Hiltz also said that after his meeting with Welby, he came away “encouraged by his [Welby’s] clarity in terms of what the Primates’ Meeting is and what it’s not.”
The Primates’ Meeting “is not a decision-making body””it’s a body for people that come together to pray and discuss and discern and offer some guidance. We don’t make resolutions,” Hiltz said.
Since it was announced that Archbishop Foley Beach, the leader of the breakaway Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), would be present for the first part of the meeting, Hiltz said there has been concern in some quarters over whether or not attempts will be made to confront The Episcopal Church (TEC) over its decision this year to allow same-sex marriages. But Hiltz said Welby was quite clear that the meeting would not exclude any of the primates of churches that are members of the Anglican Communion.
“His principle is one of full inclusion of all the primates. I think he will encourage, and if need be, challenge, the primates to uphold that principle,” Hiltz said.
Given that, at this point, Fred Hiltz and the ACoC are not in communion with the majority of Primates and churches of the Anglican Communion (or, in “impaired” communion, if you prefer), his view on the purpose of the primates meeting is, at best, somewhat distorted. Either the ABoC told the truth to the GS Primates when he met with them in Cairo, or there will be no Communion by the end of next month. The GS Primates made clear what the first order of business needed to be.
The last resolution the Primates meeting made was at Dar es Salaam.
We all know what the ABC did to that one.
I wonder if he believed the meeting would affirm SSB/M if his tune would be exactly the opposite. I think the answer is obvious. The thing that continues to amaze me is the racist undertone of every one of these pronouncements. They think GS bishops are primitive and provincial, not enlightened like themselves. I am pretty sure of this, and I believe Hiltz, and maybe Welby, is going to be surprised when the GS bishops tell Welby if their friends (Beach and ACNA) are not invited to the table, there is no table. That’s my prediction of how badly Hiltz and Curry (and Welby) are going to be blind sided.
Abp. Hiltz is engaging in a tactic, much used within TEC, of becoming hyper-precise in using procedures to thwart the will of the majority. Hiltz is describing the Primates Meeting as a juridical entity. If one looks at the documents creating/describing the Primates Meeting, I doubt that a By-law exists granting the Primates Meeting, qua meeting, with de jure authority to decide anything.
The lack of de jure authority for the Primates’ Meeting, as a juridical entity, to be a “decision making body” is beside the point. The Anglican Communion is a voluntary organization and its constituent Anglican provinces can participate or not as they see fit. In that sense, the Primates Meeting is a forum in which each Anglican Province can express its collective will to the other Provinces.
A clear majority of the Provinces have rejected the theological innovations of TEC and the ACofC. That will not change, no matter what Abp. Hiltz or the new Presiding Bishop say at the meeting. There is little new to say about the merits of the respective theological positions of the two sides.
Further debate regarding the theological positions of the two sides is not the point of the January meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to discover whether, and to what extent, the Provinces can remain in communion now, given theological disagreements among them that cannot be bridged. A related question is: what relationship, if any, ought Christians to have with other Christians with whom they have unbridgeable theological disagreements? For those discussions, the Primates Meeting requires no juridical authority. [N.B Even though Presiding Bishop Schori and Bp. Spong, et. al., publicly rejected Christianity, there are still many Christians in TEC and in the ACofC].
In light of the two questions outlined above, in my view there are really two issues before the meeting. The first issue is: to what extent does the ABC now stay in Communion with TEC and the ACofC? The second issue is: to what extent do the orthodox Provinces remain in Communion with the ABC if he remains in Communion with TEC and the ACofC? For those questions, I very much doubt that Abp. Welby will be blindsided, although Abp. Hiltz might be.
For a more lucid evaluation of the purpose of the Primates meeting-
http://www.anglican.ink/article/what-stake-canterbury-eliud-wabukala
[blockquote]The Anglican Communion is in danger of losing the gospel of God’s costly grace to us sinners for the poor substitute of cheap grace which makes us comfortable but can neither save nor transform. The choice before the Primates as they gather in Canterbury is whether they will recognize this reality and take the difficult but necessary action to restore the bible to its central place in the life of the Communion, or whether they will accept a merely cosmetic solution which will see it increasingly taken captive by the dominant secular culture of the West.”
Abp Wabukala[/blockquote]
Publius at #4, that pretty well sums it up.
Previous Primates Meetings have made resolutions and issued communiques. ++Hiltz may ignore them if he wishes. For that matter, he can ignore holy Scripture too if he wishes.
Sooner or later, those who despise the correction of the Church (properly led and guided by its Lord) end up bitterly regretting their decision. If ++Hiltz is smart, he will repent now, but only he can make that decision.