Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Thus Spake the Secretary General ...

... in this reply to an inquiry regarding the upcoming "September Summit" from a colleague (shared with permission):

Thank you for your email. Its contents have been carefully noted. The meeting in September to which you refer has been convened precisely so that bishops who are asking for alternative primatial oversight can meet with their current primate and his successor to determine from within the Episcopal Church the best way forward. While the Archbishop of Canterbury had a role in establishing this meeting, and will be represented at it by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, it is intended to allow the Episcopal Church to reach its own conclusions, and does not represent any independent action by the Archbishop of Canterbury at all.

You may like to read Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold's recent comment on the meeting, which you will find here.

Do please join with us in praying for the well-being of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and that God's will for all God's children may be clearly known and heeded.

G K Cameron
Deputy Secretary General
Anglican Communion Office

2 comments:

SUSAN RUSSELL said...

Actually, it was pretty short and sweet:

"I have heard that there will be a meeting of only certain American bishops "to meet together to discuss some of the 'difficult'
issues facing the Church and to explore possible resolutions."

I have heard that the Archbishop of Canterbury requested this meeting. This is not his province and this is not his responsibility. Why were not all American bishops invited to this meeting?

As a member of the Episcopal Church of America, I strongly object to this meeting."

It seems to me that a lot of the confusion/concern/mis-information about this upcoming meeting could have beeh avoided if there had been speedier clarification from 815 about the context and focus of this meeting. Asking the specific bishops involved in the specific issue of asking for "Alernative Primatial Oversight" to meet with thier own primate and primate-elect to sort that out actually makes sense to me. It seems to me the kind of leadership the ABofC actually SHOULD be exercising. But the meeting was quickly "spun" in many places to be something completely different -- raising all kinds of unnecessary fears and expectations.

The vagueness of "discuss some of the difficult issues facing the Church" in the initial release immediately leads to reasonable questions like, "why is there no LGBT representation at the table, where are all the "other" bishops not-to-mention lay and clergy leadership?

Cameron's email makes clear that this is "a horse of a different color" and I'm grateful both for the clarification and for my colleague in sharing it with me ... so I could share it with ya'll!

Pfalz prophet said...

Wow, is there a possibility that we could actually discover Rowan William's agenda? I'm re-reading Andrew Linzey's and Richard Kirker's collection of papers on Windsor and I keep getting the same crawling sensation, that the ABC is using the uproar to increase his authority and become, sans name, an Anglican Pope, complete with magisterium from Africa and the ACN.

Who are Bps. Henderson, O'Neill, Sisk and Lipscomb? What decisions are they and their counterparts on the schismatic side making for TEC without the participation of the rest of us?

Thank you, Rev Susan, for your letter to the PB. I've only recently signed on, and my August "sabbatical" is over, I'll be joining in from time to time.