This is part II of an ongoing series on the actions that led to the creation of and my support for common cause.
In our last installment of as the church turns Gene Robinson had just been confirmed by a roughly 60 – 40 vote by the bishops at the 2003 General convention. His consecration was scheduled for that November. We again forget that the primates had met in May of 2003. The meeting in October obviously to prevent or address the consecration was “extraordinary.” Hear the words of our beloved leader Rowan
“I am clear that the anxieties caused by recent developments have reached the point where we will need to sit down and discuss their consequences. I hope that in our deliberations we will find that there are ways forward in this situation which can preserve our respect for one another and for the bonds that unite us.”
In retrospect I can see the hints of trouble even in remarks like this. Notice that Rowan does not see the events as being wrong. They “cause anxiety” and “have consequences.” How about saying that ECUSA (this was before the name change) was radically changing something as core to our identity as marriage & sexuality. If you do this I as leader of the Communion will break fellowship with all who support this. In Southern parlance this is known as “nipping this thing in the bud.” But again I did not see that. I saw that Rowan recognized the problem and had come to help us. I had not yet found out about his previous beliefs about “the body’s grace.”
Please forgive me for this long quote but really nothing ever changes in the positions despite the various meeting and communiqués that will follow:
We also re-affirm the resolutions made by the bishops of the Anglican Communion gathered at the Lambeth Conference in 1998 on issues of human sexuality as having moral force and commanding the respect of the Communion as its present position on these issues. We commend the report of that Conference in its entirety to all members of the Anglican Communion, valuing especially its emphasis on the need “to listen to the experience of homosexual persons, and…to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptized, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ”; and its acknowledgement of the need for ongoing study on questions of human sexuality.
Therefore, as a body we deeply regret the actions of the Diocese of New Westminster and the Episcopal Church (USA) which appear to a number of provinces to have short-circuited that process, and could be perceived to alter unilaterally the teaching of the Anglican Communion on this issue. They do not. Whilst we recognize the juridical autonomy of each province in our Communion, the mutual interdependence of the provinces means that none has authority unilaterally to substitute an alternative teaching as if it were the teaching of the entire Anglican Communion.
To this extent, therefore, we must make clear that recent actions in New Westminster and in the Episcopal Church (USA) do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardize our sacramental fellowship with each other. We have a particular concern for those who in all conscience feel bound to dissent from the teaching and practice of their province in such matters. Whilst we reaffirm the teaching of successive Lambeth Conferences that bishops must respect the autonomy and territorial integrity of dioceses and provinces other than their own, we call on the provinces concerned to make adequate provision for Episcopal oversight of dissenting minorities within their own area of pastoral care in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of the Primates.
I was more than overjoyed by this statement. ECUSA back off or the international church is going to deal with you. It was a clear threat and our presiding bishop and ROWAN WILLIAMS had agreed to it. Surely if Gene was consecrated now the help we dreamed of would come. Yes, there was the little part about autonomy & territorial integrity but that would never come into play. The response of ECUSA is a matter of history. The consecration occurs in December of 2003 the Network publishes a draft of its constitution. Rowan Williams supports it:
I want to say that I remain fully committed to searching for arrangements which will secure a continuing place for all Episcopalians in the life of the Episcopal Church in the United States and I have been involved in working with several parties there towards some sort of shared future and common witness, so far as is possible. It is in that light that I’ve been following sympathetically the discussions around the setting up of a network within the Episcopal Church of the United States of America engaged in negotiating some of these questions of Episcopal oversight.
To be fair to Rowan he always says clearly that the place for dissenters was within the Episcopal Church. We were all willing to do that, but the assumption was that we would be declared in and those who supported Bishop Robinson would be declared out. Round One on the international level had seemed to go our way. Now if we could just get more people to join the network!
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/communion/primates/history/2003/index.cfm
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2003/10/16/ACNS3633
http://www.acn-us.org/archive/2004/02/archbishop-of-canterbury-supports-networks-place-within-ecusa.html
