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ACNS 3895     |     IRELAND	|     18 OCTOBER 2004

Letter from the Most Revd Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh, to the Most
Revd Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the Windsor Report
2004

14 October 2004

The Most Revd and Rt Hon the Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace

14 October 2004

Dear Archbishop Rowan

I have the honour to submit to you the Report of the Lambeth Commission
on Communion, entitled 'The Windsor Report 2004'. In the last twelve
months, we have laboured hard and prayerfully listened to all shades of
opinion across the Anglican Communion, and have been able to come to a
common mind on a diagnosis for the current situation in the life of the
Communion, and the remedies which could be offered.

We have made a remarkable journey. The Commission members had strongly
held and differing opinions on both the presenting issues and their
underlying causes, and we have not been afraid to discuss those views
openly and honestly in our work. But equal to all of this is our central
belief that the forty-four churches of the Anglican Communion belong
together in witness and common mission for the sake of the Gospel, and
this has helped us to develop a set of unanimous recommendations.

As a hallmark of our endeavour, we believed that it was important to
mirror the values of the Gospel in our work - to look for healing not
division, for pastoral reconciliation and not punishment, to look to our
shared witness not only in our mission but in the processes by which our
Communion works out the current tensions.

The report you have before you is the result of our labours. It offers
analysis of all that, under God, our Communion can be, and of the
underlying nature of our present divisions. It makes proposals for the
future of the Communion, in particular for the exercise of your own
ministry, and invites all members to the Communion into a process of
reconciliation on the issues that divide us most sharply.

I should be grateful if you would lay this report before our fellow
primates at the earliest opportunity. We are asking much of them and
their provinces, but with the help of God, I believe that there is every
reason to be optimistic about the future that we can share.

Yours very sincerely,

+ Robin Armagh
The Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland

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