We are of the view that the passing of these 2 resolutions, when on a plain and ordinary reading, constitutes an abrogation by TEC of the agreed-to moratorium on the consecration of practising homosexual clergy as bishops and rites of blessing for same-sex unions. This effectively moves TEC irretrievably away from the orthodox position of the rest of the Anglican Communion as a whole on these issues. This is a negative development. It is also a repudiation of the listening and consultation processes put in place in an attempt to resolve these issues.
We reiterate that the basis of the common heritage shared through membership of the worldwide Anglican Communion is best reflected by the proposed Anglican Covenant, which we wholly support. The proposed Anglican Covenant encompasses our basic shared beliefs and traditions. It represents the most basic statement of what we consider to be acceptable for resolving the present predicament facing the Anglican Communion and moving forward. We hope that the Anglican Covenant will be endorsed by the provinces in the Anglican Communion within the next 12 months.
Asia has always been more mature in its thinking and reserved in its pronouncements than most of the rest of the communion. But they know the plain meaning of statements and TEC has clearly walked out of the Anglican Communion. Gather up the fragments and there will be twelve full baskets!
http://www.churchoftheword.net
I think you will see more and more Provinces taking this step as their Synods come.
Thank you, SE Asia and +Chew, Primate.
Amen to that, Dr. Seitz.
We are all especially grateful for the care taken in recent statements from Communion leaders to acknowledge that there are still orthodox Christians within TEC, and the intention to support them.
One also ascertains from this, that Abp. Chew was not so impressed by the holiness of the GC as TEC press releases would have us believe.
I think the acknowledgement of a plain and ordinary meaning is a rejection of the letter to the ABC. And also the truth.
Did the PB and Ms. Bonnie really think anyone would buy the pig they were poking……
Several ideas being put forth to save the sick (Canterbury/Lambeth*) Anglican Communion and each have problems.
1. The notion of allowing individial parishes and Dioceses to sign onto the the Covenant, particularly for Dioceses where there are some parishes within them, that have heterodox/syncretist priests and membership sounds like a very inept, cumbersome and confusing way to hold the Communion together. (This can be seen in the Anaheim statment being signed by people who voted for the resolutions that broke the moratorium.)
It would be better to first recognize ACNA as a province. ACNA has already done the work of organizing into a coherent whole.
The remainder of the orthodox parishes and Dioceses within TEC should form themselves into a group or groups (within the AAC, CP, Third Way, etc.) and elect leadership and then join ACNA or FCA or the Canterbury AC (presumably signing the Covenant) as they wish to do.
2. The two-track system is a desperate (and quite un-Scriptural) attempt to keep TEC in the AC. There is no Biblical basis for the Church being yoked with heretics and unbelievers. The wheat/tares analogy refers to the church/world, not to keep unrepentant or unbelievers within the church. Revelation and all the Epistles teach this plainly.
3. The Covenant was hopeful, but has now been consigned to a team to be retrieved at some later date… (wink) when it is sufficiently unlikely to be any sort of deterent to heterodoxy or immorality.
What has the Anglican Communion really come to?
The Jamaica meeting is the perfect Icon of the Anglican Communion. The way the meeting was conducted and the outcome are a perfect miniature portrait of the Communion. Deft, disingenuous, sly, subtle people unapologetically foiled and side-tracked the Covenant and farmed it out to revisionists. It was like a Harlem Globetrotters exhibition or a shell game. Then while all eyes and minds were on the Covenant, these charlatans foisted the Continuing Indaba Project (to spread TEC sexual immorality and abortion around the globe) as part of AC ‘ministry’. In doing so, the ACC/JSC forced the whole AC to embrace and join in the heterodoxy of the errant provinces. The Jamaica meeting revealed the unrelenting determination, the lawlessness and deception that the agendites will employ to achieve their ends.
The Jamaica meeting is the perfect example of the Canterbury-Lambeth Communion.
Rowan Williams acting as the Archbishop of Canterbury has permitted or committed acts of fraud and deception, one after another, over the last 7 years, deflecting and defeating every reasonable and possible attempt, betraying every act of good faith, every honorable means of rectifying the problems that exist in the Communion.
