Report from ACC-14 Day Seven: No Fourth Moratorium and No Covenant

Today’s report was written by the Rev. Philip Ashey, C.O.O and Chaplain, AAC. It was also included in today’s Weekly Email Update. If you would like to sign up for the AAC’s Weekly Email Update, click here.

What happened today with the Anglican Covenant and the Windsor Continuation Group(WCG) Report?

I have just spent all day observing ACC-14’s decisionmaking plenary sessions here in Kingston, Jamaica. I would like to offer several observations:

The failure to pass a "fourth moratorium" on litigation

As we reported two days ago, the Anglican Communion Office, speaking through Bishop Gregory Cameron, could not explain why the moritorium on litigtion, unanimously voiced by the Primates at the Dar es Salaam meeting, was not included among the Communion Moratoria in the WCG draft resolution. In fact, the WCG report to the Archbishop of Canterbury included the fourth moratorium in paragraph 4, and noted that the current failure to observe this moratorium was exacerbating the "interventions" in North America.

When a resolution to add this fourth moratorium was moved today, the Presiding Bishop of TEC rose to complain, among other things, that such a moratorium would enable congregations leaving TEC to "alienate their property."

As usual, nothing could be further from the truth. The key principles set out in the appendix to the Dar es Salaam Statement required both parties "to give assurances that no steps will be taken to alienate property from the Episcopal Church without its consent or to deny use of that property to those congregations." (WCG Report to the Archbishop of Canterbury at paragraph 34, footnote 11, page 7). It is exactly the kind of "standstill" begged for by +Rowan Williams in his presentation of the WCG Recommendations, where he called all parties to take a step back from what they are doing - that we owe it to the Lord of our Church to do so.

Dr Williams has read the report. He presented its recommendations to the ACC-14. He was present at DES and read that Statement too. Yet he allowed the misrepresentation of the Presiding Bishop to stand, without comment. Read more
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