It is very nice to see ACANZP's own ++Winston Halapua featuring in an ACNS daily briefing. Briefing 2 (from Day 3) is on primacy. Here is the report re ++Winston's remarks:
"Whatever the similarities or differences between the roles and responsibilities of Primates across the Communion, seeing primacy as a gift rather than a right was a concept expressed by Archbishop Winston of The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand & Polynesia as he explained the concept of ‘Tikanga’.
He said the word meant “The place where you stand”, that your position was sacred ground gifted to you by your ancestors, your people, the environment. He said that the position of Primate was gifted to the role-bearer as a responsibility for a time and for the future. “You don’t own it,” he said, “the place [role] owns you. It’s a gift, not a right. It’s a privilege.” "
I like the idea of primacy as a gift rather than a right. Certainly the three primates of our church (++David Moxon, ++Brown Turei, ++Winston Halapua) conduct their roles with humility and care.
I confess to being slightly puzzled by the definition given of 'tikanga' and would appreciate any assistance ACANZP readers could give me. The definition given sounds to me more like a definition of another word, turangawaewae.
But if a bouquet can be given to ++Winston, should we throw a brickbat at the organisers of the meeting as a whole? Over on 'catholicity and covenant' a little sentence is picked up in the report:
"The question was raised, though not addressed in plenary, about how far Primates had a role in safeguarding the life of the Communion as a whole."
Errm, isn't that what many Anglicans with understanding of what is at stake in this meeting are looking for? A plenary addressing of the big questions about the life of the Communion as a whole, whether the primates do or do not have a role in respect of such big questions ... wouldn't that be a good idea?
Have the primates dropped the ball and been derelict in the duty of primatial care for the Communion?
6 comments:
"Have the primates dropped the ball and been derelict in the duty of primatial care for the Communion?"
Peter, with all due respect for you as a theological educator in the Diocese of Christchurch, can you be serious asking this question?
By the very nature of their provincial and individual titles as *Primate*, these gathered at Dublin are each Primate of an individual Province of the Communion. They are not, unlike the Archbishop of Canterbury, accorded the honorific title of 'Primus inter Pares'. Only the ABC has this title at the moment.
I'm sure some Primates of the Global South contingent - not at the Dublin Conference - would like that title to be given to one of themselves, but it is not likely, in the circumstances, to move to that extremity.
Those at the conference are concered, I am pretty sure, firstly with their own provincial affairs, while wanting to cooperate, as far as possible, in resurrecting the koinonia of the whole Communion. This is something GAFCON could not give a hoot about, obviously.
Hi Ron,
Yes, I am serious in raising the question. As I understand the communal life of the Communion there are four important entities at the top of all committee life of the Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates' Meeting, and the ACC.
Since we are constantly told that none of these bodies has any particular power (e.g. compared to a General Synod of a member church), then whatever power any of these bodies has is important in a situation in which something 'needs to be done' to improve it. My suggestion is that each body has a certain amount of persuasive power: each has a voice and it can be used for good (cf., for example, the pleas that primates say something condemning recent violence in Uganda).
Thus the primates meeting in a meeting called 'The Primates' Meeting' have an opportunity to lift their eyes from the provinces and address, in some appropriate way, the course the Communion is taking, visibly presented before their eyes through the empty seats of the absentee primates.
It would be a duty of care for such an important meeting (albeit, as said above, with very, very limited powers) to take some care of the Communion.
RE: "This is something GAFCON could not give a hoot about, obviously."
Father Ron Smith appears obsessed with "GAFCON" -- but "GAFCON" is made up of a mere six Anglican Communion Primates.
So I'm not certain what "GAFCON" has to do with Primatial action and dereliction of duty.
Look -- I'm a bit more moderate about this issue than Peter Carrell. I think that Primates as a whole have differing ideas of what they wish the Communion to be. I don't know why we should expect certain Primates -- who believe and promote one particular worldview -- should have the same ideas about the Anglican Communion's nature as certain other Primates who believe and promote an alternative and antithetical worldview.
I expect that a few of the Primates currently attending the "Primates Meeting" will eventually recognize that they desire the AC to be something far more than some of the other Primates . . . and things will all flesh out in a way that will allow the various groupings to engage in smaller groups of Primates holding similar foundational worldviews.
Sarah
"things will all flesh out in a way that will allow the various groupings to engage in smaller groups of Primates holding similar foundational worldviews."
- Sarah Hey -
Well, Sarah, one of those groups already moved away from everyone else in the communion at the GAFCON conference(s) - declaring their own 'Jerusalem Statement' about what they believed Anglcianism really needed to become to match their con/evo expectations.
Obsessions seem to be pretty copmmon on the Anglcian sites lately. Yours is with your often expressed problems with TEC, mine is everyone's problems with GAFCON.
Maybe obsession is not a bad thing if it helps more people to understand what is really going on under the swurface of things.
RE: "Well, Sarah, one of those groups already moved away from everyone else in the communion at the GAFCON conference(s) . . . "
Sure -- but I expect that group will end up merely a small subset of the larger group of Primates that end up grouping and working together. In fact -- it's already happened!
RE: "Yours is with your often expressed problems with TEC . . . "
; > ) Well -- to parallel your words "everyone's problems with GAFCON" you'd have to say "everyone's problems with TEC . . . " But that sort of points up the fact that not "everyone" has problems with GAFCON. Revisionists do, of course, just as traditionalists have problems with the current leaders of TECusa.
Further, I don't randomly bring up TEC in comments about "Primatial Duty" unless it's actually relevant. You bring up GAFCON on practically every thread concerning a group of Primates who aren't attending the Dublin meeting -- I expect because you don't quite yet know what to do with the larger set of non-GAFCON Primates who now have opted out of working with the PB/RW.
That's fine of course -- I'll just keep pointing out the facts and that is that the group of Primates who are now no longer hanging out with the PB is expanding rather nicely.
I'm hopeful that this Primates Meeting will be recognized by some of the traditional Primates who attended as so silly that they'll grow as exasperated as some of the Primates who attended Lambeth grew with that meeting.
But we'll see . . .
Sarah
"I'll just keep pointing out the facts and that is that the group of Primates who are now no longer hanging out with the PB is expanding rather nicely."
- Sarah Hey (Anonymous) -
Well, Anonymous (or Sarah Hey, take your pick), I am aware that you are cobsidered by ACNA, A.C.I. and dissenting members of TEC that you have the charism of 'speaking out' against your own Presiding Bishop; but on the w.w.w., each person gets to say their piece, and yours is only as authentic as anyone else's in the blogosphere.
I am also aware that you, like Mr. Dasvid Virtue, are an American reporter on the so-called *Global Orthodox Anglican* reservation, who likes to criticise your own Church family in TEC, for your own particular reasons. However, you need to know that we Anglicans in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Pacifica, have our own ideas about ACNA and ACI that probably equate to your ideas about TEC. So, wherever I perceive you to over-accentuate what you see as the errors of TEC, and the Anglican Communion Office in general, I will continue to joust with you, on this and other sites that permit it - in the firm belief that the truth of the inclusive nature of the Gospel of OLJC needs to be told.
What I do find amazing is your lack of loyalty to your own part of the Anglican Communion in North America. I would have thought that you, Sarah, as a feisty female, would have relished the idea of a
woman, who is as gifted as Bishop Katherine Schori is, with a charism of leadership in the Church.
But then, you can't please everyone. I know some folks, who call themselves traditionalists, have problems with the fact that Jesus was beholden to a woman's rule when his mother Mary looked after him in infancy - a woman whom 'all generation would later call "Blessed".
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