Thursday, February 15, 2007

Latest from the Living Church:

Presiding Bishop Attends Primates' Orientation Session
2/15/2007

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori attended her first session of meeting of Anglican primates Wednesday in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, participating in an orientation session for the 14 new primates.

Led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the primates “worked through” a paper on the nature and role of a primate, prepared by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Australia said. Following Archbishop Williams’ tutorial and introductions, each of the new primates spoke to the “issues and concerns” they faced in their provinces.

Militant Islam, poverty, drought and climate change were among the concerns shared by the new primates, Archbishop Aspinall said. However, “progress” on the Windsor Report “will be at the heart of the primates’ deliberations” in the coming days, deputy General Secretary Canon Gregory Cameron said.

Canon Cameron also rejected any linkage between The Episcopal Church’s response to the Windsor Report and crossings of diocesan boundaries by the Global South primates. “The Windsor Report said there should be cessation” of the practice of foreign bishops visiting North American churches to perform sacramental ministries, he noted. However, it was the primates’ view that “many of the situations were so serious that it was not right to end them.”

The Panel of Reference had been created to provide an “objective solution to ease the situation,” he noted. However, the communiqué issued by the primates at their meeting in Northern Island last year noted the Global South primates would not be “able to stop the interventions until the parishes were reassured.”

On Thursday, Feb. 15, the first full day of the meeting, Archbishop Williams was to deliver an address. That was to be followed by a joint meeting of the primates and the standing committee of the ACC. The two groups will hear a presentation on The Episcopal Church’s response to the Windsor Report prepared by the archbishops of Wales and Central Africa and two lay members of the ACC.

There is quite a bit more. Read it all.

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