Obviously, the most problemmatic portion of the proposed Anglican Covenant is Section Four which deals with processes and procedures should one Province or “instrument” of the Communion feel that another Province has failed to live into the implications of the Covenant and caused serious stress and strain for sisters and brothers elsewhere, stretching or even breaking the bond of Communion the Covenant is supposed to enhance.
This is obviously a new development for the Anglican Communion. We have always seen ourselves as interdependent but autonomous Provinces bound together primarily by our approaches to the Bible and the Liturgy and by our historic ties to the See of Canterbury and the Church of England. This relationship has served us well in the past but, with globalization and worldwide communication and our now-decades-old developing self-understanding as a global Communion (“the third largest communion of Christians after the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox”) do we not need something more now as a kind of skeletal structure to bind us together.
Just curious. Does Christopher Epting know that a large number of provinces are already formally out of communion with TEC? I ask because, if they are out of communion, well, they are not in communion. Something is broken that was not before. So what is the appeal to a ‘status quo’ of autonomous provinces mean, really? Does it mean, well, were are all in the anglican communion as heretofore, except that a large number of provinces do not recognize TEC and are out of communion with them? What kind of communion is that — autonomous and out of communion, so it doesn’t matter? I simply do not understand this kind of anglican communion and I doubt our ecumenical friends do either. Can he illumine what he means? One way of understanding a covenant is that it *could* repair this state of affairs, by allowing the largest bloc of the Communion to exist as before, and a smaller bloc to be ‘prophetic’ and autonomously so!
#1 Chris, you are assuming coherence and integrity, hence you arrive at ignorance as possible cause for nonsense. As my logic prof once said – check your premises.
What exactly do Anglicans have to say when they attend any ecumenical dialogues? It is certainly true that ACI is capable of articulating its positions, but if reps from the current Anglican hierarchy engage in talks, how do they explain the present chaotic state of this Church? Covenant/no Covenant, primates’ meeting neutered, ACC/who is on it legally/illegally; JSCAC/SCAC or whatever you call it…not like anyone attending the dialogues can’t read the internet.
RC’s have the Pope, College of Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monsignors, priests, and deacons, etc. We’re getting to be a slipshod mess that is undefinable.
And whose fault is that? Oh, oops, I forgot–that blame is not to be directed at any one person, even the guy in charge.
:-/
Ecumenical dialogues find the positions of the churches in their official documents. The Anglicans who find the 1979 BCP an inadequate expression of our doctrine have almost all left the Episcopal Church and our ecumenical dialogue partners who find that book inadequate also have other issues.
This is classic: “We have always seen ourselves as interdependent but autonomous Provinces bound together primarily by our approaches to the Bible and the Liturgy and by our historic ties to the See of Canterbury . . .” Yes, until a few of us decided to take TOTALLY new approaches to the Bible and totally ignore the protests of our global Anglican family when they expressed their concern about our totally new interpretations of Scripture which we were not able to demonstrate had any basis in Scripture! I love the way that they always phrase these explanations as if everything was going along fine then then for some totally unexplained reason others started demanding all these novel ideas like covenants. Some part of it is deceitful, but to some extent folks like Bishop Epting seem just clueless. How many votes for “Team Clueless” and how many for “Team Clueless”?
Sorry, that should have read: how many votes for Team Clueless and how many votes for Team Deceitful?
Along the lines of Seitz’ complaint that the appeal for a “status quo” overstates one thing when another reality is actually in place, so I think it is disingenuous to point to “Section Four” (the entire thing?) as “the problematic portion” of an Anglican Covenant when the idea of the entire Covenant was being villified prior to the issues of Section Four arising.