Primates Meeting - Press briefing on 16 Feb 2007

ACNS 4250 | ACO | 17 FEBRUARY 2007

Given by Archbishop Philip Aspinall, Archbishop of Melbourne (designated by the Primates as the official spokesperson for the Primates'
Meeting)

Accompanied by the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, Primate of the West Indies.

Archbishop Aspinall

It's good to be with you again to give you a brief update on today's
proceedings; as I anticipated with you last evening, we spent the morning
today considering further the Primates' responses to The Episcopal Church's
reactions to the Windsor Report and the Dromantine requests from the
Primate.

Unfortunately I'm not in a position to tell you much about that because it
hasn't reached definite conclusions yet; certainly we moved from the intense
listening mode I described on the first day into much more of a discussion,
exchange of views, debate, so there was free and frank exchange of views and
certainly some areas of concern and tension. It would be wrong to give an
impression that it's all sooth sailing; there are real tensions for us still
to work through and hopefully there'll be more to report on that tomorrow,
as those discussions mature.

We then moved on; the second major thing we tackled today was to receive the
report from the Covenant Design Group, and Archbishop Drexel is the chair of
that group and has been intimately associated with its work, so he may wish
to speak and you may wish to ask Archbishop Drexel some questions about the
work of the covenant design group.

Let me say that Joint Standing Committee considered the report of the
Covenant Design Group earlier in the week and the Joint Standing Committee
resolved in these terms:

'The Joint Standing Committee informs the Primates meeting that it wishes
to commend the work of the Covenant Design Group for further study and
reflection in the Anglican Communion.'

So the Primates today received with deep thanks the report from the Covenant
Design Group which includes a draft covenant. Discussion, comment,
suggestions for clarifying and improving the text have been made both by the
Joint Standing Committee and by the Primates themselves; the Primates have
requested the archbishop of Canterbury to prepare on behalf of the Primates
a letter commending the report and the draft covenant to the provinces for
study and response. The Primates noted an urgent need to translate the
report and the covenant into a number of together languages so that it can
be considered by the whole Communion and that needs to happen as a matter of
urgency.

The kind of time-line we're looking at: the covenant design group is hoping
for initial responses from around the Communion over the next twelve months,
with a view to a revised version of the covenant going to the Lambeth
Conference in 2008. It's anticipated that the Lambeth Conference itself will
revise the covenant further and that that further revision will then be
submitted to the churches of the Communion for final adoption or
ratification following the Lambeth Conference in 2008.

The Primates also considered with some care the public release of the report
and the draft covenant and the decision they came to was that they believe
they have an obligation to share the document with the bishops of the
Communion prior to its public release and arrangements are being made for
that to happen electronically over the next couple of days, so the hope is
that when we provide you with the communiqué on Monday, we will also provide
you with the covenant design group's report and the draft covenant. You may
wish to pursue that further with me and with Archbishop Drexel in a few
minutes.

The third major task we tackled today was to consider the report from the
Panel of reference; and we had Archbishop Peter Carnley with us, the former
Primate of Australia and Chair of the Panel of Reference; a number of
difficulties in the operation of the Panel were pointed out to the Primates
and chief among them are these three.

First, the sheer effort that is required to establish the facts in a case
when large volumes of written material are produced by all sorts of people
involved in a particular matter. Second, sometimes there are constraints
around the Panel of reference's work caused by the fact that legal actions
are underway which impinge on the Panel's work and the cases it's
considering; and third, just the purely human problems of getting timely
responses from a large number of people who are distant from each other.

So we had an account of those difficulties that the Panel has experienced;
the very blunt question was asked among the Primates about whether the
outcomes achieved are proportionate to the work carried out by the Panel;
that question was faced squarely and while there's no definitive answer
reached yet, it was pointed out by a number of participants in the
discussion that there really has to be a will for reconciliation in these
circumstances in order for the work of the Panel to be effective. We also
considered how the Church should respond if at all to public criticism of
reports issued by the Panel; such reports not always being factually
correct; those reports can tend to undermine confidence in the Panel. Again
those questions require further reflection and the Archbishop of Canterbury
will take them up with members of the Panel themselves and with other
advisers.

The final thing today we dealt with, which we've just come from, was a
session dealing with the listening process, Canon Phil Groves joined the
Primates to describe the work he's been doing since his appointment
following Dromantine; he's been making contacts around the Communion and
compiling reports of what different churches around the Communion are doing
in relation to listening to gay and lesbian people and he's also done some
theoretical work research on listening processes.

He reported to the Primates that there's an increasing awareness among the
churches of the Communion of gay and lesbian people and the issues they
face; he emphasised that, for the listening process to be effective, there
needs to be established safe ground for homosexual people in order for them
to feel safe and to share their experience with the church; and that in some
of the listening processes that have been attempted, it has not been always
possible to establish such safe ground so that homosexual people feel safe
sharing their experiences.

Canon Groves outlined preliminary proposals for the kind of approach being
considered for the Lambeth Conference; he is working on developing high
quality materials which will deal with the experience of homosexual people;
what science can tell us about homosexuality, the legal and cultural
contexts around the Communion, reflection on bible and tradition in those
specific contexts as well as training materials to develop skills in
listening and facilitating listening.

So that's very much a progress report to update Primates on where that
listening process is up to. So they're the matters that have taken our time
and attention today.

Archbishop Drexel, do you wish to say anything in a preliminary way about
the covenant and the design group's work?


Archbishop Drexel

Good evening; I was appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to serve as
Chairman of the Covenant Design Group and we had our first meeting in Nassau
early in January and as a result of that meeting we were able to prepare a
report and to produce a draft covenant for the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The overall purpose of the covenant - the draft covenant is to provide the
Anglican Communion with a mechanism for mutual accountability and holding
one another together. We believe that when the covenant is finally approved
we will have a means of holding each other in check and also dealing with
difficult situations that may arise from time to time. Unfortunately the
Anglican Communion has no central legal authority and we have really no
means of holding one another in check other than through mutual admonition
and meeting and talking, so we're trying to make some progress as a global
community to establish this mutual accountability and the building up of one
another in Christ.

It's not possible for me to discuss the details of what we've proposed until
Monday evening when it is publicly released, but what I can say is that we
have produced what we consider to be a statement of classical Anglicanism,
given our history, and our background we are producing something that has
merit and power for the Anglican Community. It is not one size fits all', so
it wouldn't apply to all Christian denominations, it is designed
specifically to deal with the Anglican Communion in the sets of
circumstances that prevail in our church.

We believe that we have been faithful to our tradition and that we have
produced a very comprehensive report. I think that both groups that have
discussed the report - both the Joint Standing Committee and the Primates
themselves - both groups were surprised at the progress that we were able to
make; that in a relatively short period -we met for four days - and in that
short period of time we were able to produced a full report and to produce a
full draft, and so both groups expressed appreciation for the work and gave
us reason to believe that in the final analysis the overall recommendations
will be well-received. I think more than that I can't say.

ENDS


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