Readers may recall from our General Synod in May that legal advice was to be sought from the Communion as to the compatibility between the Covenant and the ACC Constitution:
"4. 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;"
According to the ACI and a recent posting there regarding continuing questions, seemingly without adequate answers, about the legal status of the Standing Committee of the Communion, this is where we are at:
"we note that our original paper dealt in large part with the possible incompatibility of the new Articles with the Anglican Covenant now being considered by the member churches. Canon Rees does not even mention the Covenant in his interview, notwithstanding the fact that he has just rendered legal advice to the standing committee in response to a question raised by the province of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia suggesting that the Covenant and ACC constitution are not compatible. This advice has not been made public even as the Covenant is being considered for adoption by the member churches. How can they make an informed decision on adoption when this issue has been addressed by the legal advisor but not all the churches have been informed of the answer?" [my italics]
So, where is that advice and when will we, the hoi polloi of ACANZP find out?
Now, to the north-west of Down Under, Michael Poon joins with ACI in asking questions of Canon Rees. And offers this tantalising comment (noticed on Stand Firm):
"The controversy on the new ACC Constitution may well derail the already difficult processes in the adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant. Churches in the southern continents may well be tempted to look for more radical alternatives for a more permanent solution to recent Anglican disputes." [my italics]
The thing about Anglicans is that, in the end, we do not like sectarianism in our midst. We crave 'communion'. And we prefer it to be on satisfactory terms!
Sharpen up, team ACO!!
28 comments:
IMO there are more legal issues than this for our province. We only recognise one instrument of communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Covenant has more instruments of communion - we would need the lengthy process: General Synod, Diocesan Synods & Hui Amorangi, General Synod, a year lying on the table, prior to even looking at the covenant.
Our GS has a history of being fuzzy on legalities - on this one it cannot afford to be.
IYO the Covenant is useless unless all provinces sign it.
IMO the covenant, even if signed by lots, will make no real difference to the real issue.
I suggest, everyone should wait (OK Mexico couldn't!) until the CofE signs the Covenant. It will be fascinating to see the CofE hand over its sovereignty to a body external to that island. Let's see the British parliament have a debate about that! After that is over, and we have altered our constitution as I suggest above, and if Jesus hasn't come back by then, then let's have the discussion about whether we too might sign up :-)
I suggest everyone follows Mexico's lead, including the C of E (which should not have a problem because the ACC is now (sort of, somehow) set up as an English legal body) :)
... it could be a Mexican wave through the Anglican Crowd ...
Ah, yes, the Mexican-style sort-of, somehow legal approach may just work here! But I'm still not sure how we can sign a covenant about instruments of communion without first recognising those instruments via the lengthy process I outlined. Do sort of somehow explain that, please.
ps. In the Covenant the CofE is not handing over sovereignty to ACC, but to ACSC. Is that also now Mexican-style sort of somehow an English legal body?
pps. A Mexican wave is only a Mexican wave if some are standing whilst others are sitting. I suspect you may be closer to the truth: if some sign, others will not & if the others sign, some will not. There you have it, the Anglican Communion's Mexican Covenant wave. I don't see TEC and Nigeria standing or sitting at the same time...
Hi Bosco,
I am not the best person to ask about the legal niceties here!
(1) I accept, because many people voice it, that there may be a legal impediment to the established C of E signing the Covenant.
(2) I acknowledge that the likelihood of 100% sign up (i.e. even if the C of E does) is unlikely; but if Nigeria and TEC were the only non-signatory, I think the rest of the Communion could live with that, and get on with being a Covenanted Communion.
(3) I would hope that our church makes whatever changes it needs to make in order to embrace the Covenant and thus signal its resolve to live interdependently with other Anglicans around the world.
Unfortunately the essence of the proposed covenant is the "legal niceties". If you, as one of the best-informed, strongest public advocates for the covenant keep changing your position as you again have here, and also acknowledge that you don't understand the legalities central to it, why should we sign up?
Hi Bosco,
There are a number of legal niceties for potential parties to the Covenant to think about. One concerns the complex character of the establishment of the C of E and whether that enables the C of E to be a signatory to the Covenant or not. My declaration of inability to know, understand, or explain these legal niceties is simple modesty!
