As he waited at London’s Heathrow International Airport to fly back to Toronto, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, spoke to Anglican Journal staff writer Marites N. Sison about the primates’ meeting, held Jan. 25 to 30 in Dublin. A total of 13 of 38 primates were absent. This included seven who boycotted the meeting to protest issues around the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of a lesbian bishop by The Episcopal Church in the U.S. last August. What follows is an excerpt of Sison’s interview with Archbishop Hiltz….
” And then [Archbishop of Canterbury] Rowan Williams gave a history of the last 10 years of the primates’ meeting…What happened was there was a call in the communion for enhanced responsibility on the part of the primates… the primates were assuming an authority [that] as a group was never intended.”
New occasions make new duties. Who is to say what ‘was intended’ was so limited? Do we bring Coggin back from the dead and ask if he could also see that the Communion would unravel? Would his ‘leisurely’ gathering still operate in the same way?
So let’s get this right:
1. The Lambeth Conference which had never failed to vote on resolutions since 1867, can be altered in 2008 so that it’s not permitted to discuss let alone vote on resolutions.
but
2. The Primates Meeting, apparently ignoring the Lambeth Resolutions giving them “enhanced” responsibility, must pretend every day is 1979 (when AB Coggan called the Primates Meeting into being). Do they have to wear bell bottom jeans and get perms?