“We need therefore to go on meeting and listening,” said the ABC -- does this mean that the North American Churches are now allowed to attend meeting of the ACC? That ALL the bishops of TEC will be invited to Lambeth? That we will be able to break bread together without agreeing about everything?

One of the things that I have found frustrating about ++Rowan's time as ABC is that it has become like Vatican watching (or Cold War Kremlin watching) with different people putting their own interpretations on his mysterious words ("what this really means is..."). I do not recall ever before having an ABC where people were unable to understand what he said!

I say this with considerable regret as I was a vigorous advocate for Williams as the only possible choice for ABC.

When first reflecting on the Windsor Report on the morning of its publication, four things struck me:
1. The cruel way the report isolated Gene Robinson, particularly as the Lambeth Commission had not even met with him.
2. The way the Report gave a skewed (the nicest word I can think of) historical account of how differences had emerged and been dealt with in the Communion hitherto.
3. The fact that the report had NOT followed the submissions of many and declared homosexuality contrary to God’s will, and left the door open for further discussion.
4. The impossible new standard that was set for the ordination of people in same-sex relationships, this would now require not only an Anglican consensus but the approval of most of Christendom.

I thought the Archbishop of Armagh had made it clear in the preface this was not a judgment, and so I believed that we had at last begun the process of listening and development for which we had long hoped. So only two hours after its publication I was foolish enough to note the above points but go on to say the Windsor Report was a document we could work with believing that as the months and years passed the listening would soften its conclusions.

I had not twigged then that 3 & 4 had been in fact a trade off. Anglicanism could appear to remain open and reflective on the subject with absolutely no fear of having to accept the ordination of gay people in same-sex relationships this side of a consenting Ecumenical Council.

So reading Rowan Williams’ address to the Anglican gathering at the WCC one could almost be taken in by the spin that Anglican diversity is safe in his hands, this is not the case. Dr Williams is pressing on fiercely with the Windsor Process – not through further open dialogue but by pursuing the findings of the Lambeth Commission at all cost.

So in response to a question on 4 above at the WCC Williams says: “On a central matter, or let’s not say a central matter, that might be misleading, but on a matter where traditionally there has been a very clear teaching, it’s I think right that the highest degree of consensus be sought before there’s such a radical change.”
Williams here throws all the weight of his office behind this strategy, a strategy that leaves us for ever floundering against impossible odds and which shifts the burden of any decision on change into the hands of our ecumenical partners. Through the Covenant, now in preparation, those who subscribe will be contracted to this policy and the matter will be settled.
In my view, there is no point in our further engagement with this “process”. Dialogue without the faintest possibility of change gives Windsor a credibility it cannot be granted.

I fear the archbishop's words get the "what he really means" treatment for two reasons. First I think he is intentionally obscure. Second, many do not want to hear the same things in the obscurity.

He has, I think, fallen into the error of institutionalism. Ah well, I have my own basket of errors. Mine at least do no more than trivial harm to the church.

FWIW
jimB

Martin Reynolds --

I too very much wanted to try to work with the Windsor Report, but the more I have pondered it, the more hopeless it has seemed (& the more of a rushed job by a committee that didn't even have adequate time to paper over the cracks) -- it is so disingenuous about the history of the ordination of women (& its "reception") that the integrity of the entire document must be called into question.

Fr Prior

My will to engage with the Windsor Report was also strong, but this document is attempting to recast the Anglican Church in some other form, and as you say its account of the ordination of women is risible and does cast doubt on the integrity of the whole.

Now that the Communion has appointed a “Listener” – while at the same time putting any possibility of change beyond reach – it creates a major dilemma. The more we cooperate with the Windsor Process the more we collude with its agenda.
My own Church here in Wales stands much where Rowan led and left us on the matter and where we all believed the Anglican Communion stood at the time in the development of its practice on homosexuality. Though we do now have a new statement.
As Fr Geoffrey Kirk reminds us reporting on a Radio 4 Interview Dr Williams gave to Sue Lawley for the programme “Desert Island Discs”
“Rowan had knowingly ordained a practising homosexual in the Diocese of Monmouth. Would he do the same in Canterbury, asked the probing Sue. There was a long silence. No, came the considered reply, he would not. He had felt free to act as he had in Wales because the Welsh Church had no statement on the matter; the Church of England, however, did have a statement, and he would abide by that.” http://trushare.com/93FEB03/FE03WAYL.htm
Of course, this Welsh take does not figure in the “history” of the development of the issue within the Anglican Communion in the Windsor Report..
Elsewhere on this blog the distinguished scholar Thomas Renz says this: “One may challenge Rowan Williams on his lack of (firm, authoritative, this-is-what-we-are-going-to-do) leadership but I am not sure that it is fair to suggest that he is speaking and acting against his own convictions.” . I do not share his view
Post Windsor we are all expected to buy into the fact that American and Canadian Churches acted in a way that was not in keeping with the Anglican way, that they have brought us to a dangerous place. We are in such a place but I believe that the American Canadian and Welsh Church (along with many others) were acting within the established parameters of Anglicanism no matter how the Windsor Report spins it. The ACC’s rejection of the Virginia Report left us is no doubt of this.
As matters develop the new Rowan Williams with the new Anglican Communion he is trying to construct in the light of Windsor will leave many behind. I still believe there is another way and it is not too late.