Stephen Crittenden: And …[Archbishop Rowan Williams] seems to have carried that through with the support of Primates. In fact like Phillip Aspinall from Australia, he made it fairly clear he was behind it. So there seems to have been at least a central group who was in favour of pursuing that right through the conference and out the other side.
Bruce Kaye: Absolutely. And the second thing he saw support for was what he called his ‘pastoral forum’, designed to help people who are minorities in particular provinces. And then he said a number of other things, how the instruments of communion work, and international development work and so on.
What I think that means is that what you have is a conference of general conversation in which the President, Archbishop Rowan Williams, identifies back to the conference what really was the consensus general direction of the conference, without any voting on that question.
Stephen Crittenden: Given his reputation, he’s actually being very bureaucratically and strategically clever on this occasion.
Bruce Kaye: Well I was going to say he’s been very papal, actually.
Stephen Crittenden: The draft covenant that the bishops saw at Lambeth seems to have been more punitive and legalistic than the majority of the bishops present were comfortable with.
Bruce Kaye: I think the general consensus according to the documents produced so far, was that they didn’t like the appendix, which is very bureaucratic.
Stephen Crittenden: Is the Anglican church going to end up with a document or indeed some new institution, a pastoral council or a faith and order committee that actually does have real teeth? I mean this gets back to the whole way the Anglican tradition deals with conflict.
Bruce Kaye: Yes, it does. I’m not sure what will happen in that direction, but I’m sure that there’ll be persistent efforts to try and find some way of making decisions about levels of affiliation.
Stephen Crittenden: In other words, if you’re not willing to give up a certain degree of autonomy, you may have to settle for a lower level of participation in the central church?
Bruce Kaye: I think that’s right.