Author Archive
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Reports this week from the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia indicate that it passed a resolution approving in principle the first three sections of the Anglican Covenant, but requesting legal advice on the “appropriateness” of Paragraph 4.2.8. The relevant clause of the resolution as passed reads as follows:
Requests the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to obtain an opinion from the Legal Advisor to the Anglican Consultative Council and from the Chancellors and Legal Advisors Committee of this church regarding the appropriateness of the provisions of Clause 4.2.8 of the proposed Covenant in relation to decisions regarding membership of the Anglican Consultative Council….
Although this request for legal advice applies only to Paragraph 4.2.8, it is clear from the vote and the debate that the dissatisfaction in New Zealand extends to Section 4 as a whole. The resolution was authored by Dr. Tony Fitchett, who was the chairman of the resolutions committee at ACC-14 in Jamaica that drafted the resolutions on the Covenant debated at that ACC meeting. Since ACC-14, Dr. Fitchett has served on the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, the body that approved the final text of the Covenant last December. Whatever Dr. Fitchett’s views of the Covenant were in December, he is now very much opposed to Section 4:
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May 13 2010 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
We at ACI have often written in recent years about the autonomy of dioceses within the constitutional polity of The Episcopal Church. Indeed, as we have noted elsewhere, TEC’s polity mirrors that of the Anglican Communion as a whole. That is, the churches of the Communion are autonomous in the sense that they are self-governing, but by tradition, now articulated in the Anglican Covenant, they are bound one to another by mutual subjection in the Lord. In The Episcopal Church our dioceses, by constitution, are autonomous. What we all too often have not practiced either in our internal or external relations is mutual subjection.
This is not a new problem. In his volume on TEC’s governance in “The Church’s Teaching” series, Canon Dawley, who recognized that the “independence” of the diocese and its bishop “in respect of the rest of the Church is almost complete,” went on to caution:
While there may be many good reasons for not changing the constitutional arrangements which have resulted in this diocesan independence, it must be recognized that at times it has seriously handicapped the effort of the Episcopal Church on the national level. Parochialism, or the absorption of the people of a parish with their own affairs to the exclusion of their responsibilities to the whole Church, is a common temptation every Christian community must face; there may also be an equally self-absorbing ‘diocesanism.” (p.116.)
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April 04 2010 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
In his recent address to his diocese, Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina identified a challenge confronting both his diocese and the wider Episcopal Church:
an entirely new challenge has surfaced: A constitutional question about the ability of a diocese to govern its common life in a way that is obedient to the teaching of the Bible, the received heritage of The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and in accordance with The Constitution & Canons of The Episcopal Church….
It is a challenge to how for over two hundred years The Episcopal Church has carried out its mission and ministry. It is one of the ironies of this time that we in a diocese like South Carolina, which has been one of the most vigorous critics of the “national” church, should be the ones that are called to defend the polity of TEC—to defend the way Episcopalians have for so long carried out their mission. But history is full of such paradoxes. In standing up and protecting our autonomy or independence as a diocese in TEC, in protecting the diocesan bishop’s authority to shepherd the parishes and missions of his diocese, and in defending the bishop and, in his absence, the Standing Committee as the Ecclesiastical Authority, we are in fact defending how TEC has carried out its ministry and mission for these many years. Every Diocesan Bishop, every Standing Committee, indeed every Episcopalian ought to know that if this is allowed to stand, that if The Presiding Bishop and her chancellor are allowed to hire an attorney in a diocese of this Church, to look over the shoulder of any bishop or worse dictate to that Bishop or Standing Committee how they are to deal with the parishes and missions under their care, imposing upon them mandates or directives as to how they disburse or purchase property then we have entered into a new era of unprecedented hierarchy, and greater autocratic leadership from the Presiding Bishop’s office and his or her chancellor.
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April 03 2010 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
We have learned today from Bishop Mouneer Anis that he has submitted his resignation from the former joint standing committee. Following so closely the release in December of the final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant, this resignation underscores the extent to which the Anglican Communion is at a major crossroads. At this decisive moment, however, substantial doubts have been expressed both publicly by Bishop Mouneer and privately by others as to whether this committee, now the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, is the appropriate body to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant. These concerns point to the steps that we believe are necessary to restore the Communion so badly damaged by actions in North America over the last decade. In what follows, we seek first to outline the current structural challenges to the Covenant’s initial implementation. This will involve some important, if technical, analysis. Only then, however, can we make clear what, in our mind, these necessary steps for implementation are.
