stage was kicked off in 1989, along with a massive fundraising campaign which attracted federal and Queensland government support.

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It is a 22 page pdf–read it all.

A two-year legal battle over ownership of the 276-year-old Christ Church came to a close in Chatham County court Tuesday with a judge ruling in favor of the national Episcopal Church’s claims to the historic property.

Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf rejected the argument of former members and clergy who broke away from the Episcopal Church in 2007 that the church belonged to them.

The ruling grants “immediate possession” of Christ Church Savannah and its property in the city’s historic district to the Right Rev. Henry I. Louttit, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

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Women vicars comprised 15 per cent of the parochial-incumbent status clergy of the Church of England at the close of 2007, the Second Church Estates Commissioner told Parliament last week. “

At the end of 1997, six per cent of parochial-incumbent status clergy ”” or 426 overall ”” were women, whereas in 2007, 15 per cent, or 974, were women,” Sir Stuart Bell said on Oct 15. However, the number of full-time parochial clergy had also fallen over the past 10 years, from 7,471 at the end of 1997 to 6,450 on Dec 31, 2007.

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The Rev. William Franklin sees the humor in a headline like The Times’ “Desperate Bishops Invited Rome to Park its Tanks on Archbishop’s Lawn,” but he considers it one of the exaggerations in coverage of the Vatican’s plans regarding disaffected Anglicans.

“It doesn’t feel like warring armies here in Rome,” said Fr. Franklin, who has worked at the Anglican Center in Rome since 2005.

Fr. Franklin, an academic fellow at the center and associate director of the American Academy in Rome, also does not see the Vatican’s announcement as fishing for new clergy or trying to poach another communion’s members.

“It is an attempt to respond to questions from former Anglican groups, and maybe some current Anglican groups,” he said.

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Daniel Herzog, who converted to Roman Catholicism after retiring as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, said in a telephone interview that he viewed the pope’s offer as extending to Anglican clergy elsewhere in the world the option, previously available to U.S. Episcopal clergy, to become Catholic priests if they convert.

In the past, “Some Episcopalians who came in groups were allowed to retain a significant part of the Anglican liturgy and, except for the use of Roman eucharistic prayers, they would be able to use the bulk of the prayer book,” he said, adding that he thought Anglican worship traditions would be “a great contribution to the life of the Catholic Church.”

Herzog, who is a lay Catholic, said he expected former Episcopal clergy would be welcomed under the same process as the 1980 “pastoral provision.”

“I think it’s an openness to people who are already predisposed toward the holy see,” said Herzog, noting that switching from being an Episcopal priest to a Roman Catholic priest is “not like changing a New York driver’s license for a Connecticut driver’s license.

“They’re not just looking for people who are angry or unhappy,” he said. “I think they’re looking for people who are personally convinced of the primacy of the Holy Father and believe that ultimately for all Christians the center of unity is the see of Peter.”

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Bishop [John] Broadhurst said that Pope Benedict has made his offer in response to the pleas of Anglicans who despair at the disintegration of their Church. “Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues,” said the bishop.

“There is widespread dissent across the [Anglican] Communion. We are divided in major ways on major issues and the Communion has unraveled. I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own. I personally think it has gone past the point of no return. The Anglican experiment is over.”

In an emotional closing speech on Saturday, Bishop Broadhurst used the metaphor of the frog and the boiling pot to describe the current Anglican status.

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Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the economy after a mild upswing of attitudes in September. But Republicans haven’t been able to profit politically from the economic gloom, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The survey found a country in a decidedly negative mood, nearly a year after the election of President Obama. For the first time during the Obama presidency, a majority of Americans sees the country as being on the wrong track.

Fifty-eight percent of those polled say the economic slide still has a ways to go, up from 52% in September and back to the level of pessimism expressed in July. Only 29% said the economy had “pretty much hit bottom,” down from 35% last month.

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The Rt. Rev. James M. Adams Jr. says he has a ready answer when people ask why he would return to parish ministry after only seven years as a bishop.

“If you’ve ever been a bishop, you would know,” he said.

“In 20 some-odd years as a parish priest, I never missed a day of God’s joy,” he said. “Being a bishop today is not what it once was. It’s more of being an administrator.”

Still, Bishop Adams, who has served the Diocese of Western Kansas since 2002, also speaks with clear affection for the Episcopalians he will leave behind in March 2010, when he moves to Lecanto, Fla.

“I have a lot of respect for these people. They have endured and survived every situation that has come their way,” he said. “They have survived, despite everything that has happened in the church, everything that has happened in the economy and everything that has happened in the world. That says a lot about them and their love of their Lord.”

