Anglican Primates discuss Covenant solution to problems: CEN 2.03.09 February 3, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Covenant, Church of England Newspaper, Primates Meeting 2009.trackback
Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper
Moral suasion, not binding legislation will be the backbone for the proposed Anglican Covenant, Australian Archbishop Philip Aspinall told reporters on Feb 2.
In their second business session at the 2009 Primates’ Meeting in Alexandria, the primates were briefed by Archbishop John Chew of Singapore on the work of the Anglican Covenant Design Group — the group tasked by Archbishop Rowan Williams with crafting a document that would set the permitted boundaries of Anglican diversity.
Dr Aspinall said that it was his impression the Covenant designers were “pulling back from the language of sanctions and teeth” in the draft document. The Covenant would be about “koinonia … fellowship .. of communion” between churches. Given the legal structures of the 38 autonomous member churches of the Anglican Communion, he said it was unrealistic that the final Covenant would be a legal mechanism whose ultimate sanction would be “not inviting you to a meeting.”
“Hitting people over the head with sticks” was not the best way forward, Dr Aspinall said.
In his briefing, Archbishop Chew told the primates the Covenant was a work in process. Its drafters had taken on board the criticisms and comments offered by bishops attending the 2008 Lambeth Conference, and were also waiting upon responses due by March 9 from the 38 provinces. Once these materials had been collated, a final draft would be presented to the May meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica for ratification.
Dr Aspinall told reporters there was an “increasing realism” within the Common on the practical limits of the Covenant’s legal reach. He believed the emphasis of the final draft would likely be on developing closer relations and “building trust.” The Covenant would request a “self-limiting” of authority on issues of doctrine and discipline from the provinces, but could not command obedience. Drawing upon the Anglican Church of Australia as an example, he said it could adopt a Covenant in three ways: amending its constitution, enacting a canon or passing a resolution at General Synod. He said it was highly unlikely the church would seek to incorporate the Covenant into its Constitution, and noted that if it were passed as a canon, it still would have to be ratified by each diocese for it to take effect in the diocese. He could think of one Australian diocese “that will not yield authority” to outside bodies, and imagined that there would be several others with misgivings over the project.
Passing the Covenant as a resolution by General Synod would give it a legal status, but under Australian canon law resolutions have no legal force and could be ignored with impunity.
He reiterated that he was offering his own impressions on the Covenant process, but added that it had been the opinion of many bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference that a Covenant that was crafted as a “moral obligation” was more likely to be adopted by the Communion.
The push to pull the teeth from the Covenant did not come as a surprise to conservative primates. Many of their voices had not been heard at Lambeth due to the boycott by a majority of African bishops, one primate said. Speaking to ReligiousIntelligence.com one conservative primate was skeptical of the viability of any Covenant, absent an independent authority who could judge whether it had been broken, and enforce sanctions for non-compliance.
Citing the failed Panel of Reference and the imperfect responses by The Episcopal Church to the Dar es Salaam communiqué and the Jan 31 announcement by the US Church’s Executive Council that six more years were needed to study the Covenant, he was not sanguine that any Covenant would work.
Yep, that old moral suasion stuff has certainly worked with TEC. If the past five-and-a-half years is any indication of the kind of unity that moral persuasion fosters, the next six years will see a further divided Anglican Communion which will result in the very thing that Dr. Williams wanted not to happen, namely, a federation of Anglican jurisdictions. Will they ever meet together “in federation”? I doubt it.