The Diocese of Western Louisiana endorsed the Anglican Covenant at its 31st annual convention Oct. 15-16 in Alexandria, La.
Delegates passed by an overwhelming majority a resolution offered by St. Mark’s Cathedral of Shreveport that endorsed the Covenant. The resolution added that the diocese “remains committed to the Constitution and Canons of General Convention of the Episcopal Church while seeking to pursue our identity as constituent members of the Anglican Communion in communion with the See of Canterbury.”
Note that there is no proviso about the sham “Standing committee”. There will be Covenant chaos with some provinces approving the Covenant as redone by Rowan’s Covenant Redesign Committee which was stacked with revisionists and one reasserter. There will be some that advocate various re-revised covenants, and then some that reject it. And Rowan will be whistling happily whilst kicking the can down the road. Here is a quote by ABp Orombi in an interview over at [url=http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2010/10/18/cape-town-ugandan-archbishop-says-congress-recognizes-anglican-contribution-to-global-evangelization-anglican-communion-is-irretrievably-divided-says-evangelical-archbishop/ ]Anglican Mainstream[/url]:
[blockquote] Sadly he plays the diplomacy game but we won’t buy into it anymore. He talks to one group and agrees with them and then he talks to Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and Archbishop Fred Hiltz (Canada) and agrees with them. We will no longer play that game. It is over.[/blockquote]
The Covenant is definitely Rowan’s game.
Wonder if Brad Drell will revive his dormant blog for this?
From the Western Louisiana web site, it appears that in a resolution (no. 4) concerning TEC’s amended Title IV disciplinary canons, the Western Louisiana convention incorporated amended Title IV into its own canons and provided that in the case of a conflict with the diocesan canons, Title IV of the TEC canons governs.
In a separate resolution 5 concerning amended Title IV, the Western Louisiana convention expresses the view that certain provisions of Title IV relating to authority purportedly given the Presiding Bishop violate TEC’s constitution. Rather than carve out these provisions from those it incorporated into its own diocesan canons through resolution 4, the Western Louisiana convention requests General Convention either to amend TEC’s constitution to make the Title IV changes constitutional or to further revise Title IV to restore consistency with the existing constitution. The diocesan resolution does not express a preference between these two alternatives.
It seems the diocese’s “commitment†to the Constitution and Canons of General Convention extends to adopting as its own certain TEC canons it believes grant the Presiding Bishop unconstitutional authority. The effect is softened only by a request to General Convention to rectify the inconsistency, but without preference as to whether the PB’s new purported authority should be confirmed or removed. The adopted resolutions may be accessed from a link on this page.