There is also the question of legal niceties surrounding a number of questions arising about the 'new' or 'revised' constitution of the ACC. Again, I am not the best person to attempt to answer these questions because no one seems to be offering satisfactory answers from within the ACO or Lambeth itself. These legal niceties do matter to the Covenant because if there is a legal problem here, then any dispute which arose post-Covenant would be (likely) unable to be dealt with. [to be cont'd.]
Hi Bosco,
[cont'd] There are then the legal niceties of the Covenant itself and whether it can in a meaningful way be implemented. They are not the legal niceties I was referring to in the comment you have challenged. If the ACC, and the AC Standing Committee are properly established, then they should be capable of performing roles assigned to them re the Covenant.
It remains my preference that 100% of the current Communion sign the Covenant (and that a way be found for a suitably modest and conciliatory ACNA to sign as well). In a comment above I expressed the view that the Comunion could probably move forward Covenantally with less than 100% signing up. But that may be a mistaken estimation.
Two points:
a) As you did not respond at all to my primary point, first paragraph of my comment August 16, 2010 12:26 PM, am I to understand that you agree with my understanding of the legal niceties involved within our own province for any signing of the covenant to be legitimate? A very lengthy process.
b) I take issue with point 3 of your comment August 16, 2010 2:51 PM. Its future tone I would at least write as present continuous and, hence, including our past. We have long lived interdependently with other Anglicans around the world, we do so currently. We have done so, and continue to do so, without a signed covenant. Nor do I think it at all fair to suggest that those who are against signing the covenant or not in favour of it, somehow are painted as not seeking to “live interdependently with other Anglicans around the world” or worse, seeking to not “live interdependently with other Anglicans around the world.” If said often enough, some might even come to believe it themselves. But I do not believe that is the intention of the majority you so describe at all. If the discussion is to have more light than heat, let’s at least be fair about what the other position is and listen to each other. If we cannot do that, no amount of listing and signing will bring true Christian unity.
Blessings
Bosco
Hi Bosco,
You may be correct; I am open to learning about the legal process we will have to engage in. As I understand the situation, some enshrining of the Covenant in our constitution would require the lengthy and extensive process you outline, and would involve whatever changes were required about Instruments of Unity. But I would think it worth also considering whether our commitment to live by the Covenant could take effect via a Standing Resolution of General Synod, and thus not require the twice round process. Like you I hope our GS gets it right, and that, surely, means getting some very good legal advice.
Hi Bosco,
Re interdependency:
Ever since the ordination of Gene Robinson, when TEC made a decision to live independently of the Communion when it suited it, a new question about how our interdependence as Anglican churches in communion with one another has arisen. The Covenant is a proposal to assist the answer to that question. If it takes effect on the life of the Communion then refusal by a minority to sign the Covenant will be a signal that a restricted form of interdependency is being pursued. This may make very little difference to anything. Or it may make a very big difference, e.g. non-signers [as I understand it] would be excluded from making Communion-wide decisions. Over time that could mean that the direction the Communion takes is further and further apart from the non-signers.
Conversely, if the Covenant fails, I think we will find interdependency affected in other ways. The way we have been will not be the way we will be.
Thanks for the clarifications, Peter.
Can you help us further by listing off some concrete examples of "Communion-wide decisions" we have made thus far, to help further clarify what sort of things you are specifically talking about that would make such "a very big difference".
Hi Bosco,
It depends what you mean by a 'decision'! Some thought a decision was made when Resolution 1.10 (1998) was passed; others do not!
In this stream of comments I have in mind decisions of the future which I think need to be in term of some issues which need addressing: e.g.
(1) given the recriminations about 1.10 (1998) I think the Communion should make a considered decision about relationship standards pertaining to bishops (if not to clergy and laity);
(2) given difficulties in our relationship with Rome through this time, I suggest a need for a Communion-wide decision on whether we are or are not committed to communion with Rome as something we can make reasonable progress on during this century;
(3) a Covenanted Communion could usefully build on unity around the Covenant and explore whether we can refind some form of Anglican common prayer;
(4) it would be good to see some tidying up of expectations re baptism before eucharist rather than the 'open to the unbaptised table' approach creeping into parts of the Communion.
I think you have clarified the point well. The Communion has never previously clearly made a single "Communion-wide decision". What you are describing as a "big difference" in possibly not having a part in never-before-tried Communion-wide decisions may be as risky as the possibly-unworkable, and certainly not-mentioned-in-the-Covenant concept of trying the total novelty of attempting to make a clear "Communion-wide decision".
