Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Transcript of final Lambeth Conference press conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury

This is the transcript of Archbishop Rowan Williams final press conference at the 2008 Lambeth Conference (please note, questions have not been included, although answers are here).

I think that we have emerged at the end of this conference with some quite surprising results. A surprising level of sheer willingness to stay together; a surprising level of agreement about what might be necessary to make that happen so that, for all the fact that the details of the Covenant proposals still need a good deal of clarification, nonetheless there is a following wind for that.

There is also a wide degree of agreement about the need for moratoria on both sides where divisive actions are concerned.

And one thing that came up that was not planned and not really expected was, again, a strong level of support for a more coherent and co-ordinated attempt to draw together the work of the communion around issues of justice and international development.

So in all those ways I think there is work to do. We’ve been trying today, and I’ve tried in my address to identify some of the processes in the coming months that will take that forward.

We have got a number of meetings coming up:

• a special meeting of the joint standing committee of the Primates and Consultative Council in November,

• I’m planning a Primates meeting very early in the New Year,

• and then there will be the routine meeting of the Consultative Council in the early summer.

Feeding into all of these will be continuing reflections from the various groups that have been looking at the issues the conference has been discussing. And they will be looking at those again in light of the very detailed responses and perspectives offered by the Indaba groups as represented in the Reflections document which was formally presented to the Conference and to myself this afternoon and which we will be dedicating in prayer in the service in the Cathedral very shortly.

I think that in addition to all that and all the formal aspects of the work together there has been a very, very widespread desire simply to go on building personal relations even where people may not want to sign up to formal agreements; nonetheless they have felt that the exchanges they have had have been nourishing, valuable and, a phrase that has occurred in several contexts is we want the Indaba to continue.

We want a process to continue in which there is space to do the sort of thing we have sought to do in this last couple of weeks.

QUESTIONS

I outlined in my opening Presidential Address that the Covenant was not meant to be a punitive exclusionary device. It was meant to say if you want to adopt a more integral and more intensified form of mutual responsibility this is the way to do it. If that doesn’t happen, well, that’s regrettable. It doesn’t mean there’s an absolute separation, it means that some levels of relationships won’t be entered into and that can still leave open a great many possibilities for co-operation.

===

I feel it has worked out very much as I had hoped and prayed. I think it has not evaded the difficult questions even if it hasn’t answered them in the way some people would have liked them to answer them. But that doesn’t cause me to lose too much sleep because the conference has never been an executive body that can simply make those sorts of quick fix decisions.

I’ve actually been surprised by how much energy there has been growing in the Indaba groups to continue the process of encounter and I feel we have been very well served by our chaplaincy team in providing a climate of prayer and worship.

People have said they felt the encounters have been serious and prayerful and without too much pressure. I don’t think I could have prayed for more, really.

===

Sacrifice has to be accepted voluntarily. That’s true. If it’s imposed it is not sacrifice. That’s why this remains something about consent, about what people are willing to give for the sake of the Communion and that means, of course, a judgement about what is worthwhile, about the Communion. There are those, I know, who will not see that kind of unity as worth that kind of sacrifice. And that’s not a judgement I want to pronounce on from on high. I want to sit with people and see what it looks like to them as it evolves. But I think that the sense that there is something about the preservation of the global fellowship which is larger than any of us has to be a factor in this.

===

Do you really expect me to answer that! You have to ask. Can I just say, this Lambeth was a task set me, being Archbishop of Canterbury it is a task set me. As long as I believe that it is still the task God is putting before me I go on doing it. That’s all I can say.

===

I haven’t called it with any agenda except to have a Primates meeting. It’s about time we had one. We haven’t had one this year because the Lambeth Conference was coming up and organisationally and financially it is difficult to put on two massive meetings in a year. But it is time we had one. We need one before the ACC and that’s the only agenda.

===

That’s another question inviting me to put my neck on the block isn’t it in terms of choosing countries! You have to weigh, I think, the obvious emotional force of being in ‘the Mother Church’ as it is seen by so many; against the symbolic force of being where a great deal of the action is. As you probably know we did consider very seriously the possibility of a bishops and laity Anglican Congress or gathering in South Africa half-way between the last Lambeth and this, roughly.