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Legal experts agree that a student ordered to attend public school after a parental dispute over education does not represent religious persecution. But they also agree that religion and child custody are mixing in messy ways, and that current case law offers few guidelines for resolving such conflicts.

In mid-July, New Hampshire judge Lucinda Sadler ordered 10-year-old Amanda Kurowski into public instruction after her divorced parents””who share custody””disagreed over her homeschooling status. The case became a cause célèbre in conservative Christian circles because of Sadler’s comments about the girl’s “rigidity on faith” and how she “would be best served by exposure to different points of view.”

One attorney observer said it is only one of many parental disputes that land in family courts, leading to a patchwork of disparate rulings.

“Parents today are penalized in custody proceedings for being too religious, not religious enough, or for belonging to an unpopular religious sect,” Joshua Press wrote in a 2009 Indiana Law Journal article. “The current situation with religion in custody disputes cries out for the [U.S. Supreme] Court to intervene.”

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My colleague, George Pitcher, described Church of England bishops as “flirts” yesterday, but reading recently issued statements from the bishops of Rochester and Chichester, they sound more like confused old dears.

They have objected to reports that they are considering leaving Canterbury for Rome following the Pope’s invitation to disaffected Anglicans ”“ a group of which they are most definitely members.

I’m reluctant to point out how flawed the Bishop of Chichester’s denial is, as John Hind is a black belt in Judo, but he appears to have got himself trapped in a stranglehold of illogicality. It’s worth bearing with me, if only because this highlights why some bishops fail to ever get across their message.

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Anglican Bishop John Chapman is allowing an Ottawa church to offer blessings for same-sex couples who are already civilly married.

“My intention is to embrace a liturgical process that will not discriminate between members of the church on the basis of sexual orientation,” Chapman told a congregation Thursday night at the beginning of the diocese’s annual synod. “This will be Ottawa’s offering to the ongoing discernment that is happening throughout the Anglican Church of Canada.”

St. John the Evangelist, at the corner of Somerset and Elgin streets, will be the only Anglican church in Ottawa offering the blessing as long as one person in the couple is baptized. The church, considered one of the more progressive Anglican churches with a strong connection to the gay community, asked the diocese in 2002 for permission to offer same-sex blessings.

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A mass exodus of overseas Anglo-Catholics in response to last week’s announcement of a proposed Anglican enclave within the Roman Catholic Church is unlikely, a review of the Communion by The Church of England Newspaper finds.

While overseas leaders acknowledge that individual Anglicans may take advantage of the provisions of the proposed Apostolic Constitution for the creation of “Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering the Catholic Church,” no diocese or province is set to quit the Anglican Communion for Rome.

In jurisdictions where traditional Anglo-Catholics predominate: the Provinces of Central Africa, Tanzania, West Africa, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the West Indies; the Australian dioceses of The Murray and Ballarat and the US dioceses of Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin—individuals may take up the Vatican’s offer, but no institution is likely to follow. Nor is the offer likely to divide North American conservatives into rival Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical camps, its leaders tell CEN.

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The economy remains unsteady 22 months after the recession began, with banks restricting credit and consumers hunkering down. For these small businesses, and many others across the country, there’s an additional dark cloud: uncertainty created by Washington’s bid to reorganize a wide swath of the U.S. economy.

The economic contraction is of course the prime force driving companies to lay off workers. But a health-care overhaul grinding through Congress could bring unknown new obligations to insure employees. Bush-era tax cuts are set to end next year, and their fate is unclear. Legislation aimed at tackling climate change might raise businesses’ energy costs. Meanwhile, a bill aimed at increasing transportation spending is stalled.

Many companies say they have responded by freezing hiring, cutting benefits and delaying expansion plans. With at least 60% of job growth historically coming out of the small-business sector, according to the government’s Small Business Administration, that kind of inertia could impede an economic recovery.

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The basic issue has never been women priests nor even the ordination of practicing homosexuals. These two issues, as serious and divisive as they may be, are simply the more newsworthy symptoms of a pathology that has gone in and out of remission for some 400 years, and that was fated to return with a fatal virulence upon the demise of British culture.

The basic issue that has eroded the Anglican Communion is what has been eating away at its foundations for 400 years: how ecclesiastical authority is to be understood. Since the 16th Century, two very different understandings of authority have engaged in a tug-of-war within the Church of England and the larger Anglican Communion.

One understanding is that the church is determined and shaped by Catholic tradition. Anglicans committed to this understanding of authority have sought to be faithful to that which has been believed by Christians everywhere and at all times. And while these Anglicans would admit that a correct discernment of Catholic tradition is often difficult, they have always considered their church bound by this tradition.

