PB: No to consideration of Covenant at GC2009

Reporting from the Executive Council meeting in Helena Montana, ENS quotes Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori as strongly discouraging any vote on a proposed Anglican Covenant at the 2009 General Convention.

If a proposed Anglican covenant is released in mid-May for adoption by the Anglican Communion's provinces, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will "strongly discourage" any effort to bring that request to the 76th General Convention in July.
Jefferts Schori briefly discussed the covenant process during her remarks to the opening plenary session October 21 on the second of the Executive Council's four-day meeting in Helena, the seat of the Diocese of Montana.

Anglican Communion provinces have until the end of March 2009 to respond to the current version of the proposed covenant, known as the St. Andrew's Draft. The Covenant Design Group meets in London in April 2009 and may issue another draft of a covenant. That draft is expected to be reviewed by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) during its May 1-12, 2009 meeting. The ACC could decide to release that version to the provinces for their adoption.

If the ACC decides to do that, "my sense is that the time is far too short before our General Convention for us to have a thorough discussion of it as a church and I'm therefore going to strongly discourage any move to bring it to General Convention," Jefferts Schori told the Executive Council. "I just think it's inappropriate to make a decision that weighty" that quickly, she added.


More news of the Executive Council meeting and the Presiding Bishop here.

Posted by Ann Fontaine on October 21, 2008 8:35 PM | |
Comments (2)

Hot Dog! This time I won´t mind ¨fasting!¨ Thanks ++Katharyn!

Posted by Leonardo Ricardo [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 21, 2008 10:07 PM

This is great. It reminds of a cartoon (possibly from the New Yorker), where a guy is on the phone and says "How about never? Is never good for you?"

I'm not saying that the GC will say never, but they should. The longer the delay, the better though. Waiting will give us time to think through the implications of the Covenant, which has been a bad idea from day one. My hope is that enforcement provisions can be minimized to the point of meaninglessness. We need to create relationships based on communion, interdependence, and respect on the ground before we could formalize the same. The whole covenant process is putting the cart before the horse, presupposing and attempting to legislate something that only God can create. The other member churches would need to become more democratic before I'd be willing to even think about it.

Posted by Bill Carroll [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 22, 2008 7:06 AM

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