That proved extremely difficult in financial and logistical terms.

I’m very open to looking for larger scale Anglican gatherings in the continent where the majority of Anglicans actually are. I think that’s a perfectly proper aspiration.

Whether there is also something that… for good or ill Canterbury still represents for the Communion that is grounding and unifying, I’m not sure. I think there probably is and so I wouldn’t want to say goodbye to something of this format.

===

Primates meetings are budgeted regularly within the Communion budget. We are looking at various routes to meet what looks like a shortfall at this stage. We knew this would be difficult. I don’t think I can go into details because I don’t have the direct management of that question.

Q - Go on, put your head on the block.

Well, it’s not a matter of that; it’s just that’s not my particular responsibility at the moment, although I’m rather concerned about it.

===

Well, we’ve talked quote a lot about ARCIC3 in my visit to Pope Benedict last year, no, the year before was my formal visit. We discussed what the agenda might be for an ARCIC3. I think that our Roman Catholic friends are looking at what emerges from this conference to see how that might feed into any planning for ARCIC3. I’m still very hopeful about that. And while full visible union may, from the perspective of the Vatican, look further off than they would like in the light of some of the decisions made by Anglican provinces, particularly around the ordination of women, I don’t think that’s a reason for suspending the dialogue or giving up on it.

===

We’ve had some discussions about this. I don’t think I would want to presume to speak for him in his absence, but it has been discussed with him and he has discussed it with some of the other Primates involved, I know.

===

We have regular Primates’ Meetings. They have been on average, I suppose, every two years for the past 15 years or so, occasionally more frequently; and just occasionally a little less. Nothing special about convening a Primates’ Meeting except that with the Consultative Council coming up next year it is quite important the Primates have a chance to discuss some of the possible agenda before that.

As to the overall perspective on the Primates Meeting, I’ve read quite carefully through, I think, all the reports from yesterday’s discussions in the Indaba groups and found some quite mixed messages about the Primates meeting.

In past Lambeth Conferences there has been encouragement for the Primates to do a bit more. When the Primates do try to do a little bit more it is often not very well received and so we are on a bit of that cycle, I suspect.

The things that need to be balanced, I guess are that Primates are in some sense people well equipped to speak for the wholeness of their particular region or local church at the same time there is a sense that all of our Anglican communities are also synodical bodies in which the senior bishop is not the only voice. So balancing the Primates and the ACC has always been a bit of a juggling act and I guess it will go on being that.

===

The reflections document is just that. It represents the distillation of what the Indaba groups have been saying and saying they would like to happen. In the nature of the case, with such a diffuse amount of material it is quite hard to pin that down to five points.

What I have tried to do with the Presidential Address is to say: It seems to me we have got the makings of a consensus around moratoria. It seems to me we have got the makings of a consensus around covenant. It seems to me we have got the consensus around better co-ordination for relief and development work - that’s quite a bit to be going on with.

And there’s also quite a strong groundswell, really back to the question over here a few minutes ago, about looking at how the Instruments of Communion work and inter-relate which nobody is terribly happy about at the moment and we all know needs work.

===

What I said in the Presidential Address was that I am looking for some specific proposals because we haven’t got them yet. And I want those ideally within quite a short time frame. I think the attempt to shape this was something to do with the fact that nobody was very happy with some new strictly Canonical structure but that there was a sense that something in the Dar es Salaam Primates’ Communiqué about how external support might be factored into a local church like the Episcopal Church. Something is worth pursuing so it is putting a bit of flesh on that.

===

I think the answer would have to be yes from where I stand. I hope that a little bit more mutual responsibility and accountability and a bit more willingness to walk in step will make us more like a church. Not, I have to say it again, not a centralised body with enforced conformity but that willing acceptance of moving together.

More of a church in the sense that that structure, as I again said in the Presidential Address, represents a bit of a challenge to the tendency for local churches to get trapped in their local contexts. I think that’s a danger. The catholic ideal, if you like, the global ideal, is one of the ways we push back against those tendencies.

===

I think that for another province to provide that kind of pastoral and, supposedly, canonical oversight for a minority group is, in effect, to say ‘It’s no use negotiating with the local body. Nothing they come up with is going to be adequate and you can’t trust them, as it were, to safeguard the essence of Christian orthodoxy here.’