The second understanding of authority, while often respectful of Catholic tradition, proceeds from the Protestant principle of private judgment. This understanding may (and often does) appeal to Scripture and the Holy Spirit. And as long as it was rooted in a coherent culture, this understanding seemed to possess a theological coherence of sorts. But when it is torn from the soil of a coherent culture, as has occurred over the last century, the roots of this understanding are seen to be what they always were: the occasional opinions of whatever happened to be the prevailing majority.

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ZENIT: What will happen to the Anglican Use parishes that have been in operation for years?

Msgr. Stetson: At the moment the so-called Anglican Use parishes in the United States are personal parishes of the diocese where they are located, which retain elements of the Anglican tradition, especially the liturgy.

There is no canonical relationship between them or with the Ecclesiastical Delegate of the Pastoral Provision.

Presumably, if an ordinariate is established in the United States, the parishes will pass to the jurisdiction of the new ordinariate and come under the jurisdiction of the prelate of the ordinariate.

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America’s Orthodox Christians, divided for decades among about 10 churches based on Greek or Serb or other ancestry, soon may be moving toward the formation of a united American Orthodox church.

Many of them have dreamed of that for decades, especially as conversions to Orthodoxy have skyrocketed. But most church patriarchs have squelched such talk.

Now it appears that the patriarchs are not only supporting but demanding some sort of unity. To explore what this may mean for believers in the United States, the independent, pan-Orthodox group Orthodox Christian Laity will gather for three days, starting Thursday, at Antiochian Village in Ligonier.

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This may be the source of Justice [Samuel] Alito’s frustration. Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Jewish justices sat with him on the bench. Their governing religious bodies have been active on a variety of legal issues ”“ and yet their affiliation with these “mainstream” denominations is normalized.

There is a perception that somehow, one’s religious belief ”“ whatever it is ”“ can be tucked away so that it has no influence on one’s thinking. Yet the foundational values from which one operates ”“ be they secular humanist or religious ”“ will inevitably have an effect on one’s thinking. It’s surprising that the press has only thought about this with regard to the Catholic justices.

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In the light of that I stated that in the event of union with the Roman Catholic Church I would be willing to receive re-ordination into the Roman Catholic priesthood but that I would not be willing to deny the priesthood I have exercised hitherto.

This is clearly a contentious and complex issue and one where it is easy to misunderstand the nuances of the debate. I think I made my position clear in my address at the Forward in Faith assembly. The text is available below and a podcast may be found on the Forward in Faith website.

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Throughout civilization, people have looked for ways to experience the sacred and holy. Christians go to church no matter how boring it is, Hindus plunge into the Ganges River no matter how foul it is, Muslims make pilgrimages to Mecca no matter how far and crowded it is. “So it is that monks kneel and chant, that Jews eat a Passover meal, that Polynesians dance, and Quakers sit still,” writes Joseph Martos in Doors to the Sacred. “In themselves they are just locations, activities, things. … In this case they are all sacraments, symbols of something else which is mysterious and hidden, sacred and holy.”

Haven’t we all been part of conversations where they somehow take on a deeper dimension, even though it’s just two people talking? It’s as if the two (or more) people tapped into something much bigger than themselves. It happened toward the end of the movie Away We Go, where the couple (played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) expecting a baby makes promises to each other. But because of the camera angle from above, it is clear that they are making those promises to the universe as well. It’s both private and cosmic. Watching it, I thought of the sacrament of confession. And haven’t we all had meals with friends or family where there was another level to that experience, and we didn’t want to leave the table because of that additional Presence? I’ve had Eucharistic moments at picnic tables, restaurants, kitchens and the beach.

As we become aware of that additional dimension, those moments take on the quality of the holy.

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Surrounded by glass and steel government buildings, some of them bombed-out shells from long ago, St. George’s Church in downtown Baghdad has always seemed like something of an oasis.

Ever since the United States started using high explosives diplomacy with Iraq, the little Anglican church has had one close call after another.

Built in 1936 by the British military during their occupation of Iraq, the church lost some of its famous stained-glass windows when the United States military bombed a nearby building in 1992, and more were destroyed during the invasion in 2003, leaving only three examples remaining. They were mementos of British regiments stationed there.

Sunday the last three stained glass windows were blown out by the suicide bomb blasts that destroyed three Iraqi government buildings nearby, according to the church’s lay pastor, Faiz Georges.

