wfn.org | [ENS] Special Commission on Episcopal Church,

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@episcopalchurch.org>]

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Special Commission on Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion to meet
Presiding Bishop, House of Deputies President appoint members

By Mary Frances Schjonberg

ENS 092005-2

[Episcopal News Service] The first meeting of the Special Commission on
the
Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion will take place Monday,
November
7, at the Episcopal Church Center in New York.

The 14-member commission was appointed by Presiding Bishop Frank T.
Griswold
and the Very Rev. George L. W. Werner, president of the House of
Deputies..
They charged the commission with preparing the way for General
Convention to
receive and respond to the Windsor Report, the February 2005
communiqué of
the primates from Dromantine, and the actions of the June 2005 meeting
of
the Anglican Consultative Council.

The Windsor Report was released in October, 2004 by the Lambeth
Commission
on Communion, established by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2003 in
response to reactions in the world-wide Anglican Communion to the
election
and consecration in 2003 of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
Robinson is an openly gay man who lives in a committed relationship with
his
long-term partner.

The report also addressed the decision of the Canadian diocese of New
Westminster to permit the blessing of committed same-gender
relationships.

The primates of the Anglican Communion issued a communiqué at the end
of
their meeting in Dromantine in Northern Ireland. The primates asked,
among
other points, that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of
Canada
?respond through their relevant constitutional bodies to the questions
specifically addressed to them in the Windsor Report as they consider
their
place within the Anglican Communion.

In June, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the principal
deliberative
body of the Anglican Communion and one of its four  ?instruments of
unity,
agreed with the primates? request that ACC members from the United
States
and Canada voluntarily withdraw from active membership on the council
for
the time leading up to the next Lambeth Conference in 2008. Those
members
did withdraw and attended the June meeting as observers. They and others
made requested presentations to the ACC about both church?s experience
with
same-gender relationships.

Griswold and Werner asked the commission, on which they both will serve
as
well, to consider those reports and actions ?as they pertain to the
life of
the Episcopal Church and our relationship to the other provinces of the
Anglican Communion.

?In doing so, the Special Commission will need to consider how we
within the
Episcopal Church can be faithful to God's mission in the  world as we
continue to live with divergent points of view held by faithful men and
women,? the two wrote in a letter to the members.

?We were seeking a group of people of diverse opinion of the highest
quality
who can handle such complex issues as these,? Werner told Episcopal
News
Service. ?I am deeply grateful to those who have accepted this
appointment.

The Special Commission will prepare a report with proposed resolutions,
if
any, for the Blue Book of the 75th General Convention next June. The
Blue
Book is each convention?s official compilation of reports and proposed
legislation from the committees, commissions,  agencies, and boards of
the
General Convention.

The commission?s members are: Sarah Dylan Breuer of Frederick,
Maryland
(Province III); the Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas of Episcopal Divinity School
(Province I); the Rev. Mark Harris of Lewes, Delaware (Province III);
the
Rev. Dr. Katherine Grieb of Virginia Theological Seminary (Province
III);
the Rt. Rev. Dorsey F. Henderson Jr., bishop of Upper South Carolina
(Province IV); the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, bishop of Nevada
(Province VIII); the Rt. Rev. Henry Louttit Jr., bishop of Georgia
(Province
IV); the Rev.. Charles E. Osberger of Wye Mills, Maryland (Province
III);
the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk, bishop of New York (Province II); the Rev.
Canon
Rosemari Sullivan of Virginia Theological Seminary (Province III);
Katherine
Tyler Scott of Indianapolis, Indiana (Province V); the Rev. Francis H.
Wade
of Washington, D.C. (Province III); Christopher Wells of South Bend,
Indiana
(Province V); and the Rev. Sandra A. Wilson of South Orange, New Jersey
(Province II).

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the
Episcopal News Service.

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