Venables reacts to Kearon sanctions

from The Lead by John B. Chilton

In an interview with AnglicanTV -- an outlet frequented by Gafcon, Global South Anglicans, disaffected Episcopalians and schismatic Episcopalians -- the Presiding Bishop of the South Cone, Gregory Venables, speaks about the Anglican Consultative Council, revisions to the Anglican Consultative Council constitution and the recent punishment the South Cone received for interventions in other provinces.

In June of this year the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Office, Kenneth Kearon, had written the Southern Cone to ask whether the province was still engaged in its interventions into other provinces cited in the Windsor Report. A week ago Kearon announced he had received no response, and he would be sanctioning the Southern Cone by demoting its member on the Inter Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order to consultant status. In May, following the ABC's Pentecost letter, Kearon had taken similar action against The Episcopal Church for its action in consecrating a lesbian bishop in a committed relationship who had not said she was not sexually active. Recently the ABC told The Times he has no problem with gay bishops as long as they are celibate.

Venables yesterday said that although it is "technically true" that Kearon had received no response "it isn't the truth." He had called the ABC in June and also spoken with Kearon by phone. Venables added that the answer could only come from the House of Bishops and Provincial committee because they were the body who had the authority to form and to sever those cross boundary relationships. (He did not note that he had accepted American schismatics into the Southern Cone without consulting those bodies in the first instance.)

He also stated that with the formation of ACNA the cross-boundary interventions had in his opinion ceased, but that was something that only the House of Bishops and Provincial committee could determine. A regularly scheduled meeting of those bodies is upcoming he said.

As to comparing interventions in other provinces to the actions of the US and Canadian provinces, Venables declared there was no moral equivalence and hence there should not equivalent sanctions.

About the revisions to the Anglican Consultative Council constitution he said that the ACO had not sent them to him, ever. He said it was "obvious what is going on", that the ACC has been hijacked by a minority. He declined to say that the Primates should be the supreme body, as some conservative primates have, saying that the Anglican Communion should reflect the opinions of the majority of Anglicans. He did not say how that would be achieved.

For his part, Kearon has yet to explain (1) the source of authority to demote members of Anglican Communion committees, and (2) why other provinces openly engaged intervention in other provinces have not also received the same sanction as the Southern Cone.