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From here:

Bishop Michael is not becoming a Roman Catholic. He intends to continue as a bishop in the Church of England and to encourage orthodox people, evangelical and catholic, in the world-wide Anglican Communion. As a long standing member of both ARCIC (Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) and IARCCUM (International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission), he prays for principled unity based on the Bible and theological agreement between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. He believes that such unity may be achieved through continuing dialogue.

Three Valley Presbyterian churches have finalized their divorce from the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination, citing differences over the Bible’s supreme authority and the possible ordination of gays.

But unlike the split within the Valley’s Episcopal diocese, which turned into a bitter court fight, the three congregations are leaving on friendly terms. They have retained their church properties and have agreed to fulfill financial pledges for ministries run by the church they’re leaving.

“The relationships we share with these three congregations, as brothers and sisters in Christ, are more important than property,” said the Rev. Rick Irish, interim leader of the Presbytery of San Joaquin, which governs Valley congregations within Presbyterian Church (USA). “Therefore, we didn’t make property an issue.”

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Following a Mass devoted to church unity, Rev. Aaron R. Bayles, the assistant pastor, reported that the majority of parishioners would be “on board” with the development.

He said he himself was exultant when he heard the news because he had always hoped for the unification of Anglican, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. The new provision for Anglicans may be “a step in that direction,” he commented.

For 17 years the parish has refused to allow the local Episcopal bishop to come for a pastoral visit or confirmation. It also stopped paying its annual financial assessment to the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. The diocese sued to take over the Church of the Good Shepherd’s building in 2009. It is a replica of a 14th-century English country parish that was built in 1894. The property is estimated at $7 million in value.

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JEFFREY BROWN: One of the themes that comes through is this idea of being prepared, preparation that helped you at that moment. And it comes through in a way that suggests why you don’t really like the idea of being thought of as a hero.

Explain that.

CAPTAIN CHESLEY “SULLY” SULLENBERGER III: Well, I think, like many people who have found themselves in such an extraordinary circumstance, they really do feel like their entire lives has been a preparation for that moment.

And I think that’s especially true in my case, because I remember vividly as a child knowing that I needed to be prepared for whatever might come. And my mother was a first-grade teacher. And, from her, I got a great lifelong gift of learning.

One of the things I teach my children is that I have always invested in myself, and I have never stopped learning, never stopped growing.

Here is your quiz question before you click. How much time–exactly to the second–did he have between the moment the birds hit the engines and when he landed the plane in the Hudson river? Now go with your guess and read or watch it all.

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“Without Louis Mulkey, I’m not sure A.J. would be here,” said Bulldogs coach Mark Richt.

Mulkey was a fireman who, when he wasn’t at the station, was working as an assistant junior varsity basketball and football coach when he first spotted Green. It was difficult not to notice a 6-foot-1 eighth grader who already could dunk.

Mulkey became a major part of all his young players’ lives because he’d do whatever it took to help them along.

“In my eighth grade year, he sat in my math class. It was crazy. I wasn’t doing too good, was talking and stuff, and he sat through it a couple weeks making sure I was paying attention,” Green said.

Along with Summerville school counselors, this fireman/coach helped Green get through a reading disability and urged him along when there were real questions about whether he would academically qualify for Georgia.

It was Mulkey who drove Green the 275 miles to Athens to attend a Nike camp, the first time he laid eyes on campus. And it was Mulkey who, on little sleep and after loading up the pepperoni rolls his wife packed, brought Green back to Athens his junior year. That was when the young star verbally committed to the Bulldogs.

Posted with special thanksgiving for the life of Louis Mulkey, RIP. Read it carefully and read it all.

In light of the announcement by the Vatican of the creation of new ecclesiastical structures to make room for disaffected catholic-minded Anglicans to move over to the Roman Catholic Church, it seems important for catholic-minded Anglicans who have long been an integral part of the Anglican Communion to reassert their understanding of catholicity and tradition within Anglicanism.

The Society of Catholic Priests, formed the the early 1990s in the UK, has established a new branch of the Society in North America. Its mission is to promote priestly spirituality and catholic evangelism within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Interestingly the announcement by the Vatican, while seemingly highlighting differences between the Anglican Communion and the Vatican over issues of ecclesiology, sexuality and ordination points to a more durable fact. There is an amazing degree of overlap between these two bodies across a range of theological issues that make such a move possible. Our catholic heritage within Anglicanism makes such an initiative feasible.
For those priests who find themselves unable, on a variety of grounds, to in good conscience remain Anglican, such a move may make some sense. While Anglicanism has developed varied patterns of authority and different systems for decision making, many feel drawn towards the more centralized structures and the official understandings of Roman Catholicism.

