Added to what at least appears to be a communiqué ”˜spin’ on Archbishop Coggan’s 1978 address, in a press briefing last week the Archbishop of Canterbury referred to a “need for a shift of focus in the life of the Communion from autonomy of provinces with communion added on, to communion as the primary reality with autonomy and accountability understood within that framework”. Precisely what that implies remains somewhat mysterious, but one can see the direction in which such a comment points. There is a slippery slope here, and it is important that the Primates’ Meeting should remain essentially for the purposes of consultative fellowship. The Anglican Communion should avoid a formal College of Primates.
Ah well, at least no hair-splitting here. The author fails to spell out the practical consequences of the Primates’ Meeting remaining principally for consultative fellowship, but then I suppose he would argue that division of the Communion is inevitable, regardless of which vision ultimately triumphs.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
All this nice language presupposes an Anglican world in which there is no tear in the fabric of the same Communion. As of November 2003 that is no longer the case. The Primates meeting can no longer be the gentlemanly gathering that is assumed in the earlier statements of Lord Coggan or earlier Lambeth Conferences. The reckless disregard for “communion” displayed by the North Americans has made such “nice” behavior a thing of the past.
We only have to look at the huge levels of distrust, broken and impaired communion since then – the venomous lawsuits, which are mostly directed against the “dissenters.” We see a broken body that is no longer a Communion.
Add to this the post Alexandria press conference of Archbishops Orombi and Venables and we see and hear that there are now two religions in the Communion and one is not Christian.
This Irish opinion is either harking only to a past and nicer time while clearly lamenting the present, or it wants to pretend that the things that are happening are not.
I believe that either we are to be a Communion or not. A loose federation historically associated but doctrinally indifferent cannot be a Communion. It is precisely such a real Communion that Canterbury seems to seek and in that “real” Communion there must be a “new normal” rather than either the disintegration that is following the tear in its fabric or a robust new manifestation of the Communion as the Anglican Church. This latter must be bolstered by clear doctrinal standards, a structure that gives real oversight worldwide, albeit collegially, and the limitation of autonomy where it threatens communion. Into this mix the non-western Churches must be given full participation and respect rather than the patrician toleration that currently pertains.
I think what scares the liberal Protestants is not a church with teeth – authority – but that they’d be outnumbered by Third World conservatives and no longer have the whip hand. Obviously they’ve no problem with Pope-like jurisdiction as Dr Schori’s handling of San Joaquin showed. (The Episcopalians there have a right to exist but they started their new diocese by breaking their own rules and sacking the old standing committee that remained Episcopal but were relying on protocol, probably because the old committee were too conservative for the Episcopal authorities’ liking.)
[url=http://home.comcast.net/~acbfp/]High-church libertarian curmudgeon[/url]
The Church of Ireland is the only whole island institution I know of. It is a minority in both north and south. In the Republic the large majority are Roman Catholic; in Northern Ireland the Church is larger but still has to deal with various varieties of Presbyterians and other dissenters as well as with a minority Roman Catholic community. This status makes CofI folks very suspicious of both Romanizing and Protestantizing movements – not as suspicious as Sydney, but close.
A “need for a shift of focus in the life of the Communion from autonomy of provinces with communion added on, to communion as the primary reality with autonomy and accountability understood within that framework”. Imagine, a communion based on churches actually being in communion with each other. Well, trying to have churches in the same communion which aren’t in communion with each other hasn’t worked so well these last 5 to 6 years, so it might be interesting to see what that would look like, but at the same time it could just possibly be important who has to leave or change to make that work.