From The Living Church:
Posted on: August 22, 2008
The task force established to implement recommendations of the Windsor Report is unlikely to complete its work in time to have any affect on plans by the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and Quincy to hold second and decisive votes to withdraw from The Episcopal Church this fall.
Despite the Windsor Continuation Group’s call for swift implementation of its proposed moratoria, Archbishop Clive Handford, retired primate of The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East and chairman of the Windsor Continuation Group, said he did not anticipate the group’s work having any sort of official status within the Communion until after the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in May 2009—six months after the last of the three dioceses, Fort Worth, has held its annual convention.
The six-member Windsor Continuation Group was established by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in February 2008. He had proposed formation of the group in his Advent letter to the primates last year.
In a paper distributed during the Lambeth Conference, the group proposed a moratorium on public rites for same-sex blessings, the consecration of partnered homosexual persons to the episcopate and cessation of “cross-border incursions” by overseas bishops. The group, which includes West Texas Bishop Gary Lillibridge, is next scheduled to meet in private session at the Diocese of West Texas’ Mustang Island Conference Center in Corpus Christi Dec. 15-19.
During a Lambeth Conference media briefing on July 30, Archbishop Handford said the group was proposing formation of a pastoral forum that would serve as a “holding bay” for dioceses and parishes that had already left, but said, “the ‘escrow’ concept isn’t something which can potentially build up and build up.
“It is to deal with those who are already out, to give what I call a safe holding space,” he explained. “It’s not something which in the future whoever wishes to can opt in. It is not a growing body. It is meant to be a diminishing body as dioceses or parishes return to their parent body.”
Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh was concerned enough with the proposed moratorium on cross-border incursions that he wrote Bishop Lillibridge. The letter was made public on a website maintained by the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, rector of St. Paul’s Church, Chatham, N.J. [This letter is posted below. ed.]
Bishop Duncan expressed concerns with an end to cross-border incursions, especially as it might relate to the situation with the three dioceses. Freezing the situation under the current circumstances would place those dioceses at a disadvantage, Bishop Duncan said, because amendments to the diocesan constitution in those dioceses require approval at two successive conventions. If any of the three dioceses were to table or reject the second reading, the process would have to be re-started. It is likely that in 2009, General Convention will seek to amend its own bylaws next year explicitly to prevent such votes from being considered.
“To recommend against passage without guarantees from the other side would be suicidal,” Bishop Duncan said, adding that parishes and other missionary jurisdictions such as the Anglican Mission in the Americas and the Convocation of Anglicans in North America among others “will never consent to a ‘holding tank’ whose stated purpose is eventual ‘reconciliation’ with [The Episcopal Church] or the Anglican Church of Canada.
“It was obvious to all at Lambeth that the majorities in the U.S. and Canada have no intention of reversing direction,” he added.
Steve Waring
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