On the other hand, anglo-catholics have found the openness of the Anglican tradition, allowing for a wide range of views and different approaches, to reflect the realities of life in the Body of Christ as it is lived out in history and the world. For many within the catholic tradition, recent changes are a natural extension of our understanding of the evolution of tradition within the life of the Church. The catholic tradition has never been about simply safeguarding narrowly explicit interpretations of scripture but about engaging the contributions and experience of all the members of the Body of Christ in the life of the Church.

Our very sacramental and liturgical life is an outgrowth of our understanding of the value, indeed the essential nature, of human experience in expressing the life of a living Christ among us. Worship of a living God is expressed in a living tradition, and utilizes the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, both of which are essential to the nature of catholicity.

As new questions face the Church, new rites evolve to address the human experience. The catholic tradition is one that lives in and confronts the complexities of the world as it is in all of its myriad grace and potentiality as well as in its vexing questions and dilemmas. The Church, at times is both anchor and sail in society. Its catholicity is that which holds fast to the essential in the face of volatility and proclaims newness of life when it is necessary.

In the face of division and anger, the Society of Catholic Priests is offering a life together that holds fast to the traditions of the Church while making room for the movement of grace, charity, and hope. It gives a non-anxious place for priests who are looking to find a place of rest amidst the eddies of church life. It is a place for the complexity of difference to meet the simplicity of devotion. It is a Society that looks to center itself in the mainstream of the Church, on the Prayer Book, and in our tradition. Our lives have been consecrated to the service of the Church and the Society of Catholic Priests welcomes those looking to be still, refrain from anger, and hope again for the unity of the Church in all of its diversity.

Robert Hendrickson

Communications Director

The Society of Catholic Priests

North American Province

——————–

The Society of Catholic Priests in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada exists to help all clergy flourish as priests in the Catholic Tradition of the Church and to encourage spiritual growth and Catholic Evangelism. More information on the Society can be found at our website: http://www.theSCP.org/. Those interested in registering for the Inaugural Assembly of this province of the Society may do so at http://thescp2009assembly.eventbrite.com/.

The current debate about the implications of the offer made by his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to make provision for Anglicans who wish to join the Roman Catholic Church ignores one important fact. The majority of catholics within the church are in favour of women’s ministry and wish to remain loyal to the Anglican tradition within the Anglican Communion.

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CROSSROADS ARE FOR MEETING (AGAIN)

AN ADDRESS TO THE CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF DALLAS ON THE PROPOSED ANGLICAN COVENANT

**
THE REV. DR. PHILIP TURNER

I

As you know, my subject is the Anglican Covenant. Is it really Anglican? Is it really necessary? Is it theologically defensible? Is it an effective way to address our present difficulties? I will get to these questions and others in due course, but first, to make sure we know what it is that we are talking about, I must take you on a little trip down memory lane. The first book I published was a collection of essays entitled “Crossroads Are For Meeting.” The date was 1986, and the particular cross in the road faced at that time by the Anglican Communion was the nature of its mission, and in particular its mission as a world-wide communion of autonomous churches. Previously, in 1963, The Anglican Congress had defined the inter-relation of these churches as being one of “mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ.” At this gathering, the assembled delegates took a dramatic step in defining the nature of Anglicanism as a communion rather than, say, a federation; but there were divisions over the Communion’s calling. If Anglicans are to understand themselves as bound by mutual responsibility and interdependence in the body of Christ, just what is the purpose of this communion under God?

The collection of essays I helped assemble revealed a profound division over this matter, one that is with us to this day. Is the mission of the Anglican Communion to join other Christian bodies in spreading the Gospel of reconciliation and redemption through Christ’s victory on the cross, or is it, with other churches, to join Christ in a sacrificial struggle to include the oppressed and marginalized and so to establish justice on the earth? Despite very articulate pleas that these two views need not be in conflict, they were in conflict then and remain so to this day. This conflict over the mission of the church has returned in our own time with such ferocity that it threatens any possibility of meaningful communion.

I hope I do not have to defend the statement that divisions over the mission of the church are lodged just below the surface of our current argument about sex. The crisis we now face has been building for quite some time, and it involves matters far more central and complex than disputes over sexual identity and conduct. To my mind, the big issue is how autonomous churches called to carry out God’s mission at a particular time and place can remain at the same time in a communion that is catholic in both belief and practice.

