The latest blow came in a statement released after Aug 30 to Sept 10 Global South meeting in China. While the primates said they were “wholeheartedly committed to the unity of Anglican Communion and recognize the importance of the historic See of Canterbury,” they were not pleased with what Dr. Williams’ subordinates were doing.
The instruments of communion: the Lambeth Conference, the Primates Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, “have become dysfunctional and no longer have the ecclesial and moral authority to hold the Communion together.”
The Global South primates stated it was “regrettable” that the 2008 Lambeth Conference had been “designed [so as] not to make any resolutions that would have helped to resolve the crisis facing the Communion.”
Not that it wasn’t before…. How is this frontpage news?
#1 Hoskyns – I think it is frontpage news not because of any change in the underlying position, but because of who is saying it, and how they have expressed themselves. It is worth reading the GS Primates’ Communique carefully.
What they do do is dance around the responsibility for the debacle which on the one hand is due primarily to the ‘We are going to do what we want so what are you going to do about it foreign primitives’ TEC, but which they could not have done without passive-aggresive sociopathic Rowan Williams undermining each of the Instruments in turn much as he is now doing to the Church of England.
What is disappointing in the Communique, and perhaps is a victory for the interference of Rowan Williams and TEC through their friends, is that notwithstanding the blistering criticism of them, that the GS Primates have been unable to agree any course of action for restoring Communion accountability and democratic governance which Williams has dismantled.
Oh well.
But there seems to be some disconnect between the rhetoric of the Communique, the hyperbole of the journalist and the “facts on the ground”.
The past summer has seen Nigerians, Bolivians and others attending the very networks rejected here.
Otherwise the relevant section seems to have been written by a disciple of the ACI.
#3 Rev Reynolds
I am disappointed – that wouldn’t be a cheap shot to attack the messenger rather than the message would it? Do you have any evidence to support your claims of disconnect between what the Primates and the journalist say … or is it just Martin Reynolds hyperbole?
Moreover I do not see any of them claiming that no members of relevant provinces attended any of the meetings of Communion organisations. Would that be just a straw man you have set up to knock down to allegedly disprove both what the GS Primates and the journalist say?
RE: ” . . . notwithstanding the blistering criticism of them, that the GS Primates have been unable to agree any course of action for restoring Communion accountability and democratic governance which Williams has dismantled.”
I’m not sure what more you would have them do, Pageantmaster. The actual instruments in question are gutted of substantive participation by them. The only “next thing” I suppose would be to formally announce withdrawal from the Communion . . . which they’re not going to do despite what revisionist TEC activists would wish.
So the only thing left is to go about one’s business and watch the other bits die.
That’s essentially what those remaining in TEC are doing. Watching TEC die isn’t a whole lot of fun, but it is what it is. I expect more and more disengagement at the official TEC entities — ie, General Conventions, etc — and simply withholding more and more money, and watching the thing slowly wither away.
That’s all that I can think of for these Primates to do. Continue meeting together, establishing the networks they need to function together with those who believe the Gospel in the Anglican Communion, and move forward.
TEC leaders will continue to try to export their particular gospel to other Provinces . . . but money is going to become more and more and more of an issue as the decade moves on.
#5 Hi Sarah
[blockquote]I’m not sure what more you would have them do, Pageantmaster.[/blockquote]
Why, step up to the mark and reorganise communion governance starting with the Primates Meeting; starting with themselves and inviting such others as wish to to participate.
We are all faced with a dismantled Primates Meeting after Dublin in which the rump attendees agreed, or more probably were misled into claiming that it was just an advisory group for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The GS Primates have been faced with a cynical and overreaching subversion of all of the Instruments by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He acted high-handedly and unconstitutionally in doing so. He has now in effect said to the GS [much as KJS did in TEC with misuse of the canons]: ‘constitutional or not, this is what I have done, what are you going to do about it?’ He has in effect called their bluff.
Extraordinarily, but understandably given their politeness, the GS Primates have avoided laying blame where it is due with the Archbishop who appointed the ACC General Secretary, most of the bureaucracy, and oversaw the machinations which led to the state where “the Anglican Communion’s Instruments of Unity have become dysfunctional and no longer have the ecclesial and moral authority to hold the Communion together.”
It is not the case that the GS Primates have the option only to put up with things and let things fall apart as they are in TEC, or to leave. They have the option to organise within the Communion, and as the majority of the Communion they can do so leaving the liberal Williams and the structures he manages to tail wag without having the dog attached.
Unfortunately, the GS Primates have decided not to tackle this and the issues head on, but instead to go along in a paragraph which will warm the cockles of Rowan Williams’ heart [if he has one]:
[blockquote]14. We have devoted much time to discuss the Anglican Communion Covenant and the Preamble by the Province of South East Asia documenting the historical events leading up to the Covenant and insisting that the Primates should be the proper moral and spiritual authority for the monitoring of the Covenant. The Covenant with the Preamble have been commended to our respective Provinces for further study and decision. [/blockquote]
The truth is that the option of just letting things drift is not realistic. We are entering a period when with Rowan Williams departing last year [John Martin wrote a perceptive analysis here], like Tony Blair before him, Rowan Williams will find himself increasingly isolated and power slipping from him. That is not wishful thinking on my part, it is just the way things work. He is now a lame force, and the longer he hangs on, the worse it will get for him, and for his office.
So we are entering a period of a vacuum of leadership and a paralysis of the Lambeth/ACC bureacracy before Williams is replaced. The CofE has only one way of restoring its relationships with the GS, and that is by selecting a stable and faithful replacement, but there is no evidence that the CofE will be able or perhaps even allowed to do so.
Who will lead? Who will step up to the mark? If not these GS Primates speaking for the unheard majority then who?
Sorry, that is Rowan Williams departing next year, not last year.
Re: the ABC’s rumored departure:
This [url=http://cariocaconfessions.blogspot.com/2011/09/tidbits.html]report[/url] from +Dan Martins from the HOB:
[blockquote]It’s not often that I indulge in news mongering, but my ears perked up this afternoon when the Bishop of Bath & Well, a guest of this meeting of the HoB, brought his greetings to the house.
First, he addressed the rumor, first appearing in the British press a week or so ago, that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will have resigned within a year’s time in order to return to academia. This, Bishop Price told us, will not happen. He told us this emphatically, and without a hint of doubt. One might be forgiven for inferring that he had some inside information.[/blockquote]
#9 wildfire
No doubt a message Peter Price has been deliberately deputed by Canterbury to pass on at this important meeting of American Bishops and a return match for Williams’ and Sentamu’s inappropriate invitation of the PB’s assistant and another TEC bishop to our General Synod. That is the only explanation for him feeling he is in a position to give that assurance. I don’t believe him, although that is not to say that in passing on the message he himself is being disingenuous, but I don’t believe the message he is passing on – but it does demonstrate how Williams continues to shilly-shally in the story coming out from his office.
No, it was not intended as a “shot” at anyone, cheap or not Pageantmaster.
Just a reflection on the paragraph saying “the Global South can no longer with good conscience attend these meetings” when Nigeria and others recently attended the network for Provincial Secretaries, the bishop Of Bolivia and others attended the summer meeting of the Liturgical group mentioned (and the journalist in question interviewed him about it) and isn’t the present chair of IASCUFO one of the signatories of this communique?
You may read this differently to me.
RE: “Why, step up to the mark and reorganise communion governance starting with the Primates Meeting; starting with themselves and inviting such others as wish to to participate.”
Okay so you’d like 11 or so Primates to organize their own meeting as “the Primates Meeting.” I’m not sure how that would work, since the ABC would call his “Primates Meeting” and another 25 or so Primates would show up. And then we’d have two so-called “Primates Meetings.”
What does that accomplish?
#11 Sarah – Rowan Williams destroyed the Primates’ Meeting as a meeting of Primates and an instrument – he turned it into a passive indaba encounter to ‘advise’ him. That is not the Primates’ Meeting – it no longer exists thanks to him, and in many ways discussion of Covenant when the field has been cleared of all working Instruments is somewhat beside the point. There are no working instruments so central to the working of any Covenant.
So it is indeed open to the GS Primates or anyone else to organise a Primates’ Meeting and perhaps it might start with a group of 11-15, but if others also decide to attend, such as happened with the Global South Encounter at Singapore it might gain wider traction. It can take action, which is of course only effective for its member provinces, but it would indeed be the only working Instrument of Governance working in a field where every instrument of Communion has been demolished and the field of governance laid waste by Williams.
So the GS Primates could indeed hold a Primates Meeting which could start to rebuild collective responsibility and governance; and Rowan Williams can hold the Not-the-Primates Meeting he created at Dublin, complete with candles on empty chairs, Indaba-tosh, Canadian and American facilitators, and security guards patrolling the hermetically sealed bunker where it is held. It wouldn’t matter anyway.
Otherwise things will just fall further and further apart, in spite of Williams chasing all over the world and trying to tie mission money in with his political agenda.
We need a restoration of Communion governance, and like Libya and Iraq, I am in no doubt about the time it will take to restore democratic institutions when they have been deliberately destroyed by a lawless dictator. We in the Communion are 80 million serious Christians mostly seeking with all our heart to serve our Lord and King, not Williams’ private playground for his twisted and sick power games – we deserve better. That’s how I see it anyhow.