On Sept 17 the Diocesan Board and Standing Committee adopted a resolution stating, “We affirm Sections One, Two and Three of the Ridley Cambridge Draft of the Anglican Covenant, as we await the final draft of Section Four.”
The diocese also asked Dr Williams to “outline and implement a process by which individual Dioceses, and even parishes, could become members of the Anglican Covenant, even in cases where their Provincial or Diocesan authorities decline to do so.”
Dr Williams responded that “as a matter of constitutional fact, the ACC can only offer the Covenant for ”˜adoption’ to its own constituent bodies, (the provinces).”
“But I see no objection to a diocese resolving less formally on an ”˜endorsement’ of the Covenant,” he said. Such an action would not have an “institutional effect” but “would be a clear declaration of intent to live within the agreed terms of the Communion’s life and so would undoubtedly positively affect a diocese’s pastoral and sacramental relations” with the wider communion, he wrote.
So CEN is not quite accurate when they use the word, “adopt.”
The Diocese has not, in fact, signed onto the Covenant, but merely “endorsed” it which is not the same thing at all.
“Less formally” adopting the covenant means WHAT?
Help me out on this!
2, it means nothing. A discese that “endorses” the covenant simply gets a warm fuzzy.