In its modern form this question was posed at the Lambeth Conference of 1948””the first to be held after the Second World War and the first to take place during the dismantling of the British Empire. At this meeting a committee of bishops asked, “Is Anglicanism based on a sufficiently coherent form of authority to form the nucleus of a world-wide fellowship of churches, or does its comprehensiveness conceal internal divisions which may cause its disruption?” This question defines the struggles of Anglicans in the post-modern period, but its roots go down into the soil of Anglican beginnings. The Church of England established itself as the church of a nation, but it sought to do so as an expression of catholic Christianity. The Episcopal Church sought to establish itself as a church independent of the Church of England, but nonetheless bound by its doctrine and discipline (and so also by its combination of both national and catholic identity).

Similar tensed goals are to be found in the numerous provinces that had their beginning the middle of the 19th Century and came to full flower after The Second World War. Just how are these churches to remain both local and catholic? That is the question. In response, Anglicans have at best stumbled toward an answer. In 1867 the first Lambeth Conference of Bishops was called to address governance issues brought into focus by growing independence within the colonial churches, the publication of Essays and Reviews, and by the Bishop of Natal’s view of Holy Scripture. The birth of many new and autonomous provinces after The Second World War issued in the Pan Anglican Congress, The Anglican Consultative Council, and The Meeting of Primates. The crisis brought about by the consecration of a woman to the Episcopate produced The Virginia Report along with linkage of a congeries of consultative bodies that were labeled “The Instruments of Unity” (now “The Instruments of Communion”). Finally, the actions of the Dioceses of New Westminster and New Hampshire in the matters of gay blessings and ordinations issued in the Windsor Report and the proposal for an Anglican Covenant.

All these institutional developments have been directed to the same end””both to guard the autonomy of the various provinces of the Anglican Communion and insure that each “recognizes” in the others fellow members of a communion of churches. This goal is easy to state, but extraordinarily difficult to achieve. To this point, the Instruments of Communion have not been able to provide the several provinces of the Communion with confidence that they, the instruments, can achieve this goal. Failure to address adequately the actions of the Diocese of New Westminster and those of The General Convention of The Episcopal Church (TEC) has strained the credibility of each and every one of them. The proposed Anglican Covenant is, in my view, the last best hope for achieving the goal of a communion of autonomous churches bound by common belief, practice, mutual responsibility, and interdependence. As I hope to demonstrate, it does so by placing responsibility for communion firmly in the hands of the autonomous provinces themselves. The proposed Covenant asks that the provinces and local churches of the Communion covenant one with another (rather than with a legislative or juridical body) and within this covenanted relationship exercise their autonomy within the limits imposed by membership in a communion of churches.

II
Now, is this proposed Covenant really Anglican? Is it necessary? Is it theologically sound? Will it succeed in achieving the goal its supporters have in mind? The best way to respond is to work through the main points of the proposed covenant with these questions in mind. You will remember that the latest version of the Covenant has four parts””the first three of which, along with an “Introduction,” “Preamble” and “Declaration” have been approved for circulation to the provinces for ratification. The fourth section, largely procedural in nature, is now being reviewed. Since they have already been approved for circulation, I will focus on “The Introduction to the Covenant Text,” the “Preamble”, and sections one through three. Though it is of central importance, my remarks on Section Four will be brief because we do not know what its final form will be.

Though it is not part of the Covenant itself, the” Introduction” provides the theological base for all that follows, and it does so by reference to the primary theological theme present in the ecumenical dialogues of the Anglican Communion. The foundational theme is “communion”. The churches, all of them, are called through Christ into communion with the Triune God. In this communion, Christians share one with another in the very life of God. The mission of The Anglican Communion is, therefore, to share with other churches in calling all peoples, through Christ, into the life of God and to manifest that life in the relations of its various provinces one with another. The Covenant, its proposers contend, is not intended to change the nature of Anglicanism. Rather, its purpose is “to reflect, in our relations with one another, God’s own faithfulness and promises towards us in Christ.” To reflect God’s purpose for the creation in this way, it is necessary that God’s mission be “carried out in shared responsibility and stewardship and in interdependence among ourselves and with the wider church.”

It seems to me that nothing could be more Anglican than this theological starting point. It accords with the catholic identity we have claimed since the Reformation, it accords with our self-representations in ecumenical dialogues, and it is faithful to our internal deliberations. Nevertheless, you are surely aware that many object to the Covenant because they believe it compromises the autonomy of the provinces and for this reason is “un-Anglican.” I can only say in response that neither in the foundation of the various Anglican provinces nor in their ecumenical self-representations have Anglicans understood the autonomy of the various provinces to exist as an unfettered right. Neither have Anglicans, despite claims to the contrary, understood mutual responsibility and interdependence to have no relation to common belief and practice. If anything is “un-Anglican” it is an unfettered claim to autonomy in which each province claims to be judge in its own case whenever its “autonomous” decisions are questioned by other provinces. So it seems to me that the covenant drafters are quite Anglican when they say in the “Preamble” that the churches of the Anglican Communion covenant together “in order to proclaim more effectively in our different contexts the grace of God revealed in the Gospel, to offer God’s love in responding to the needs of the world, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and together with all God’s people to attain the full stature of Christ.”

