From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Conservative Episcopal primates meeting
From
ENS.parti@ecunet.org (ENS)
Date
17 Dec 1999 10:20:47
For more information contact:
Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
kmccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens
99-188
Conservative primates open the way for action against 'liberal'
provinces
by Kathryn McCormick
(ENS) A group of conservative primates agreed at a mid-
November meeting in Kampala, Uganda, to voice their dismay at the
Primates' Meeting scheduled in March in Lisbon, Portugal at what
they see as some province's rejection of Anglican orthodoxy..
In a statement following the meeting, held from November 16
through 18, the primates said, "We will carefully document and
commend a proposal to this meeting in Portugal which, we believe,
will address the problems in our Communion caused by misuse of
provincial autonomy and innovations exceeding the limits of our
Anglican diversity. In this we will be acting upon Resolution
III.6(b) Lambeth '98."
That resolution asks that the Primates' Meeting assume
responsibility for intervening "in cases of exceptional
emergency" in provinces unable to resolve problems on their own
and for giving guidelines on the limits of diversity in
submitting to the authority of Holy Scripture and loyalty to
Anglican "tradition and formularies."
The primates said they would seek agreement on and the
progressive implementation of measures to "ensure a return to
historic standards for ordination, moral and marriage disciplines
where in our communion these have been notoriously breached."
The primates have now met twice to discuss the problems they feel
have been caused by liberals in the U.S., Canada and Scotland.
Rejecting for now a bid by First Promise, a group working to
see that conservative Anglicans gain their own bishops, the
primates nonetheless said, "We hear and understand what you have
told us about examples of abandonment of Anglican teaching,
discipline and practices in the provinces from which you come. We
share your distress on account of the damage and harmful results
of these increasingly serious developments."
Further, they assured conservatives "that among us are those
ready to respond to specific and urgent situations which may
arise in the months before the Primates' Meeting….Parishes and
clergy under threat because of their loyalty to the Gospel and to
Anglican standards must be supported and we will play our part in
such support."
They did not say what actions they might take.
Bishop James Stanton of Dallas, head of the American
Anglican Council and an observer at the Kampala meeting, asked
the primates there not to take precipitate action, according to a
report in the Church Times, the weekly newspaper of the Church of
England.
The newspaper quoted him as saying, "First Promise were
eager to get on with alternative jurisdiction. Our position has
been that while we believe there are great difficulties in ECUSA,
particularly with some liberal bishops running roughshod over
their people, we felt that whatever actions taken had to be in
unison. What Lambeth called for was action by the primates as a
whole."
He said all plans were based on goodwill and, according to
the newspaper, argued that the American bishops were eager to
support Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, who was working to
ensure a time of jubilee in the American church.
Attending the Kampala meeting were primates of Rwanda,
Uganda, Congo, Burundi, South East Asia, Tanzania, the Southern
Cone of America, and representatives of the Sudan and Kenya.
--Kathryn McCormick is associate director of News and Information
for the Episcopal Church.
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