I'm sorry, but this just sounds like one more round of "My way or the highway." It is inconceivable to me that anyone claiming to be Anglican can claim such certain ownership of the truth. I've always thought that one of our best characteristics is our willingness to hear and engage alternative viewpoints. Ah, the ghost of Cromwell is undoubtedly smiling....

So it *is* all about sex. after all!

"We urge the Archbishop of Canterbury to work in close collegial consultation with fellow Primates in the Communion, act decisively on already agreed measures in the Primates' Meetings, and exercise effective leadership in nourishing the flock under our charge, so that none would be left wandering and bereft of spiritual oversight
- Global South Primates, Chairman Abp.P.Akinola -

What a nerve!!! Here is the Primate of All Nigeria asking the Archbishop of Canterbury - who as Primate-inter-pares he has already rejected publicly, by striking the See of Canterbury from his Provincial Statute Book - to intervene on behalf of GAFCON to make sure that none of their *sheep* run off to Rome in the latest round-up from the Vatican of disaffected Anglicans.

Perhaps this will show the rest of the Communion the frailty of GAFCON's real leadership strength.
No doubt GAFCON Secretary-General, My Lord Abp. of Sydney, Australia, Peter Jensen, will also be looking to the ABC to help him repulse this unwlecome (for him, at least) move by the Roman Pontiff to move against his own Protestant Enclave of the Anglican Communion. After all, Dr. Jensen wants Anglicans to take up his initiative to foist Lay-Presidency at the Eucharist, which would not be allowed in any 'ordinariate'.

What a fluttering among the dove-cotes must be going on in that unlikely liaison in ACNA at the moment, too. They must be wondering which way is up at the moment, never mind in what direction Archbishop Bobby might jump when the ordure hits the fan - not to mention the Bishop of South Carolina.

Please Archbishop Rowan, take no notice of this plea from the Global South and ACNA. They only call on you when there is a threat from Mother.
And please, don't offer them The Covenant.

They may be right about point 5, except that I still maintain the definition of Anglican is "in communion with Canterbury", and earnestly desire these trumped-up wannabees cease trying to redefine the communion in their terms, especially having defied the original definition to the extent of rewriting the introductions to their bibles.

Being right about the shifting changes of political power is no thing of which to be proud.

So now we know, as if we didn't. The purpose of the Covenant is international discipline dished out by the Primates Meeting, and it is all centred around bishops and homosexuality. Whereas the Pope's offer was centred around bishops and being female. So pick your obsession. Which is why no one with any ethical sense would pass the Covenant.

Rome is welcome here only insofar as it agrees with their view on homosexuality. Otherwise it's "the grim wolf" that "with privy paw daily devours apace and nothing said..." Archbishop Williams is welcome only insofar as he does his duty and gives them their Covenant. The Covenant is important only insofar as it confirms their view on homosexuality. An ecclesiastical Empire needs a broader basis, methinks.

"We urge the Archbishop of Canterbury to work in close collegial consultation with fellow Primates in the Communion ... so that none would be left wandering and bereft of spiritual oversight."

Unless, of course, they are GLBT.

The usual suspects, with the usual spin, and the usual digs at ++Williams, and their diatribe complete with the usual homophobic slurs. Women weren't even worth a mention.

And as to "...none left wandering and bereft of spiritual oversight." Good would be starting in their own backyard and cleaning up the mess of tiny children in Nigeria being tortured and abused for witchcraft.

The statement is clearly one of, "Thanks, but no thanks."

That being said, it's amazing how much in this statement is centered on homosexuals and our place in the Church and Communion. This is a bit obsessive even for them.

Well, you know, they have been working very hard at the construction of their own PseudoPapacy. I imagine it is a bit upsetting to think that perhaps some of their flock, being conservative and all, would prefer to go with the Good Old Fashioned Pope rather than the innovative design for a Protestant Papacy being created by GAFCON and the covenant crowd.

And, talk about your "honeyed words", wha? My partner believes that, when it comes to the closet, when you live with such a basic lie at the centre of your life, lying becomes second nature. Since you have constructed your own reality for yourself around your sexuality, reality itself becomes a fluid thing, and truth ceases to have any meaning, because such people can convince themselves that any falsehood is actually true, so they really don't know they are lying.

