From the American Anglican Council

The Chaplain's Corner

Canon Ashey By The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey, J.D. Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council Dear friends in Christ, Earlier this year, Anglican Communion Secretary General Kenneth Kearon announced that the representatives of TEC would be removed from all ecumenical dialogue groups as well as a commission on Anglican Faith and Order for violating the moratoria on non-celibate homosexual bishops and same-sex blessings. Even though this sanction was extremely limited, it had a certain logic to it. In ecumenical discussions and relationships, representatives of a church body must be able to faithfully represent the teaching of the church body they are representing. Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (1998) on human sexuality and holy orders remains the official teaching of the Anglican Communion. Representatives from TEC cannot faithfully represent the Anglican Communion because of their conscious, continuing and premeditated violations of Lambeth 1.10 by consecrating another non-celibate homosexual bishop and continuing to permit and promote same-sex blessings. At the same time, a letter was sent to Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone asking for clarification of his province's involvement in boundary crossings. Since no response has been received from ++Venables, Kearon has now announced that a representative from the Southern Cone will also be removed from an Anglican Communion body: 'Many of you will have read the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the Anglican Communion issued at Pentecost last (28 May 2010). Part of that letter addresses the current and ongoing tensions in the Anglican Communion - these tensions cluster around the three moratoria referred to in the Windsor Report. 'At that time I wrote to the Primate of the Southern Cone, whose interventions in other provinces are referred to in the Windsor Continuation Group Report asking him for clarification as to the current state of his interventions into other provinces. I have not received a response. 'Consequently, I have written to the person from the Province of the Southern Cone who is a member of the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order (IASCUFO), Bishop Tito Zavala, withdrawing his membership and inviting him to serve as a Consultant to that body.'" This makes no sense whatsoever, for the following reasons: 1. There is no moral equivalence between emergency pastoral interventions to preserve apostolic faith and order, and violations of Anglican doctrine and discipline through the consecration of non-celibate homosexual bishops and the promotion of same-sex blessings. In the Communique of the Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam (February 19, 2007), at paragraph 10, the Primates addressed the question of "cross-provincial interventions" to provide pastoral care for orthodox Anglicans in North America: "The Windsor Report identified two threats to our common life: first, certain developments in the life and ministry of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada which challenged the standard of teaching on human sexuality articulated in the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10; and second, interventions in the life of those Provinces which arose as reactions to the urgent pastoral needs that certain primates perceived. The Windsor Report did not see a "moral equivalence" between these events, since the cross-boundary interventions arose from a deep concern for the welfare of Anglicans in the face of innovation." While acknowledging the "strain" such interventions placed on the life of the Communion, the Primates together made three significant affirmations: (1) They restated the findings of the Windsor Report on the nature of cross provincial interventions as responses to violations of apostolic faith and order, (2) They stated that there is no moral equivalence between violations of the Windsor moratoria on consecrating non-celibate homosexual bishops and same-sex unions, and violations of the moratoria on interventions, because (3) such interventions are a pastoral response to Anglicans in North America aggrieved by the doctrinal and disciplinary innovations initiated by the leadership of TEC and ACoC, and are therefore conscientious attempts to preserve apostolic faith and order against such innovations. If there is no moral equivalence, there is no logic or justification to require an equal response to any violation of the Windsor moratoria. Please search Section D of the Windsor Report which deals with all three breaches, including cross-provincial interventions. You will find no language asserting a need for an equal response. 2. The removal of Bishop Tito Zavala communicates to ecumenical partners of the Anglican Communion that the integrity of diocesan borders is as important, if not more important, than apostolic faith in the Anglican Communion. In fact, ecumenical partners will recognize by the appointment of Ian Douglas and Janet Trisk to the new Anglican Communion Standing Committee (or SCAC as it was originally named) that the Anglican Communion leadership does not place importance on guarding and defending the apostolic faith. As a bishop, Ian Douglas continues his predecessor's policy of permitting same-sex blessings in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. Janet Trisk is a member of an organization - "Sea of Faith" - that denies the objective existence of God and views religion as a human creation. We have already analyzed the unprecedented, unconstitutional centralization of power in the ersatz Anglican Communion Standing Committee, at the expense of other Instruments of Unity - especially the Primates - in our article on "Whither the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion?" Under the revised section four of the increasingly unlikely Anglican Covenant (Ridley-Cambridge Draft), it is the Anglican Communion Standing Committee which will have primary responsibility for responding to violations of Anglican faith and order. This fact will not have escaped our ecumenical partners, especially given the Archbishop of Canterbury's public pronouncements on the efficacy of the Covenant in holding the Communion together. The seating of Ian Douglas and Janet Trisk signals to our ecumenical partners that apostolic faith and order can and will be violated with impunity. Moreover, the removal of Bishop Tito Zavala comes after the recent visits of Metropolitan Hilarion and Pope Benedict XVI to the Church of England. As we reported several weeks ago in our weekly Anglican Perspective, both Hilarion and Benedict stated unequivocally that ecumenical relationships between the Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Anglicans can only be based upon a mutual respect for the faith once delivered by the apostles, including especially the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of all, the Creeds, and the Councils of the undivided church. Bishop Zavala was an eloquent and significant contributor to the Final Communique of the GSE4 Encounter in April of this year in Singapore... AND Bishop Zavala comes from a province of the Anglican Communion which intervened in North America to provide pastoral oversight for Anglicans whose only offense was to preserve apostolic faith and order within the Anglican Communion over and against the doctrinal innovations of the leadership of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. The sad fact of Bishop Zavala's removal cannot have escaped the attention of both Metropolitan Hilarion and Pope Benedict XVI. If Dr. Williams, Secretary Kearon, and the Anglican Communion Standing Committee were truly interested in strengthening ecumenical relationships with Roman Catholics and Orthodox, why would they ignore the pointed remarks of Hilarion and Benedict and remove an Anglican bishop whose contributions have been to mend the fabric of apostolic faith and order rather than to tear it further? Why not write a letter of reprimand to the Southern Cone, if action had to be taken, or limit Bishop Zavala's participation in ecumenical representations that focus on the integrity of diocesan boundaries - no doubt a major focus of ecumenical discussions when so much else is at stake! Some have speculated as to why Archbishop Venables did not respond to the Secretary's letter. Could it be that, like ++Ian Earnest and other Global South primates who will not attend meetings with leaders of TEC and ACoC (the principal violators of Anglican faith and order), ++Venables has better things to do than play shell games with Lambeth power structures? Yours in Christ, Phil+