Covenant is ‘future-directed’ says Gomez

From The Church Times:

08/01/2008 17:10:00

By Paul Handley at the Lambeth Conference

THE LAST two working days of the Lambeth Conference have been focused mostly on the Covenant, and what it might contribute to the unity of the Church.

What has emerged is that the process might take even longer than thought. At a press briefing on Friday morning, Canon Gregory Cameron, deputy-general secretary of the Anglican Communion, said that the timetable was dictated largely by the different processes in each of the provinces debating it. For example, he said, it might need to successive meetings of the US General Convention to ratify the Covenant. Since the Convention meets only every two years, this would mean no endorsement (or rejection) till 2015.

At a later press conference, the Bishop of Botswana, the Rt Revd Trevor Mwamba, said: “We are not in any hurry. Only the devil is in a hurry.”

The Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr Philip Aspinall, said that he expected to see reluctance to sign up to the Covenant in every province.
Archbishop of WI Gomez © not advert
The Archbishop of the West Indies, the Most Revd Drexel Gomez REUTERS

“It will be difficult, I believe, in every province of the Anglican Communion for that province to make a decision to enter into the Covenant; because, at the heart of Anglicanism is the notion of autonomy, self-rule. And so province will guard that very jealously.

“It will only be as a result of deep and careful reflection that they agree to self-limit in order to protect something which is equally valuable, and that is our Communion.”

The chairman of the covenant drafting group, the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, dismissed the suggestion that few provinces had so far endorsed the Covenant. Many in the Global South, for example, had expressed their support verbally.

“All of the groups represented at GAFCON have, up until May this year, commented positively on the Covenant. . . I would be surprised to hear that they had had a change of heart. If they have, they have not communicated that to me.”

Provincial reactions are to be submitted to the covenant design group by the end of March 2009, which will then produce a third draft to be presented to the Anglican Consultative Council in May.

Archbishop Gomez also rejected the recent criticism from GAFCON that the Covenant failed to address the presenting problems directly. “We did not attempt at any of our sessions to produce a document that would deal with the present issues before the Communion. Our document is future-directed. This is how the Communion should deal with events as they unfold in the future.”

The overall aim, he said, was: “to work towards holding the Anglican Communion together, not inventing something new, but simply providing a mechanism that brings us back to the centre, about who we are and what be believe, and to renew our commitment to journey forward together.”