During the press conference at All Souls’ Church, Langham Place, London, Archbishop [Peter] Jensen expressed surprise that Archbishop Williams was not more supportive of the group’s efforts.
“I was hoping he would be very joyfully receptive to what he saw as a development of quite legitimate authority to help bring order to the chaos of the Anglican Communion within the last five years,” he said.
Archbishop Jensen dismissed as mythological the idea that the Archbishop of Canterbury exercised legal or juridical power over the Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s power is largely moral, he said, adding “that the last five years have seen a diminution of the moral authority that he is able to bring to this role.” The loss of moral authority was not Archbishop Williams’ fault, Archbishop Jensen said, and probably would have happened to “whoever had been the archbishop.”
I must disagree. Not only did the ABC not exercise what authority he had, he actively worked to undercut instruments unity that might have brought order. Based on the ABC’s actions one can only concluded that he believed that the AC could only be held together through inaction and he deliberatly worked to create that inaction.
The ABC’s loss of moral authority is his own fault and no one else.
I must disagree, also. The AbofC did indeed call the Windsor Conference, the Dramatine Conference and he did participate in the Dar Conference. All of these things were good and he seemed to keep an even hand on these. But he seemed to lose focus after the DES Communique was issued and undercut the Primates Meeting at the TEC HOB meeting by saying that it believed the HOB had complied, when clearly it had not, and I then refusing to call another Primates Meeting to get the Primates view of whether compliance had occurred, obviously because he knew that the Primates would overwhelming vote that compliance had not occurred. So instead of letting matters take their course, which he had started with the Windsor Conference, he decided to take matters into his own hands, and now he has GAFCON and the Jerusalem Statement and the new world order to deal with, when he has organized Lambeth into a structure that is purely meditative and doesn’t have the structural to deal with the GAFCON movement, even if the bishops going to Lambeth were of a majority to turn back GAFCON, which, based on the vote of Lambeth 1.10, such a majority does not exist, even with the boycott of the African provinces. I think the AbofC simply lost his faith in the workings of the Holy Spirit after DES Communique was issued, decided to put himself into the fray, and now he has a much bigger mess than if he had allowed the DES Communique to decide the results alone, as the Primates intended. (And, what makes matters worse, you know he knows that ++KJS knowingly signed DES Communique and knowingly then went back on her word, once she got home to the the US, because he – the AbofC – was the one who took the final draft around to all the Primates, including her, and got them to sign it.)
Abp. Jensen was just trying to be kind. He knew better.
I must disagree with you all. Rowan HAS exercise his moral authority; it’s just that he exercised it in support of the destructive agenda of the Episcopalians. Rowan did NOT lose focus after DES; he stayed focused like a laser beam on advancing the disintegration of the Anglican Communion along with his Episcopalian accomplices. I remain amazed that people think Rowan has not used the authority he has.