You may yet have to redraft the Covenant if you want it to do anything like this.
I am once again more convinced that the Covenant just will not do what those who are in favour of it think it will and should accomplish. And your hopes expressed in a brief list here are yet another such example.
Blessings
Bosco
Hi Bosco,
I think I differ on whether or not 'Communion-wide' decisions would be a novelty or not. All sorts of Communion-wide decisions have been made, albeit often by the process of agreeing to be active in certain ways, including bishops turning up at Lambeth en masse, others participating in ACC, and wide assent to the Communion participating in formal conversation with Rome via ARCIC.
It is not so much a question of the Covenant needing re-design for the purpose of providing for Communion-wide decisions, as that the Covenant [if signed by a majority at least] will offer a basis on which member churches will have voting power in Anglican Communion meetings: Covenant signers vote, non-signers do not. If and when AC meetings engage with 'Communion-wide decisions', then the Covenant will have effect on the making of the decisions. [cont'd]
Hi Bosco, [cont'd.]
Let us suppose the Covenant is not agreed to with anything like a workable majority. That means a 'Communion-wide' decision will have been made: to not have a Covenant!
Almost certainly that will concomitantly involve another Communion-wide decision: to further fragment the Communion.
Then, there are signs that probably (some might say 'certainly'), this fragmentation will be formalised into at least two global Anglican entities, one of which will be a 'remnant Anglican Communion.'
My question to Covenant-doubters (such as yourself, but not only to you) is: do you have an alternative proposal for (1) at least stemming the tide of fragmentation of the Communion, (2) at best restoring union to the Communion?
I actually think we do not differ on whether there have been Communion-wide decisions as you desire. It was a genuine question on my part – and you have not been able to come up with a single clear one. Eg. “bishops turning up at Lambeth en masse” is not at all a “Communion-wide decision” – the ABC invites them, most come, some don’t. Their voting is not binding on provinces, the Lambeth Conference isn’t even mentioned in our constitution, formularies, etc. People regularly may refer to it as an “instrument of communion”, but we don’t even have a provincial agreement that this meeting is such.
“the Covenant [if signed by a majority at least] will offer a basis on which member churches will have voting power in Anglican Communion meetings: Covenant signers vote, non-signers do not.” This may or may not very well happen – but currently this is totally your conjecture. There is nothing in the actual Covenant itself supporting your position. Again – supporters of the covenant fantasise that it will do things that it is not actually designed to do.
My regular response to your particular question, and I’m sure I’ve made it on this blog, is that nothing has concretely changed in relation to us. Fr Hugh Bowron in advocating the Covenant at our diocesan synod spoke of his delight at having been able to study in USA and held up a future where that wouldn’t be possible if we didn’t accept the Covenant. Signing or not signing will not make any such concrete changes.
Your belief, for example, that the Covenant will restore common prayer to the Communion, again may I respectfully suggest, is misplaced. We cannot even restore common prayer to our tiny diocese where we have in place far stronger measures than the Covenant.
The Covenant just will not do what your thread here and elsewhere thinks it will. If you want it to do these things you need to radically redraft it.
Blessings
Bosco
Hi Bosco,
I appreciate your engagement on the topic as it exposes weak points in the argumentation. It could be that as a result I lose my fervour for the Covenant ... and it could be that the arguments are strengthened!
Perhaps I could respond in this manner which I think both shows appreciation for what you are saying but also maintains a commitment to consideration of the Covenant: broadly speaking there are three scenarios for the future of the Anglican Communion in relation to the Covenant, and I rank them in order of contribution to much needed renewal of communion:
(1) An overwhelming majority (100% desirable) of the Communion's member churches sign the Covenant signalling both a renewal of commitment to fellowship and a resolve to live interdependently in the light of the Covenant (with effect of ruling out certain independent actions which have occurred in the past, but would now be a thing of the past).
(2) An overwhelming majority of the Communion do not sign the Covenant, thus killing it dead. Fragmentation of the Communion continues, but some member churches continue to interact interdependently as in former days. Little changes for them, but they are now members of a Communion which is a shadow of its former self.
