Anglican Action As Communion Consequences Kick In

Phrases such as 'Anglican action' and 'Communion consequences' may seem oxymoronic. But not today, as reported by the Anglican Communion News Service, including this:

"Last Thursday I sent letters to members of the Inter Anglican ecumenical dialogues who are from the Episcopal Church informing them that their membership of these dialogues has been discontinued. In doing so I want to emphasise again as I did in those letters the exceptional service of each and every person to that important work and to acknowledge without exception the enormous contribution each person has made.

I have also written to the person from the Episcopal Church who is a member of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO), withdrawing that person’s membership and inviting her to serve as a Consultant to that body.

I have written to the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada to ask whether its General Synod or House of Bishops has formally adopted policies that breach the second moratorium in the Windsor Report, authorising public rites of same-sex blessing.

At the same time I have written to the Primate of the Southern Cone, whose interventions in other provinces are referred to in the Windsor Continuation Group Report asking him for clarification as to the current state of his interventions into other provinces.

These are the actions which flow immediately from the Archbishop’s Pentecost Letter.

Looking forward, there are two questions in this area which I would like to see addressed: One is the relationship between the actions of a bishop or of a diocese and the responsibilities of a province for those actions – this issue is referred to in the Windsor Continuation Group Report para 48.

Secondly, to ask the question of whether maintaining within the fellowship of one’s Provincial House of Bishops, a bishop who is exercising episcopal ministry in another province without the expressed permission of that province or the local bishop, constitutes an intervention and is therefore a breach of the third moratorium.

The Revd Canon Kenneth Kearon."

Intriguing, and pleasing for this particular observer of Anglican Communion life, is the refreshed role of the Windsor Report in guiding these actions. If Communion means some kind of working together on matters of concern across the whole organisation, some kind of common mindedness about Anglican faith and order, then something rather than nothing needs to guide us. The Windsor Report arose from a common mind to respond to events in 2003. Despite much ado about it, clamour of doom and gloom from the chattering classes, it has represented the best a Communion-which-is-not-a-church could offer by way of magisterial wisdom. For some of us it perhaps could be taken off the shelf and dusted!