All this has produced a massive amount of meaningless documents with worthless signatures fit only for the bonfire of the vanities.
The Anglican Communion, as run by Williams, TEC and the West, has sent a sickening stench to the High Throne of Heaven. God is not impressed or fooled by the honors men convey upon each other or the histories, cathedrals, lovely liturgies, chalices, vestments, hymns offered by false shepherds and false and defiled hearts.
(*not The Global South, CAPA, FCA/Jerusalem which are true Communions, healthy and bound together by God’s pre-existing unchanging unrevisable Covenant as revealed in The OT and NT Scriptures, by the Good News of the Saving Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the witness of the Saints of all ages, by reason and evidence, in Scripture, by signs and wonders, and by hearts and lives redeemed and transformed.)
Dee in Iowa,
That was actually a pig they were putting lipstick on and trying to pass it off as just a plan ol’ pig.
This is huge!
Take note of this line: “It is also a repudiation of the listening and consultation processes put in place in an attempt to resolve these issues.”
And again this one: “We hope that the Anglican Covenant will be endorsed by the provinces in the Anglican Communion within the next 12 months.”
In short, they hope that the FCA/GAFCON provinces will adopt the current Ridley Cambridge Draft of the Covenant in the next 12 months–especially if Section 4 is undermined in November like it was in Jamaica. KJS and her partners made a huge tactical mistake at Kingston. The majority of the Communion will in fact be able to endorse the Covenant within 12-18 months, long before TEC’s next General Convention can even debate it!
Add this to Bp Wright’s statement: this has been a good week for the Reappraisers and the Communion.
#9: The fourth word from thr end of your post?
Good catch Cole….should be “Reasserters”.
Sorry to be a nit-picking stickler about words.
[i]”…an abrogation by TEC of the agreed-to moratorium on the consecration of practising homosexual clergy as bishops and rites of blessing for same-sex unions. “[/i]
I was at GC 2006 when B033 was approved in those chaotic closing hours of the convention. There was NO mention of same-sex blessings in whatever vaguely worded moratorium was adopted. Yet we keep seeing these references to violation of the moratoria (plural), including SSBs.
I know what the Windsor Report required. GC did NOT accede to it (the subsequent “understandings” about B033 notwithstanding).
w.w.
And, #12, I think we reasserters need to be honest about what GC06 did and did not do with B033. I clearly recall at the time that we mossbacks were adamant that the resolution did not impose a moratorium on the consecration of non-celibate homosexuals, which was apparent from its plain language. We’re hardly in a position to decry the repeal of something that we knew didn’t exist in the first place.
While TGC hasn’t consecrated any such persons since then, several dioceses have considered it. There never was a moratorium on gay bishops or gay marriages in TGC, just a voluntary request for restraint which, as we all know in the case of SSBs, has been honored only sporadically. True, that restraint has been swept aside now, but it was barely a fig leaf anyway. Clarity is now achieved.
My recollection is that at GC06 the formal response to the call to a moratorium on SSB’s was that as there had been no formal liturgy for public SSB’s authorized for use in TEC and no provision for them in BCP rubrics or the canons, TEC was “already in compliance.” Windsor Report language about “pastoral” provisions was expanded to cover all the SSB’s happening at the time and since. The post-convention letters from President Anderson and Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori follow the same route. C056 2009 authorizes the SCLM to collect and “develop” draft liturgies for presentation to GC2012, and reminds bishops that they are welcome to be “generous” in their provision of pastoral care, but stops short of specifically authorizing SSB’s–or celebrations of civil marriages in those states where SS civil marriages are legal. This supposedly in technical compliance with the Windsor language . . . .
The point is of course that water is over the dam already on this. Whatever the sales pitch, nobody is buying. Bishop Wright’s image was of a grandmother trying to tiptoe across the room. My image is of someone with his hands over his eyes calling out, “you can’t see me!”
Bruce Robison
Send your notes of thanks publicly. This is a “context” opened to all reasserters, an “opportunity” to assert. The original post allows comments.