The Covenant is a framework for just this mutual sibling encouragement and admonition around the pole of “recognizability.” This responsibility is in fact entailed in the very idea of “oversight,” of episcopacy. That is why bishops are not merely local administrators, but also constitute a worldwide collegium of stewards of the recognizability of the Gospel in the Church’s life and teaching. This is why, in the patristic era, there arose a custom that three bishops, ordinarily from neighboring dioceses, would participate in consecrations. The ministry of vouching for the catholic and apostolic nature of life and teaching was held by them jointly.
In other words, embedded in the very concept of a bishop is a ministry of recognizability beyond the merely local. A covenant of oversight for the sake of communion is implied by episcopacy itself. This ministry, to be sure, is best exercised in a flexible manner that provides for discernment over time and gathering in council. (The Covenant presents such opportunities in abundance, which makes the accusations of quasi-Romanism so extraordinary.)
Ah, the utter evil of quasi-Romanism. The spirit of Anglicanism hasn’t changed much since the beheadings of Sts. Thomas Moore and John Fisher.
Principal Sumner has it right. The key to the covenant proposal lies in two terms–mutual accountability and recognizability. These two terms set out a way of relating within a communion of churches that is different from that proposed by many progressives in America–autonomy that does not require accountability. It is also different from many more traditional voices that seek unity based on “subscription” to common articles of belief rather than “recognition” that the belief and practice of others, though different from one’s own, are nonetheless, like one’s own, in accord with the witness of scripture. The progressive way turns communion into a series of ad hoc cooperative arrangements (usually for human betterment), and the traditionalist way turns communion into a largely juridical relation rather than a work of love that sustains communion through the hard work of mutual recognition rather than adjudication.
Baruch
Well said, Dr Turner. And conciliarism, as Principal Sumner suggests, is the key to accountability and recognition. My concern is that the Covenant does not go far enough in this direction, in establishing (or perhaps better, recognizing) a conciliar authority (perhaps not so much in a juridical sense, as in robustly “moral” sense); viz., should we not recognize the authority of the collegial episcopate and make the Lambeth Conference a decennial episcopal synod?
Todd Granger,
The question is how moral authority is to work in the Anglican Communion in a way that sustains it as a communion. We can’t give Lambeth the authority of a synod without giving up on the idea of the “autonomy” of the various provinces. Autonomy can be retained but limited by mutual accountability and recognition only if moral authority is recognized as essential to communion life. Moral authority has been ascribed to all the instruments but TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada have been unwilling to defer to that authority. The question then comes, what is to be done? The Covenant proposes a process where by recommendations are made either to the instruments or to the provinces or both as to a fitting response to refusal to defer to moral authority. It is then up to the Instruments and/or the Provinces to accept or reject these recommendations. Sadly that proposal has been compromised by divisions among the Primates, the passivity of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the political maneuvering that resulted in the present (unacceptable) composition of the Standing Committee. I believe that the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury are the two Instruments best suited to exercise moral authority, but neither has been able or willing to do so. To my mind this is not a problem with the proposed covenant but one that concerns the spiritual health of our communion, and particularly its leaders. Our choices seem to me to be three: (1) give up the idea of recognition and accountability and become a federation as progressives now propose; (2) establish a set of criteria by means of which some semi-juridical body can determine the acceptability of action by any of the provinces and if necessary impose some form of discipline; (3) hope and pray for leadership that can convince the communion to accept the covenant and call forth to the graces to make it work. Only the last of these will result in a communion worthy of the name.
“…the passivity of the Archbishop of Canterbury”…
That’s a polite way to put it. OTT, well-said, Dr. Turner.
Dr Turner,
I agree with you, that the hope for the Communion does not lie in either of the first two alternatives. But there is no reason that the third alternative can’t include a robust conciliarism founded on (anchored in? centered on?) the bishops of the Churches of the Communion. To be sure, the Lambeth Conference at present (and particularly after 2008) doesn’t possess the moral authority to sustain the communion, but I’m not sure that either the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Primates Meeting possesses that sort of moral authority, either – at least at the present (and that this is not only a matter of not exercising authority). Why can the episcopal conciliarism of the undivided Church not serve as an example? Why couldn’t the particular autonomy of the Churches of the Communion not be subject to the mutual recognition of bishops in council: we recognize the practices and faith of one Church as authentically Anglican – or we don’t so recognize this in the practices and faith of another Church, and thus your bishops will not be invited to be present at the next synod of Anglican bishops. (But we can’t, and we’re not going to, force any provincial Church to toe the line. Simply that any Church that forges ahead with what is not recognizably Anglican will find themselves out of communion (with all the ecclesiological, sacramental, ministerial, and institutional force of that state). I don’t think that would be a semi-juridical body, because the criteria by which they are deciding this are not set down in any document (other than a “thick” reading of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, and more explicitly and Creeds and Holy Scripture, all of which require an interpretive authority). It would mean the more robust functioning of the bishops of the Communion, together in council, to do the work of discernment based less on a set of criteria than on the traditioned reading of Holy Scripture.
Perhaps what I’m hoping for is an Anglican Communion that begins to look a lot more Orthodox in its orientation.
(Pun most assuredly not intended!)
RE: “hope and pray for leadership that can convince the communion to accept the covenant and call forth to the graces to make it work.”
I’m not certain that that’s any different from the past 30 years of assuming that we are all mutually accountable and recognizing one another.
The problem is, we are neither, and I don’t see how a document proposing “a process where by recommendations are made either to the instruments or to the provinces or both as to a fitting response to refusal to defer to moral authority” will make it so.
Sarah,
I have no idea whether our prayers will be answered or not. I wonder what you think the way ahead is?