This is important, first, because it marks the public rolling out of an agenda by the Communion Partner bishops, hopefully with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s full and forthcoming public support, aimed at preserving some remnant of constituent membership in the Communion for covenanting Episcopalians.
Second, and more profoundly, this step effectively serves as a petition to God for the preservation of Anglicanism, to a larger end of reconciliation and communion. “The divisions before us,” after all, have to do with much more than “differences of opinion on matters of human sexuality,” as the bishops note. They finally touch upon ecclesiology ”” the nature of the Church, as a global communion, committed to “discerning the mind of Christ together.” And this point, like the text of the Anglican covenant itself, drops us into a rich field of ecumenical discernment and decision, since communion in Christ is always larger than the particularities of any one divided church or family of churches….
For this reason especially: that the Catholic Church precedes and follows, comprehends and judges, our feints at autonomy, independence, and party spirit, as well as our flirtations with one or another false unity, we applaud the movement forward to covenant by the Communion Partner bishops, and pledge our support.
[blockquote]This is important, first, because it marks the public rolling out of an agenda by the Communion Partner bishops, [b]hopefully with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s full and forthcoming public support[/b], aimed at preserving some remnant of constituent membership in the Communion for covenanting Episcopalians.
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Still hoping in Rowan Williams to offer more than empty words to conservatives in the TEClub? That is sad. He has delivered the covenant up to a committee that he, himself, has stacked with revisionists. Simply sad.