(3) Around a half of the member churches sign the Covenant. The Covenant is not quite dead, but nor is it quite alive. No one knows what to do next. There is talk of revising the Covenant with the hope that a revised Covenant garners more signatories. But everyone is getting a bit tired of the Covenant, and so things drag on ... meanwhile fragmentation continues ...
“Little changes for them, but they are now members of a Communion which is a shadow of its former self.”
How sad!!
It’s been interesting to read this exchange, but it’s very sad isn’t it? You are discussing a MAN MADE covenant whose failure you suspect will bring about the end of this Anglican communion!!! Doesn’t that strike you as sad? Sure, I suppose you could say the Creeds and the 39 articles are man made, but at least they have stood the test of time. Pity we’re not using them to draw closer in obedience to God our Father who wrote the Scriptures to guide us through just the sort of problems that face us .. but no, we really don’t want to listen to Him. We enjoy far too much disputing exactly what that Word says.
Hi Rosemary,
It is very nice to hear from you! And I hope you are enjoying better weather than we are in Christchurch ... in covenantal-speak, these are the days of Noah :)
To your comment: yes, it is a sad place that the Anglican Communion finds itself in. Personally, I would very much like to see a Communion which paid more heed to the 39A. I do not think paying that attention would be incompatible with also signing the Covenant.
Except that, as Peter has written previously, the 39 Articles are against the Covenant.
Alison
Hi Alison
I write so much I cannot remember writing that ... are you able to refresh my memory?
You have written about the Covenant being against Article 34. Possibly you cannot remember because maybe other articles are against it also.
Alison
Hi Alison,
Looking again at Article 34 I am not quite sure why I would have said that it is against the Covenant, so I may have to think about that again.
Generally speaking (i.e. allowing for a clause here and there which is irrelevant to life today, or irrelevant to churches outside of England), I think the 39A are compatible with the Covenant.
But I could be wrong ...
There is a comment early in this lengthy correspondence which reads, We have long lived interdependently with other Anglicans around the world, we do so currently.
However the present treatment of the Anglo Catholics in England is more along the lines, this is what we are going to do now and if you don't like, lump it or leave. This attitude remains a major concern for traditionalists in the ccontroversy over sexual morality (and no doubt vice verse for liberals who must also feel they are being told to lump current arrangements or leave).
The international crisis was sparked by what was perceived to be the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of the US Church to the wider communion.
Our church has a strong track record of ejecting bodies it disapproves of. Are we going to do this again or are we going to deligberately try to be a communion
The point of the covenant I take it is to provide a route map of the Communion's past best practice for conflict resolution, based on past precedents. Perhaps it will make no difference to the real issue, as suggested earlier - but perhaps it does make a difference, after, all whether we make our best efforts to prevent disaster or merely let events take their course. And perhaps the covenant would help this. Or not?
Rhys
Hi Rhys,
You bring up a much needed reminder: the broad, tolerant Anglican church has always, in the end, ejected those who try to push the church beyond certain (often unspecified) limits.
I agree: I think the Covenant could play a powerful role in keeping focus on what being Anglican means (and thus also on what not being Anglican means). I note that opponents of the Covenant generally do not spell out their proposal for an alternative transparent means of determining the future character of Anglicanism.
It is interesting, Peter, that you have two different threads running currently on your site. One is your passion to have a well-defined, distinctive Anglicanism with clearly defined boundaries of in and out all neat and tidy. An Anglicanism clearly distinct from other Christians. The other is your passion for a single, unified Christian church which includes all Christians regardless of current background. You may understand others, possibly without your agility, may struggle to hold this tension as you appear to do.
Ps. It does not help the discussion to keep moving one’s own position flexibly around and yet paint positions differing to your own moving one in words that they themselves might never consider using. Here the Covenant ceases being for you the opportunity to henceforth make Communion-wide decisions (which you claim we have done previously also – but I cannot find a single one) and now the Covenant “could play a powerful role in keeping focus on what being Anglican means”. The suggestion that those uncertain about the efficacy of the Covenant can’t articulate “what being Anglican means” is IMO grossly unfair. I think that the first three clauses of the proposed “Covenant” are quite a good brief summary. I’m with Rosemary on this one – I think we have already been given enough, including God’s covenant, and the danger is that by adding more we will actually be diminishing.
Blessings
Bosco
Hi Bosco,
Might be too much to say in a word-limited comment, so will post ...
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