I’m not saying that’s stated by everybody involved in interventions but you hear it from time to time and I’ve seen it written and I’ve heard it in correspondence from time to time. And I’m simply saying that’s not something any Christian should say lightly of any other.

===

I think if the north American churches don’t accept the need for moratoria then, to say the least, we are no further forward. The idea of a covenant which includes as many of them as possible becomes more fragile and that means as a communion we continue to be in grave peril.

===

I’d say that the process of the Lambeth Conference rested on a particular assumption: the assumption that bishops needed to speak to each other in a safe place and were capable of doing it respectfully and prayerfully. That’s the first thing.

Second thing, coming out of that: the Communion, the Anglican Communion needed to know how deep the commitment was, on people’s part, to staying together. I think we’ve got a bit of an answer to that.

Third: I think the Communion needed to know what form of action and witness was still possible and credible for it. Even in its current rather wobbly state. And I think something around the March of Witness, something around a few other things that have come up has helped to answer that.

I think that might be where I would begin to talk about the document.

===

I think in the back of the Reflections document and the Presidential Address I will need to write a pastoral letter to go around the Communion. And because contact and exchange continues with many many people who were at Gafcon, including some of those who were also here, I think I would want to know first of all: What do you think of this? How far does this go to meeting concerns? How far does this provide a basis for co-operation? And tease that out a bit in the months ahead.

===

Can I distinguish two things: The first is a kind of finalising the text that people will be signing up to or otherwise, and I hope that could be done within the next 12 months because all the meetings coming up are orientated towards that.

Now, the different question is how soon can one expect buy-in from the provinces. And that depends on the fact that all the Anglican provinces have different rhythms of provincial meeting.

So where the General Synod of the Church of England meets two or three times a year, there are provinces where Synods meet once every three years, so ideally one would hope for a round-up by, I suppose 2012/2013, but that’s because of the rhythms of meetings. I don’t think one can short-circuit that the way some would like to, but I think it’s important, all the more important, therefore, to have a much clearer short-term timetable so that we can say that at least is the text we want to see.

===

One of the problems around this is that people in different parts of the world clearly define ‘public’ and ‘rights’ and ‘blessing’ in rather different ways. I refer, I think, to the address I gave this afternoon. As soon as there is a liturgical form it gives the impression ‘this has the church’s stamp on it.’ As soon as that happens you have moved to another level of apparent commitment, and that’s nowhere near where the church, the Anglican Communion generally is.

In the meeting of Primates at Gramado, in Brazil some years ago, the phrase ‘a variety of pastoral response’ was used as an attempt to recognise that there were places where private prayers were said and, although there is a lot of unease about that, there wasn’t quite the same sense of feeling about that as about public liturgies.

But again, ‘pastoral response’ has been interpreted very differently and there are those in the USA who would say ‘Pastoral Response, well, it’s a blessing’ and I’m not very happy about that.

===

The Indaba groups had a lot of discussion about whether a moratorium should have a time limit on it. Most do. I think, frankly, it is very difficult to come to a common mind on this at present. And I think a phrase used by the Primates: ‘unless and until a wider consensus emerges’ is about as specific as it has got in the past. So I don’t think we are much further forward than that at the moment.

===

I am saying that the current policy, well, I wouldn’t say policy of the American church but some of the practices of dioceses, or certain dioceses, in the American church continues to put our relations as a communion under strain and some problems won’t be resolved while those practices continue.

I might just add, perhaps, a note here. One complication in discussing all this is that assumption, readily made, that the blessing of a same sex union and / or the ordination of someone in an active same-sex relationship is simply a matter of human rights.

I’m not saying that is claimed by people within the church but you hear that from time to time. You hear it in the secular press. And that’s an assumption that I can’t accept because I think the issues about what conditions the church lays down for the blessing of unions has to be shaped by its own thinking, its own praying.

Now, there is perfectly reasonable theological reflection on this in some areas, I’m not saying there isn’t. But I don’t want to short-circuit that argument by saying it’s just a matter of rights.

Therefore to say the rights and dignities of gay and lesbian people, as people in society, is not what we are disagreeing about. I hope and pray anyway.
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