The Church of Ireland Gazette reports in Inquiry established into Lambeth Conference finances that:
Following reports of a £1.2m shortfall in the funding of this year’s Lambeth Conference, the Church of England’s Archbishops’ Council and Church Commissioners have set up a review, under the independent chairmanship of John Ormerod, a former senior partner of Deloitte, to examine the financial management of the Lambeth Conference.
The team has also been asked to make recommendations regarding the future involvement of the Council and the Board of the Church Commissioners in assisting the financing of meetings of the Lambeth Conference. A spokesman for the Church of England told the Gazette: “The inquiry is due to report back to the Council and the Board early in 2009 with a preliminary report on the financial difficulties and how these arose. A final report, examining the way forward, will be produced in summer 2009. The Council and Board have indicated that the inquiry’s report should be published.” The membership of the inquiry will be: John Ormerod; the Rt Revd Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester, and Christina Baxter (both Archbishops’ Council); and Timothy Walker, Third Church Estates Commissioner…
I believe it was a custom in the middle ages that the condemned was required to pay the executioner. Stand by. The request will soon come for Canada and the US to pay for our own lynching.
Dear Malcom, I’m sorry that anyone in the USA or Canada should feel that the organisers of the Lambeth Conference would blame you for the short-fall of the Conference Budget requirements. Especially as most of your Bishops were in attendance. It may just be that the organisers were expecting all of the Bishops of the Communion (including those of the African Provinces) would be contributing to the Budget, and to the programme of the Meeting, through their actual presence. However, it turned out that several Primates (and, notably, the Archbishop of Sydney) directed their local Bishops not to attend, and… Read more »
Father Ron, Peter Jensen is not a Primate. He is the Archbishop of Sydney, and has limited provincial authority within New South Wales, but lost the last primatial election that gave us Philip Aspinall (Arch of Brisbane) as the Primate of the Anglican Church in Australia. Jensen has been ordaining like he fervently believed in sacerdotalism in order to increase his proportion of the General Synod vote the next time round. And, as a matter of fact, I think that those who opted out of the Lambeth Conference lately concluded should stump up some cash. Since they’ve proven themselves so… Read more »
Oh, hand over the ledgers and contract files. Any U.S. conference planner responsible for a convention around the time of 9/11 can tell you which expenses were fixed and variable, if any deadlines for reducing head counts and changing menus were missed – and if anyone was minding the store on the budget. Meals and handouts were probably the only place to make adjustments. Things have changed a lot in conference planning in the last ten years. This isn’t about finding a scapegoat, it’s about adjusting for the next time. They don’t need a committee to look at this, they… Read more »
My only point is that it is likely to be us nasty western libeals who are asked to pony up the cash for a conference that basically slapped us around. But I think our national churches should be more gracious than I’m feeling at the moment. I propose a North American Lambeth Appeal which would raise funds to cover all or part of the shortfall. With the Bishop of New Hampshire as Chair. And the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and the Primate of Canada as Patrons. And none of the three of them should say a peep about… Read more »
Kieran, Thanks for your correction on the actual status of Archbishop Jensen. He indeed is an archbishop, but not a primate – not, anyway, in the sense the Anglican Church uses that term. I am aware that there are other Australian archbishops who are not Heads of a Province, but whose territory includes local episcopal areas with their own bishops. So, in fact Jensen’s powers as a bishop extend only to the Sydney area. This makes him less significant that the Primate of Australia, Dr. Peter Carnley, whom most of us Anglicans around the world recognise as the spokesperson and… Read more »
“Jensen has been ordaining like he fervently believed in sacerdotalism in order to increase his proportion of the General Synod vote the next time round.” Now, now, I’m sure it’s because Australia is in the clutches of the lacivious Devil and he needs priests, oh, sorry, preachers, to go and spread the…..no, becuase laity, being priests and everything, can do that. Or, maybe it’s because God has sent so many labourers into the vinyard that…..but no need of ordination, then, as before, the laity are all priests and can surely preach. So, yeah, why the need for so many clergy?… Read more »
Ford, you do have a point about the peculiarity of the Archbishop of Sydney ‘ordaining’ further clergy. As has been made clear, this may be only for the puroses of bolstering the evangelical clergy vote in Synod. Even he has to recognise that his plans of protestant evangelisation of Australia would not get far on his proposal for Lay-Presidency at the Last Supper – a plan which he proposes to implement as soon as possible. When the Arhbishop of Sydney speaks of his own allegiance to ‘orthodoxy’ it must be obvious to everyone that his casuistical ordination of clergy –… Read more »
“When the Arhbishop of Sydney speaks of his own allegiance to ‘orthodoxy'”
Well, I just laugh at this. I mean, he may be devout, strong in faith, all that rot, but “orthodox” he is most certainly not. His claims to orthodoxy are so obviously untrue, you either have to consider him utterly deluded, or something much worse.
I have just decided (under consultation with the Holy Spirit, who assures me I am right) that those who refuse to wear a surplice and pink tutu at prayer are rank heretics. Anathema! Anathema!
(Well, it’s at about the same level as the pronouncements on orthodoxy as the more extreme “orthodox”, so what the heck, I’ll make it up as I go along, too.)
“a surplice and pink tutu at prayer”
Walsingham, I am shocked to my very core. You are an Anglo-Catholic. Surely you are aware that tutus should be purple(or blue)in Advent, white in Christmas, green in Epiphany, unbleached linen in Lent, white at Easter, red at Palm Sunday, Pentecost, and feasts of martyrs, and green the rest of the time. Laetare and Gaudete Sundays mandate rose tutus. Tsk Tsk!
@Ford Elms: My dear Ford, ancient tradition (since last Tuesday at least) dictates that the tutu must always be pink as a sign of our eternal devotion to our Lord. I will not hear of this misuse of liturgical colors, though I will admit that using eyeshade in liturgical colors is admissible. As proof of this, I note that some well-admired archbishops have been so devoted to the eternally pink tutu that they even named themselves for it. Thus I beg you, my dear Ford, to cease walking apart in your many-colored tutus and return to the path with us… Read more »
“I note that some well-admired archbishops have been so devoted to the eternally pink tutu that they even named themselves for it.” It is even rumoured that some of them and their clergy wear said tutus, with liturgically appropriate eyeshade, as part of their practice of “leather and lace” Anglicanism! I am, however, of the ancient tradition dating from noon Thursday past, that believe the pink tutu to have been a medieval accretion, a “tradition of man”, one of the detestable enormities of the Bishop of Rome (from which Good Lord deliver us!), and duly done away with in the… Read more »