The Pastoral Forum to be headed by Dr Rowan Williams is a last-ditch attempt to bring rebel Anglican provinces into line and prevent a total split in the 80 million-strong Communion.
It is designed to provide a rapid response to crises, by offering guidance either to liberal churches that break guidelines by ordaining gay clergy or blessing same-sex unions, and also traditionalist churches that cross borders to ordain bishops in other provinces. A halt to all these practices has been demanded.
The forum will allow parishes that have defected from their national churches to be looked after in a “holding bay” until they can be returned to their previous home.
But it will also have the power to “diminish the standing” of rebel churches, which could mean their heads being thrown off the Primates Meeting of worldwide Anglican leaders, or being barred from the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of bishops that is taking place in Canterbury this week.
“The idea of the forum will be discussed at a meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, a body of clergy and lay people, next May.”
Way to late. GAFCON will up and running by then. Iker and Duncan will have been deposed and there will be “facts on the ground” all over the place. This might have worked in 2000, but it think that events already in motion have their own momentum.
And barring a total reworking of TEC those orthodox who have been brutalized by TEC will not go back nor will they surrender any property or goods they have purchased since leaving.
Clearly, the two most opposed to each other’s theological positions do not see this as an answer. Just check out the HOB/D listserv where this is understood as the exclusions of LGBT persons. For Reasserters the issue seems to be that those who left are expected to return to their home province and are to be held in trust for TEC and the ACoC.
There are two problems. The EC and the ACoC see their actions are prophetic and right and will not turn back. TEC has had 3 chances already…and as we know in baseball they have struck out. Why would anyone believe that a fourth time would have a different result?
Those who have left did so out of faith and conscience. They will not to the authority that has so terribly oppressed and abused them!
This is like GC06 all over again. The two sides in disagreement agreed that the resolutions offered did not honestly address the problem. Both sides rejected them. The folks in the middle stood in disbelief and did not have a clue as to what was happening and why we could not agree to disagree. They were clueless.
It seems like Lambeth has crossed into the Twilight Zone.
No need for +Duncan to be deposed: all he needs to do is to indicate that he wishes to stay with his fellow “orthodox” Bishops who are not leaving TEC. But alas I fear he will join with the three anti-WO TEC Bishops and join the anti-WO Province of the Southern Cone (at least anti-women for priests and Bishops).
#2
I agree completely. I believe it’s a good faith effort, but there is no longer common ground sufficient for this to work.
The Telegraph always seems to have a decided revisionist edge to it, usually accompanied by some sort of alarmism.