The Archbishop of Canterbury’s ban on American participation in the Anglican Communion’s international ecumenical dialogues remains in place, a spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council reports.
However, the addition of an American Episcopalian to the delegation to the third Anglican”“Lutheran International Commission (ALIC) meeting in Jerusalem last week was not a violation of the ban on participation in ecumenical dialogue of those who propagate views contrary to the church’s teachings on human sexuality, the ACC says.
A spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) tells The Church of England Newspaper that the communiqué misstated the status of the American member of the Anglican team. The Very Rev. William Petersen, Provost and Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bexley Hall Seminary in the United States, was a “consultant not a member of ALIC. The reference to him in the communiqué as a member was incorrect,” ACC spokesman Jan Butters said.
You gotta love the machinations. Changing the word from “member” to “consultant” (a difference that the body concerned apparently didn’t understand) and saying that a priest canonically resident in a TEC diocese doesn’t really count as a TEC priest – someone’s having a laugh.
Guess we get to go back to our room for a nap without snack time for another hour or so. We are so naughty. So very naughty.
“Consultant = Member.” And probably not-so-inactive. Period.
Dean Petersen was active in Episcopal-ELCA cooperative work and is a good choice to provide current information on the Called to Common Mission Concordat Agreement. The alternative is Porvoo which is a state church to state church agreement of limited applicability outside Europe. Sweden enjoys historic succession and has transmitted it in Tanzania and perhaps other places, so the TEC-ELCA agreement may be possible in other parts of the communion.
I’m no great enthusiast for the Porvoo Communion but FWLIW it’s members include:
Church of Ireland
Church in Wales
The Lusitanian Church
Scottish Episcopal Church
Spanish Episcopal Church
Estonian Evangelical-Lutheran Church
Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Lithuania
Again FWLIW the facts about Apostolic Succession in the Church of Sweden are “muddy” (not that such things matter since Anglicans are certainly in full communion with churches with no Apostolic Succession of Bishops):
http://web.archive.org/web/20060702201635/http://reader.classicalanglican.net/?page_id=315
Just for accuracy those who signed the Porvoo declaration include in addition:
The Lusitanian Church
The Spanish Episcopal Church
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland
The Church of Norway
The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland
There are also a couple with Observer status
Many thanks. I purposefully left out the “state” Lutheran churches (and the good old COE) to correct the false impression that Porvoo simply involves, as they say in England, churches established by law.
I should say I also left out the Church of Sweden, which although disestablished, is governed in a way that would be unrecognizable to one looking for a US style separation of church and state.
“Words mean what I tell them to mean,” said Humpty-Dumpty
Violating the ban is not at all violating the ban.
So there.
How disingenuous can they get? Bill Clinton must be tha ACC’s ghost writer!