No plans to cancel Dublin Primates’ Meeting, ACC says: The Church of England Newspaper, Nov 19, 2010 p 7.

ACC Secretary General the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon

First published in the Church of England Newspaper.

There are no plans to cancel the Dublin primates meeting, ACC secretary general Canon Kenneth Kearon has declared

In a statement released via Twitter on Nov 11 in response to a story last week in the Church of England Newspaper about the Jan 25-31 meeting, ACC spokesman Jan Butter wrote: “Am afraid this story is not accurate. Communion Sec. Gen. Canon Kearon adamant: never any plans to cancel Primates’ Mtg.”

In its Nov 12 issue, the CEN reported Dr. Rowan Williams had proposed suspending the Primates Meeting—a gathering of the communion’s 38 primates—in favour of holding multiple small group gatherings of like minded archbishops.

Dr. Williams suggested that given the “number of difficult conversations” and the threat of a boycott of its meetings by some of its members, a regime of separate but equal facilitated small group sessions might better serve the primates’ “diverse” perspectives.

The report in the CEN, however, did not claim the archbishop’s Oct 7 letter called for the cancellation of the primates meeting.

In response to a request for clarification, the spokesman for the ACC stated there had been a “slip of the pen”’ in the Twitter message in saying there were never any plans to “cancel” the meeting.  “The point I was trying to get across was that there have never been any plans to suspend the upcoming Primates’ Meeting in Dublin next January,” Mr. Butter wrote.

However, behind the scenes conversations between Dr. Williams and the primates remain on-going, CEN has been told.  While reservations and supplies have been laid on by the ACC staff for the 38 primates and the Archbishop of York to meet at the Emmaus Conference Centre outside of Dublin, it is not clear how many primates will attend the gathering.

In 2008 Dr. Williams called the bluff of the Global South bishops and declined to honour their request to postpone the Lambeth Conference, due to their objections to the presence of the US and Canadian bishops.  As a result a majority of African bishops sat out the every ten year meeting of the communion’s bishops.

In his Oct 7 letter, Dr. Williams warned the primates of the substantial “damage” to the communion a boycott of the meeting would entail.  Whether he can find a synthesis between the opposing camps within the communion, offering suggestions as to ways the primates could meet together without actually having to meet together, remains unclear.