Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea backs Anglican Covenant: The Church of England Newspaper, December 23, 2011 p 7. December 30, 2011
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, Anglican Covenant, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Peter Ramsden
trackback
Bishop Peter Ramsden of Port Moresby
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
The provincial council of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea (ACPNG) has endorsed the Anglican Covenant.
Last week’s announcement by the ACPNG marks the fourth province to endorse or subscribe to the Covenant. The West Indies, Mexico, and Myanmar have already backed the covenant, while the bishops of the Philippine Episcopal Church have rejected it, and Australia, New Zealand and the United States are likely to oppose the agreement in its current form.
The press office of the Anglican Consultative Council last week reported that the Bishop of Port Moresby, the Rt. Rev. Peter Ramsden, had written to Canon Kenneth Kearon informing him the premise of the covenant was in line with the ACPNG’s self-understanding of its mission and its Anglican heritage.
“Anglican” was one of the styles of Christianity brought to this land and people near the end of the nineteenth century”, Bishop Ramsden said.
Anglicanism has “never pretended to be the only form of Christianity, but it did reflect how one part of the Christian family had developed, built on the importance of scripture, creeds, sacraments and episcopal order,” the bishop said.
In Papua New Guinea the church sought to combine its “Anglo-Catholic theological heritage and personal discipleship to the Lord Jesus in the way we witness to the five marks of mission with our ecumenical partners in PNG and our Anglican partners overseas.”
The bishop stated that the ACPNG’s understanding of “communion” was that it described a close relationship that “ensures autonomy and requires responsibility.”
It was an “expression of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” and also required “mutual respect, open communication and patience in dealing with issues that threaten it.”
He added that the innovations in doctrine and discipline concerning the ordination of women clergy and issues in human sexuality had strained the church’s communion.
In recent decades we have been saddened by the apparent lack of these things in the controversies concerning the ordination of women and issues of human sexuality. Anglicans were nonetheless “called to live a particular style of Christian witness which, because it is less juridical and confessional than that of some others, clearly requires a high level of mutual concern and respect.”
The ACPNG was “proud to belong to the Anglican Communion,” Bishop Ramsden said.
“As bishops we attended the 2008 Lambeth Conference, supported the three moratoria, endorsed the covenant process and value the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury to promote our unity. The Covenant might not have been proposed if some Anglican Provinces had not acted in the way they did, but recent history has produced it and we believe it deserves our support as a contribution to shaping and strengthening a future Anglican Communion, faithful to our calling to be ‘eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’.”
