Press Releases
Irish Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) members comment on recent devlopments in the Anglican Communion
(Irish ACC members personal reflection..)
As the two elected members of the Anglican Consultative Council for the Church of Ireland, we wish to raise concerns about the request made by the Primates? meeting to the Episcopal Church (USA) and Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw their members from the ACC until the next Lambeth Conference (2008).
The ACC is truly the most representative of the Anglican Instruments of Unity ? the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates and the Lambeth bishops are all in episcopal orders. For the ACC, a genuinely synodical international gathering, to have its membership and atmosphere adjusted essentially at the behest of the Primates? meeting would severely damage the balance of dispersed authority within Anglicanism. There is a real danger that the crisis of to-day will give way to the centralised curialisation of to-morrow.
As indicated in their press release the Primates themselves clearly found that discussing issues such as tsunami relief and the AIDS crisis renewed the fellowship of those otherwise inclined to disagree. If the Anglican Church of Canada and Episcopal Church (USA) representatives on the ACC are only admitted to the Nottingham meeting in June to express their views on one issue, their churches will be precluded from participating in other important discussions which could both enhance fellowship and create perspective. What better way both to cement division and to compromise the independence of the ACC?
We are more than aware of the gravity of the present situation and the sensitive language in which the Primates have couched their suggestion. While it seems to us that it is the ACC itself (or at least its Standing Committee), rather than the Primates, which should ? if appropriate ? seek the withdrawal of particular members, we do not see the value in this decision at whatever level it is made. The Primates meeting also requested that the Anglican church of Canada and Episcopal Church (USA) ?respond ?.. to the questions specifically addressed to them ?. as they consider their place within the Anglican Communion? ? do we expect them to do this while not in conversation and fellowship with the rest of the Anglican Communion, in particular through the meeting of its most synodical body the ACC? Moreover, at the last ACC meeting (Hong Kong, 2002), the Canadian Church more than fully explained the canonical background to events in New Westminster.
We know that within the Church of Ireland which we represent at the ACC there are - as in Anglicanism generally - many shades of opinion concerning sexuality and same-sex relationships. Our concerns here, however, are essentially ecclesiological. The Windsor Report, for all its wisdom, is in danger of becoming a Trojan horse. For the moment, the supremely important thing is that members of the dysfunctional Anglican family somehow keep talking and listening and in so doing learn to make more charitable judgements concerning one another?s motives if not deeds.
Given that the Primates? meeting took place in Ireland we feel it is especially important that our personal, courteous misgivings concerning some of its conclusions are heard, not least by our diverse global ACC colleagues.
Michael BURROWS Kate TURNER
For further information contact
The Very Revd Michael Burrows
The Deanery
Dean Street
Cork
Ireland
Tel: +353 (0)21 4964742