So far, at least, the Covenant seems to me to thoroughly Anglican and certainly theologically adequate. It surely can’t be a mistake to root one’s ecclesiology in the sacrificial death of Christ and the life of the Triune God. But let us test further to see if we can make similar affirmations in respect to the specifics of the proposed covenant. Section One concerns “Our Inheritance of Faith” and like the other two sections is divided into affirmations and commitments. The affirmations seem to me both thoroughly adequate and thoroughly Anglican.

What is affirmed in respect to our inheritance of faith? Communion in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church that worships one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! The Catholic and Apostolic faith uniquely revealed in Holy Scriptures and set for in the catholic creeds! This faith to which authentic witness is born in the historic formularies of the Church of England and appropriated in various way in the Anglican Communion! To this list of affirmations is attached the four elements of the Chicago/Lambeth Quadrilateral and participation “in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God.”

To what are Anglicans committed in respect to “Our Inheritance of Faith?” The answer is to a number of things but they all stem from a faithful and communal reading of Holy Scripture that is attentive to the councils of the Communion, our ecumenical agreements, the teaching of Bishops and synods, the work of scholars, and prophetic and faithful leadership.

Now, once again, (taking due note of the fact that the Covenant does not require subscription but only affirmation that the formularies of the C of E bear authentic witness to the catholic and apostolic faith) I see nothing “un-Anglican” or theologically inadequate in this. The rub for the Covenant’s opponents comes with the commitment to seek a common understanding of scripture that must be attentive to a host of voices that may well challenge deeply held convictions on the part of an individual province. But, once again, it seems to me less than theologically adequate to place the primary weight of interpretive responsibility on the shoulders of individual readers or even individual churches, as it appears many within our own church would prefer. It also seems to me theologically inadequate to define communion apart from unity of belief and practice””a cry heard with increasing force among the Covenant’s opponents.

Now to Section Two that concerns “Our Anglican Vocation”! This section affirms that the communion of the churches is to be placed within God’s providential ordering. The Anglican Communion is also to be understood as part of that ordering, and within that context the mission heritage of Anglicans is affirmed as offering unique opportunities. These opportunities are given greater specification by five commitments that echo the Baptismal Covenant found in TEC’s Book of Common Prayer.

Though I have quibbles with some of the wording of this section, I doubt that it will be the subject of much controversy, and so I will pass immediately on to Section Three that, if grasped in its plain sense, most certainly will cause great controversy. Here the Covenant addresses “Our Unity and Common Life”, and here we come to the heart of our present conflicts. How shall we understand communion on the one hand and autonomy on the other?

What is it that the covenant asks us to affirm? We affirm that by incorporation into the body of Christ we are called “to pursue all things that make for peace and build up our common life.” For Anglicans this affirmation signals a resolve “to live in a Communion of Churches” in which each “orders and regulates its own affairs”¦through its own system of government and law.” In doing so, however, it understands itself to be living “in communion with autonomy and accountability.” This accountability is not mediated through a “central legislative and executive authority” but by “mutual loyalty sustained through the common counsel of the bishops in conference and the other instruments of Communion.”

From this basic affirmation flow certain commitments. Chief among these is “to respect the constitutional autonomy of all of the churches of the Anglican Communion while upholding our mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Body of Christ, and the responsibility of each to the Communion as a whole.” Concretely this means that each of the Churches of the Communion, before taking a controversial action, will seek a shared mind through the Communion’s councils. Further, it means that when an action “by its intensity, substance or extent” threatens the unity of the Communion or the credibility of its mission, a province will only act (if it does so at all) with “diligence, care and caution.”

Few, I think, realize how strong the words “intensity, substance or extent” and “diligence, care and caution” in fact are. The same lack of recognition applies too much of the vocabulary deployed in earlier sections of the covenant. I speak of terms like “shared discernment, accountability, and autonomy.” In deploying these terms, the Covenant’s drafters refer to a substantial and well-developed body of Anglican thought.
The generally accepted meaning of these terms places a heavy burden of proof on any province that exercises its autonomy in ways that other members of the Communion believe threaten their unity or their credibility.
III

I am forced to say (sadly) that by any reckoning, the recent actions of TEC’s General Convention are of sufficient “intensity, substance, and extent” to threaten the unity of the Communion. Further, given the seriousness of the threat and given the fact that TEC’s actions have been taken both against the counsel of all the Instruments of Communion and a direct plea by the Archbishop of Canterbury, it stretches credulity to say that they are actions that manifest “diligence, care, and caution.”