In summary, and on the basis of our continued conviction that the Covenant itself as currently formulated is a positive, faithful, and necessary basis for the renewal of the Anglican Communion and its member churches, we argue that:
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January 31 2010 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
1. Now that the final text of the Anglican Covenant has been sent to the member churches of the Communion, it is useful to outline the procedures by which member churches and other churches enter into the Covenant. In reviewing these procedures, it is important to be mindful of the distinction between committing to the Covenant, which churches may do at any time through affirmation or adoption, and formal recognition of that fact by the other Covenant churches or the Communion Instruments.
2. Section 4 of the Covenant specifies two procedures by which churches may enter the Covenant. Paragraph 4.1.4 deals with churches that already are recognized as members of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four Instruments of Communion. Paragraph 4.1.5 deals with “other churches.”
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December 22 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Monday, October 26th, 2009
The Diocese of South Carolina received a letter from Bonnie Anderson, the elected President of the House of Deputies. It was followed by a second statement saying that it was her practice to send such letters to each Diocese before their conventions.
In what follows we pay attention to sections of the first letter, where the President of the House of Deputies spoke at some length of her interpretation of the resolutions to be voted on at the South Carolina Diocesan Convention. These remarks seek to be substantive in character; presumably they represent her own considerations as well as those of the Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. For that reason they deserve comment and evaluation of their own.
At the outset, we note that it is the duty of the President of the House of Deputies to preside over that body. Neither she nor the Executive Council is the constitutionally-designated Ecclesiastical Authority in the Diocese of South Carolina. It is not her role to instruct or interfere with the lawful diocesan Authority.
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October 26 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
ACI welcomes the encouragement given by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the decision by the Diocesan Board and Standing Committee of the Diocese of Central Florida to affirm the first three sections of the Anglican Covenant. As we have previously stated, these sections entail substantial commitments to mutual responsibility and interdependence in the life of the Communion. While it is not ACI’s prerogative to release the full text of the letter, we are grateful for the Archbishop’s recognition that acceptance of the Covenant, in whatever form, is the means by which we declare our “intent to live within the agreed terms of the Communion’s life.”
We also acknowledge that endorsement by dioceses “would not instantly and automatically have an institutional effect (and so would not automatically affect the diocese’s legal relationship with the Province of TEC).” As the Archbishop notes, matters regarding the implementation of the Covenant in the Communion remain to be sorted out. No one can expect that the institutional effects will be felt “instantly or automatically.” But everyone recognizes that such effects, if not instant or automatic, are nevertheless certain.
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October 01 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
1. We address below issues related to the capacity of CP dioceses to sign the Anglican Covenant. We consider the text of Section 4 of the Ridley Cambridge draft, ACC Resolution 14.11, the unique polity of TEC and the ACC constitution and membership schedule. Although the final wording of Section 4 has not yet been agreed, the principles discussed below, particularly the constitutional integrity of member churches, are fundamental to Anglicanism and not in dispute.
Who Can Sign?
2. There are two paragraphs in Section 4 of the Ridley Cambridge text dealing with adoption of the Covenant by participating churches. Paragraph 4.1.4 invites “Every Church of the Anglican Communion, as recognised in accordance with the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council” to adopt the Covenant. Paragraph 4.1.5 provides “It shall be open to other Churches to adopt the Covenant.” These paragraphs treat the different kinds of adopting churches differently in terms of procedures and the effect of adoption by a particular church. Because CP dioceses are constituent parts of TEC, a member church of the ACC, they are covered under 4.1.4, but it should be noted that if this were disputed they would then come within the scope of 4.1.5.
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September 08 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
The approved text of the Anglican Covenant is already serving as a lens through which individual Anglican churches are inevitably and accurately being measured in terms of their character as “Communion churches.” Thus, in ways not yet properly noted by all, the text endorsed by the Anglican Consultative Council, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Joint Standing Committee in May 2009 has already raised and to a large extent provisionally answered the question “who can adopt this Covenant?” It is the purpose of this paper to explain why and how this is so, and to do this in relation particularly to The Episcopal Church, although it should be noted that the Covenant’s defining substance can be applied analogously to other Anglican churches as well.
The substantive sections of the Anglican Covenant, Sections 1-3, are now in final form. They will be sent to the churches of the Communion for adoption within a few months. A fourth section containing procedural provisions will be added to the other three at that time, but it remains subject to further review and “possible revision.” Section 4, however, either as it now stands or as revised, will not change the fundamental substantive commitments given by the covenanting churches. The scope of the fourth section is purely procedural.
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September 03 2009 | Articles
Written by: The Anglican Communion Institute, Inc.
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
On the matter of ACI authorship, first ACI statements entail input from several authors, in the US, UK and Canada. Fr Matthew Olver is a Priest at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas and a contributor to the covenant-communion website. On that site, individuals can submit material available on the web, and he forwarded the [...]
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August 06 2009 | Articles
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