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A response to the Communique of the Primates' Meeting, February 2005
by Warren Tanghe
2/28/2005
It is a mark of the continuing gravity of the crisis precipitated by the actions of the 2003 General Convention that the Primates of the Anglican Communion felt constrained to devote half their meeting to these issues, to the detriment of other issues confronting the Communion and its ministry to the world.
So long as "there remains very real questions about whether the North American churches are willing to accept the same teaching on matters of sexual morality as is generally accepted elsewhere in the Communion," the Primates wrote, "the underlying reality of our communion in God the Holy Trinity is obscured, and the effectiveness of our common mission severely hindered".
The Primates are clear that provincial autonomy is abused when a Province acts contrary to the historic Faith as received in the Communion.
The Windsor Report called upon The Episcopal Church and the bishops who have allowed same-sex blessings "to withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion...in order to create the space necessary to enable the healing of the Communion".
The Primates' Meeting repeats that call, but more specifically, asking that The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada "voluntarily withdraw their members from the Anglican Consultative Council for the period leading up to the next Lambeth Conference" in 2008.
At the same time, the Primates ask that representatives of those churches appear before a hearing at that Council's next meeting, in June 2005, to set out the thinking behind their recent actions.
It comes as no surprise that one of the Anglican Communion's "Instruments of Unity" should respond to actions which its unity by striving to restore it.
Given the constitutional processes of the Communion and of the Provinces involved, that means moving slowly and deliberately. We consider it a positive development that the Primates have set an apparent time-limit, the Lambeth Conference 2008, for appropriate action by the two erring Provinces.
But those who live within those Provinces and under the jurisdiction of erring bishops have no reason to believe that they will back down from their divisive teachings and actions, which they assert are right and good, and even biblical.
We would therefore have wished to see the Primates' Meeting take more decisive action, a clear disciplining of the erring Provinces and the creation of some new and orthodox Anglican entity apart from them for those who hold the historic Faith. That has been and remains FIF/NA's stated goal.
The Windsor Report suggested that The Episcopal Church's proposals for "delegated episcopal pastoral oversight" were "entirely reasonable, if they are approached and implemented reasonably by everyone concerned".
FIF/NA and other groups have pointed out serious problems implicit in that plan, and the Primates' Meeting has responded by setting up "as a matter of urgency", a review committee to "supervise the adequacy" of provisions for "groups in serious theological dispute with their diocesan bishops, or dioceses in dispute with their Provinces" -- language which includes those who believe the ordination of women a violation of apostolic Order.
FIF/NA applauds that action, and recommits itself to act as an advocate for its members and all who hold the historic Faith, setting before the review committee information regarding actions taken against them and failures to meet their "legitimate needs".
The Rev'd Canon Warren Tanghe is Acting President of Forward in Faith North America.