Indeed, given the fact that the first section of the Covenant clearly understands unity of belief and practice to be, in part, constitutive of communion, and given the fact that the third section makes clear that autonomy must be understood within the context of communion wide accountability, it would appear that TEC’s recent actions amount to a provisional rejection of the covenant. Apart from reversing the decisions recently taken, the only way TEC can with any integrity ratify the first three sections of the Covenant is to deny its plain sense and openly define communion univocally in terms of forms of mutual aid and hospitality that are decoupled from unity of belief and practice.

It is just this sort of talk that appears on the blogs and issues from the mouths of many of our present leaders. They do not like the Covenant because it compromises provincial autonomy and so is “un-Anglican.” By this charge they mean that the Covenant places limits on doctrinal and moral innovation, hinders innovations made necessary by the requirements of the mission of particular provinces, and places a curial hierarchy above the governing structures of individual provinces.

In response, one can only say that living in communion does place limits on doctrinal innovation and it does require that local adaptations for purposes of mission not make innovations other churches of the Communion cannot “recognize” as in accord with Holy Scripture and apostolic teaching. What, however, are we to make of the charge that the Covenant creates a curia that compromises the autonomy of the provinces? Opponents level this charge particularly against Section Four.

Since we do not have a final version of Section Four, I cannot respond in any definitive way to this charge. I will only say that in all the versions submitted so far the drafters have bent over backwards to protect the autonomy of the provinces. Rather than creating a curia that has legislative and juridical authority, they have sought procedures that will allow the provinces to act jointly and in good order when an action by a province, because of its “intensity, substance and extent”, is not “recognized” by the provinces as in accord with the belief and practice of the Communion as a whole.

The final section of the covenant in its penultimate form is procedural only. It does not establish an international hierarchy. It seeks only to present an orderly process for the provinces to preserve their unity and credibility through a process of “recognition” rather than adjudication. It is just such a process that the Anglican Communion has lacked and because of this lack, reactions to TEC’s recent actions have been piecemeal, chaotic, idiosyncratic, and productive of greater division rather than more extensive communion.

The simple fact is that without a strong Section Four that creates credible procedures rather than additional hierarchies, the Anglican Communion will perish as a communion of churches. So is a covenant necessary? I prefer to use the word necessary like St. Luke does only in reference to God’s providential ordering of his world. Whether a covenant or, indeed, whether Anglicanism itself are in this sense necessary I do not know. I can only pray that they are. Whatever the case may prove to be it is still reasonable to ask if a covenant is likely to be an effective means of preserving communion? I cannot answer this question with any degree of certainty. Nevertheless, I believe the Covenant is the only hope we have if we wish on the one hand to preserve a communion that involves more than mutual aid and hospitality; and on the other, in doing so, avoid the creation of an international hierarchy. At this point, I must be utterly clear. From a human point of view our choices are extremely limited. Either we have a covenant with real consequences like the “two track” proposal or the Communion will collapses. Many provinces from the Global South that support a covenant with consequences will simply go their own way, and those who have rejected a covenant with consequences will be left with something that is a Communion in name only. To return to the beginning, I believe the Covenant is our only hope to arrive at our present cross in the roads and meet rather than part forever.

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i The Lambeth Conference 1948 (London: SPCK, 1948), p. 84.
ii For verification of this point see William Curtis, The Lambeth Conferences: The Solution for Pan-Anglican Organization, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 17-77.
iii Ibid, passim.
iv See e.g., the various reports of ACRIC and The Church of the Triune God, The Cyprus Statement of the International Commission for Anglican Orthodox theological Dialogue, 2007.
v Ridley Cambridge Draft (hereafter cited as RCD), “Introduction to the Covenant Text” (here after cites as Introduction) #5.
vi RCD, Introduction #7.
vii RCD, Preamble.
viii RCD, 1.1.1-1.1.8.
ix RCD, 2.2.2a-2.2.2e.
x RCD, 3.1.1.
xi RCD, 3.1.2.
xii Ibid. See also “A Letter from Alexandria”, the Primates, March 2009.
xiii Ibid. See also Lambeth Conference 1930.
xii RCD, 3.2.2. See also Toronto Conference 1963, and the Ten Principles of Partnership.
xiv RCD, 3.2.4; 3.2.5.
xv See Anglican Communion Institute, “The Anglican Covenant: Shared Discernment Recognized by All”, Anglicancommunioninstitute.com.