A renewed plan for moratoria on same sex blessings, gay consecrations and cross border interventions were outlined at the Lambeth Conference earlier this week.Together with plans for a Faith and Order Commission, a Pastoral Forum, a safe-space for parishes under overseas oversight until they can be reunited with provincial bodies, the Windsor Continuation Group drip-fed their recommendations into the Conference with a series of three special hearings.
Yet American and Canadian Bishops told a hearing this week that dioceses were openly authorizing and allowing same sex blessings and did not intend to stop.
Of the African Primates who have crossed borders into the United States to consecrate American missionary bishops, none of them are in attendance at the Lambeth Conference to respond in person to the call for a moratorium on their actions.
The road testing of proposals by the Windsor Continuation Group has met significant resistance in the conference.
Liberal US bishops have dominated the hearings, according to participants. “I would have liked to see something a little more positive and less punitive,” said Bishop Kirk Smith of Arizona.
Bishop Michael Ingham of Canada slammed the proposals as a ‘non-starter’ for his diocese, New Westminster, which was the first in 2002 to go ahead with authorizing same sex blessings.
The Windsor Report, he argued, was not an agreed policy, or a doctrine within the Communion. “And yet the Windsor Report is being introduced today as an agreed benchmark from which it is assumed we can move forward. This is not so.” He also slammed the Group’s proposals as ‘punitive in tone’ and argued they entrenched the principle of outside interventions.
Proposals for a Faith and Order Commission, and a Pastoral Forum have all been trialled together with the renewed calls for moratoria.
The group’s chairman, Clive Handford, former Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, spelled out clearly that the reflections, were just that, not a report.
A final report incorporating the contributions of bishops at Lambeth will go to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Spring in time for debate at the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica.
Bishop Handford said that the proposed Pastoral Forum, together with the moratoria, would create a breathing space amid the divisive conflict over homosexuality since the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire in 2003.
The Forum would be set up rapidly under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the chairmanship of a bishop to help resolve crisis situations as they arise.
The forum would create a ‘holding bay’ for those parishes or dioceses which have already broken away under the leadership of overseas primates, until they could be reconciled through negotiation with their parent churches. Members of the Forum representing the diversity of theological views would travel and offer pastoral advice in “conflicted, confused and fragile situations.”
The scheme was compared to extended family care for children in dysfunctional nuclear families, or with ‘escrow’ accounts which are created to hold monies in trust for their rightful owner on completion of certain undertakings. The Windsor Continuation Group said of moratoria called for in the original Windsor Report of 2004, that these requests had been “less than wholeheartedly embraced on both sides.”
"If the three moratoria are not observed the Communion is likely to fracture. The patterns of [current] actions could lead to irreparable damage."
On the question of whether the moratoria should be restrospective, Bishop Handford, argued that Bishop Gene Robinson would not be required to resign, but that any parishes or dioceses which had come under oversight from the Provinces of Southern Cone, Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria, should come into the proposed ‘holding bay’ of the Pastoral Forum.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce