Here follows a slightly abridged account of the press conference. Present at the press conference was Auburn Traycik, editor of The Christian Challenge, Robert England, an Anglo-catholic writer and David Virtue, Editor of VirtueOnline.

The order of some questions and remarks was changed to aid understanding.

In his opening comments, Archbishop Hepworth explained that, while a number of persons had known for months about the consecration of Fr. Chislett, public announcement of its exact date and place had to be withheld because "David is under very serious legal threat from his archbishop." Archbishop Philip Aspinall has published twice in ad clerums to his diocese threats of "instant dismissal" if Fr. Chislett should go to the TAC, he said. Also, the "constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia is upholdable at law because the constitution is an act of each state parliament." (TCC was told that this meant that Aspinall could have obtained a civil injunction to restrain Chislett's consecration.)

Hence, TAC leaders "felt it wise not to have the consecration in Australia, and also that there was a great sign value in consecrating two bishops side by side, with an almost identical ministry, that is, a ministry from the TAC back into the Anglican Communion for [orthodox members] for whom no provision is made, and who have had no pastoral provision [in the face of changes in order and faith] for the past 20 years or so.

"So it's a missionary ministry," and willl likely be extended in other places in the near term, Hepworth said.

"This follows some three years of negotiations by the TAC with other Anglican Communion bishops." Hepworth said that two Communion bishops would join in consecrating Frs. Chislett and Moyer: Bishop Ross Davies of Australia's Diocese of the Murray, and Bishop Maternus Kapinga of Tanzania's Diocese of Ruvuma. "We were hoping for a third, and if we'd been more secret, we probably would've got them. But quite massive pressure has been put on a number of people; Bishop Davies has been threatened with civil action...for taking part," Hepworth noted.

"What we are attempting to do this evening [is to forge] a eucharistic community, a sacramental community rather than a canonical one, which includes bishops of the TAC and Anglican diocesan bishops. Immediately before the blessing tonight, that will be given practical effect when the two new TAC bishops are licensed as Anglican Communion bishops" by Bishop Davies.

"That poses no dilemma for us, because the bishops taking part from the...Communion have publicly announced their separation, sacramentally, from parts of the Anglican Communion," Hepworth continued.

The TAC sees itself as having two roles, he said. The first is "the pastoral care of Anglicans who have been hurt and [scattered] in the last 30 years of Anglican theological brawling, which has flowed over into legal brawling and outright persecution. For instance, in Africa, we have under our care one congregation [that was] driven out of [its] church by police with whips and tear gas under the instructions of Desmond Tutu, because [it] had joined the TAC. Persecution is very real and very physical in many places, and worse in other places often than the U.S., where it's bad enough," he noted. "That's the first reason we exist, and that is a mission that immediately leads us to cross boundaries that other people have constructed, such as the line between the Anglican Communion and the TAC.

"In recent conversations between the Anglican Archbishop of Australia and myself," he continued, "I said they have two options about the boundary between them and us. They could turn it into a Berlin Wall...or they could make it like a state boundary in Australia or the U.S., where the only reason you know you've crossed it is because the street signs have changed. You're in a different jurisdiction, but it's not noticeable...I think [that is a real option] for the Anglican Communion...and we have some evidence of that in the events that have led up to today.

"The second reason we exist is to conduct spiritual warfare with those we believe have fallen into profound error. The sort of people that are good at nursing the wounded are often not the same people that are good at the public confrontation of wrong teaching..."

Q. How do you see tonight's event as changing, or adding to, or differentiated from the rest of the Anglican realignment?

"What the TAC is doing tonight is attempting to take a...leadership role in gathering into a single sacramental entity those Anglicans who have been on the catholic side of the Anglican spectrum, who watched with great pain the demise of ARCIC (the longstanding Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission dialogue aimed at reunion with Rome, which has been hurt by women's ordination within Anglicanism and has now lapsed following ECUSA's consecration of an actively gay bishop - Ed.).

"[W]e have waited three years for these consecrations; we've waited and negotiated with people in the Communion to take a role of leadership," Hepworth said. "No consecrators have come forward, the [Anglican] primates have refused [to perform the consecrations]...We...said at the outset that we would be consecrators if it became clear that we should. It has become clear to us in the last year that we were the only ones prepared to [spearhead] the ministry of...pastoral care [for beleaguered traditional Anglicans]...So, some five months ago we determined to do it now. But the decision to do it [TAC bishops] took in November 2003 (just after ECUSA's consecration of gay cleric Gene Robinson - Ed.)...At that moment we took [the initiative in] the regathering of those Anglicans, which we know are a tiny minority, who believe as we do; [and] at that stage [our] conversations with Rome were transformed into something that...both sides [anticipated] being brought to reality."

Q. And this is necessary because of what you have seen as being the steady demise, the steady erosion, of the Anglo-Catholic party within the Communion?

"Yes. We've watched in countries like Australia, the U.S., Canada, South Africa and New Zealand the almost total elimination of Anglo-Catholicism in any organizational way. In the Diocese of Brisbane when women priests were brought in in 1992, there were about 60 parishes strongly opposed...; there are now only three. The rest have simply stopped going to church or been driven out."

Hepworth said that, in Australia as in the U.S., vacancies in rectorships have offered liberals the greatest opportunities to change the character of a parish and erode the Anglo-Catholic witness.

Q. How do you envision Bishop Moyer providing...pastoral oversight to congregations in the Episcopal Church that are being persecuted?

"There is a further distance from him achieving that immediately than there is in Australia," Hepworth said. "One of the reasons we're doing both consecrations together is that we're in the process of negotiating an agreement with the Australian Anglican bishops that will allow the fused TAC/Forward in Faith episcopate in Australia-we have agreed to fuse in resolutions over the last 12 months-to minister to traditionalist parishes in the dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia. Archbishop Carnley, who is a liberal by any standards, has been very enthusiastically leading this initiative. In part he is motivated by his passion for Aboriginal justice, and the fact that the Torres Strait Islanders (the other group of Australian Aboriginal people) are almost entirely traditional Anglicans having come to the TAC from the Australian province some ten years ago - Ed.) and he's now finding ways that he can deal with that with some justice, and not persecution. I think [he also wants to give people] their fair due, which is an Australian thing.

"We met for a day in January," Hepworth noted. "Basically what we're asking, and what we appear to be getting, is the allowance of parishes to come under a fused traditional college of bishops which will include Bishop Davies of the Murray and possibly one or two other diocesan or suffragan bishops. We will make no claims on either side about property for the first 20 years...and we will split the diocesan assessments...That's on the table and we're actually discussing models of achieving it in a very amicable and cooperative way," an exception to that cooperation being the Archbishop of Brisbane, who evidently did not expect that traditionalists would still exist at this point, Hepworth said.

"Archbishop Carnley is taking this model to the Primates' Meeting, and that's the reason why some news reports about [that meeting] include the ordination of women as an issue," Hepworth asserted. Women's ordination is " not a done deal," or the problems extant in Australia would not exist, he added. "That means in Australia Bishop Chislett has a ready-made ministry of whatever parishes join this arrangement. We have 19 significant parishes so far that have indicated they'll be in it on day one. Others will wait and see what happens on day three, as Anglicans normally do!

"That [model] is not immediately transferable to the United States purely because the good will isn't here. But we believe it's a model that is transferable to a number of other provinces.

"In the immediate term," Hepworth continued, "we see Bishop Moyer's ministry as being a global one of teaching and pastoring traditional Anglicans. He has a canonical role in the TAC to all those places [where there are] U.S. armed forces...Apparently, that's 121 countries...We're anticipating he'll do a great deal of travel. He'll also immediately become the TAC's visiting bishop to both England and Ireland, where we don't have a bishop at the moment. We have an agreement with Forward in Faith, [United Kingdom], not to put a permanent bishop in England without consulting with them..."

Q. Could he be a bishop for some parishes that are separated from ECUSA...?

"We expect both these [bishops] to, firstly, create new parishes out of traditional Anglicans that are homeless; and secondly, to discover creative ways of becoming the bishop to traditional Anglican parishes that are still under the jurisdiction of [liberal] bishops...The fulfillment of that mission will depend on...local circumstances...

"What we're trying to do is develop the Australian model to a higher level of implementation first. [Archbishop Carnley has been cooperative] and he's kept Rowan Williams in the loop," Hepworth said. "The fact is [that] the Anglican Communion can either continue with absolute warfare on traditionalists in many places, or it can find a model which allows for the pastoral care of at least this generation, and the growing of the next generation of people who believe that way.

"What I've tried to do is work cooperatively with people in the Communion to develop models that I believe will work, and which don't involve people in making major sacrifices, either financially, or in conscience. I'm offering this model as a serious one, and I'm implementing it tonight with both TAC and Anglican Communion colleagues, and with a good deal of prior consultation around the world.

"I've been writing to other primates and to Rowan Williams for 18 months about this consecration," Hepworth said. " I wrote to Rowan Williams [a year ago], telling him when I was going to do it, and guaranteed that I would not do it [nor consecrate any other bishops] before the Windsor Report was out, and that what I did subsequently depended on what was in the Windsor Report. My reaction to [that report] is well known..." In response to a question from another reporter, Archbishop Hepworth remarked that the Windsor Report's draft covenant, which the Report recommends that all Anglican provinces adopt to help ensure unity among them, "clearly ends the period of reception, by making the acceptance of women priests mandatory in every province."

"I don't trust drafts; [this one] might be implemented," he commented. "I presume they didn't publish the draft because it's meaningless. They published [it] because it was what the [Lambeth Commission] would like to see. If it came into effect, [its impact] would be to make impossible the membership within any part of the Anglican Communion of anybody [who supports historic holy order]."

Q. How would you describe your relationship with Dr. Williams?

"Courteous, on both sides. I respect his position and as you'll see I've said so. I pray for him every day, as any good Anglican bishop should. I believe that Christians can act decently towards each other even when they disagree...I am deeply hurt, and I make no secret about it, by some of his teachings, which fall outside that rather stretchy elasticity of Anglican theology. I believe some of those teachings hurt the church and the world. And so I'm in a theological conflict with him, but I've tried to bring that conflict to his attention in a decent way..."

Q. What do you think about Rowan Williams' comment that the episcopal role envisioned for Fr. Moyer would pose "serious canonical obstacles" to him continuing as a priest in good standing within the Communion?

Archbishop Hepworth felt that the approach taken in the cases of Frs. Chislett and Moyer would circumvent those "obstacles" but leave Archbishop Williams with "a different problem."

"The only problem he's got now is whether he needs to recognize all bishops...who are licensed and acting as bishops of the Communion...or whether he's now going to start being selective. The Archbishop of Canterbury's never been selective. If a bishop is licensed and operating in an Anglican [Communion] diocese, he's on the Lambeth [Conference] list. If he's not, such as [in the case of a bishop of] the Church of England in South Africa (an Evangelical body which has not had bishops licensed in the Communion - Ed), Canterbury has not had to act.

"I should point out that there are a number of precedents for bishops being created within Anglicanism for specific ministries during times of high doctrinal dispute," Hepworth said. "The Church of England, for instance, appointed bishops in Scotland in the middle of the 19th century to serve Anglo-Catholic parishes. These bishops were never recognized by Canterbury, even though its church had appointed...and consecrated them. The need died out when the Scottish church stopped persecuting Anglo-Catholics. A similar situation arises with Evangelicals in South Africa. And that's why Sydney, and others in Australia, have been consecrating bishops for South Africa for the last century, and Canterbury has never recognized them. But nor has Canterbury ever condemned them. My reading of Rowan on tonight's ceremony is that he is neither approving nor condemning publicly; that's exactly what Archbishops of Canterbury have done for the past two centuries in similar circumstances...[We may know more after the Primates' Meeting.]"

Q. What do you anticipate coming out of the upcoming Primates' Meeting?

"I anticipate nothing," he said. He saw no immediate resolution to difficulties arising from "the dynamics of the Primates' Meetings" and the "problems which confront Anglicanism--which essentially are the almost total demise of an Anglo-Catholic party as an influence anywhere in the Communion," and the consequent struggle for power in the Communion between liberals and Evangelicals, both of which tend to be anti-catholic. "We're not about to see a period in Anglicanism such as we saw in the '50s and '60s, when the Anglo-Catholics were dominant almost everywhere, and tolerated [elsewhere]. There are no grounds for toleration between anybody currently involved in the Anglican Communion, so I don't expect it to suddenly happen," Hepworth said.

Q. There was talk that in the eventuality that [Central Africa's] Archbishop Malango would have to release David [Moyer] because he would no longer recognize [him because of what is happening tonight], that another primate might be waiting in the wings to take care of David. Can you reveal that name at this point?

"...There are a sequence of letters from Archbishop Malango, some of which are private, in which he indicated that he would attend this consecration and take part, and subsequent letters, in which he indicated that he wouldn't, as a result of actions elsewhere in the Communion. We have also been speaking to the province of Papua New Guinea, because the Church of the Torres Strait borders that, and [have had] quite positive response, although the Church in Papua New Guinea has the same problem as the African churches: if they misbehave Australia cuts off their money. This is a problem everywhere in the Communion...Conversations have also taken place with Peter Akinola [of Nigeria]. We determined that he would not act, because of the public knowledge of the TAC's conversations with the Vatican; he's uncomfortable with that as an Evangelical (though Nigeria does not ordain women - Ed.) and we respect that.

"A number of Evangelicals, including Sydney Evangelicals, have said that if indeed the Elizabethan Settlement is now terminated, that is, Anglicanism no longer tolerates a Catholic side and a Protestant side...then both sides are liberated to pursue their own agenda, [the one] they would have pursued 500 years ago, if they hadn't been thrown together by a powerful state into toleration...That means, for Sydney, completing the Reformation so that they have lay presidency and a range of other things that are perfectly natural and logical consequences of their theological position." On the the Anglo-Catholic side there would be the "equally and perfectly logical" pursuit of reunion with Rome. "They're no longer mutually incompatible, because we're no longer pretending to be bound by an agreement that has been terminated by others."

Q. What was your feeling about the Anglican Mission in America statement on women's ordination (by which AMIA concluded that it should not ordain women as priests or bishops - Ed.)?

It was "extremely powerful. We have no problem whatsoever with it. [Its] theological arguments...complement ours," Hepworth said. There is still a debate, one that extends into the Roman and Orthodox Churches, over women deacons, he noted. TAC is "happy" with the AMIA 's decision to further examine women in the diaconate. Hepworth noted that, while the TAC will ordain women as deaconesses (a lay order set apart), it does not ordain women as deacons, that is, as within the one apostolic order expressed in three different roles. He acknowledged that the fact that some FIF bishops do ordain women as deacons creates a problem with the administration of the sacrament of holy order, in TAC's view. "But it doesn't actually destroy the sacramental life of the church [in the wider way] that the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate certainly does. In other words, it's possibly not as much a communion-breaking event as having women in the priesthood," he said.

"In our conversations with liberal archbishops in Australia, they've acknowledged our point that you cannot have bishops who cannot recognize a woman bishop in the same college of bishops as a woman bishop; it's interesting that both they and [we] regard the presence of U.S. FIF bishops as part of ECUSA's [House] of Bishops as a profound theological anomaly..."

Q. The [Church of England's] Synod...is almost ready to go with women bishops. That pushes Forward in Faith really to the fringes [of the C of E]...That would push them into your arms perhaps?

"Initially, there's going to be the attempt for a third province, and they've published the parameters of that," Hepworth said. "[S]ince [traditionalists] control less than ten percent of the Synod, they're clearly only going to get it if the price is right for the others."

In Australia, he noted that those aligned with FIF had managed to persuade a sufficient number of the General Synod to oppose women bishops at the Synod's last meeting, so the issue was lost for the second time. "If we had a separate sacramental jurisdiction approved by the Australian bishops, our interest in continuing that opposition [would wane], and we've indicated that to the Australian bishops," he said.

Hepworth noted that, after the Rosemont consecrations, he would travel to Arlington, Texas, to join others in designing a conference later this year between a group of Roman Catholic cardinals and Anglican leaders interested in reunion with Rome. The gathering will likely take place in France.

END