Now, I'm not saying, not even sarcastically, that the GAFCON crowd are in the closet. We all probably have our suspicions about some, but that's pub conversation, not something for here, at least not today. But, if some of their more influential people ARE in fact in that position, might that be a reason why they actually believe that "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" followed by a quote from Scripture can cover up their malice? I mean, they have clearly stated that we are Apostates, preaching a new Gospel, geared towards courting popularity with secular society, that we have no faith at all, that it is acceptable to jail gay people and those who support us for five years, and what was it Orombi did a couple of weeks ago? I mean, come on. They do not, in their hearts, wish us "Grace and Peace from our Lord Jesus Christ", so why the hypocrisy now? The faux piety of this is nauseating.

It´s all just plain stupid...imagine the Roman Catholics pontificating about Gay Clergy along with self determined holy +Orombi and +Akinola? Now a touchbase with REALITY from Fr. Geoff Farrow:

http://fathergeofffarrow.blogspot.com/2009/10/us-catholic-bishops-teach-americans.html

...¨In LGBT people and popular bigotry, they have an effective scapegoat for the “moral evils” plaguing marriage and society. Thereby they are able to refocus popular attention away from the pedophilia sex scandals in the Catholic Church and re-establish themselves as a moral authority. What if someone should bring up the inconvenient fact that most Catholic priests and bishops are gay and that this data has been published? Well, hypocrisy is the obsequious bow which vice pays to virtue. Besides, most people chose not to believe that embarrassing data.¨ FGF

Is this Akinola's way of telling us he is now in support of the covenant. Last I heard he was saying the covenant wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

"At the same time we believe that the proposed Anglican Covenant sets the necessary parameters in safeguarding the catholic and apostolic faith and order of the Communion."

Oh, come on. If they really believed that, they would have (all) come to Lambeth '08!

A mere seven points in this statement, and at least 1.5 are about homosexuality: I don't know what the (so-called) Global South want to call their new sect (idolatry?), but it certainly ain't Catholic or even less, Anglican!

Honestly, a fiction writer couldn't make this sort of stuff up, without being accused of bathos. Yet is is real, and really published with solemn faces in certain Anglican sectors.

My gloss? Well, the Global South seems to be saying, Hold on, wait a long minute. We are the ones who can properly diss both women and gay bishops; don't go running off to that Rome fellow so fast.

Except, as we all already know, GAFCON may not be all that free from twisted ambivalences about current AngloCatholic manners, including the loud rumors that AngloCatholics are keepers of some of the most sumptiously appointed Closets in Anglican Land, wherein all manner of gay priests cavort celibately and otherwise.

I predict? The laws of unintended consequences will just have to work out this development, for all churches and church folks involved. On Benny's side, although he patently wishes to stop change dead in its gnarly tracks in favor of a closed and retrograde Rome, the reality on the global ground still appears that he is presiding over a church that is still much more of a big tent than his conformity and policing signal as wanted. Adding wholesale defectors from Anglican Catholics might seem like a warm-fisted skinhead gang rally of like minds? All rabidly antigay? But brings big tent stuff inside anyways, mainly having to do with (A) married priests plus other cultural innovations, and (B) the gifted-talented women who will still be all around, all over, helping to run the world and hopefully set it right, Tikkun Olam. Not just baby factories, then.

On the RWilliams side, a mass departure of believers patently more afraid of women cooties than they are of queer folks cooties may help to crystallize the rabid antigay remnants. Nothing like light and air to get to the bacterial bottoms of things, then. All of us have microorganisms in this Great Time Of Open Transition?

Just as when individual queer folks Come Out in their extended families or workplaces, their news often becomes a long occasion of other shifts and transformations taking place - some welcome, some uncertain, some very unwelcome - and yes, after everybody is done pawing and moving about, we will still be here together, on a small benighted planet struggling for its very real survival against the forces which we have mainly unloosed.

Stay tuned.

I suppose it does cast a positive light on those of us in SEC & TEC where the principle of inclusivity for all, including LGBT and women(!), is claimed.

I think it's amusing that the Global South bishops are saying "We're more conservative than the Pope, and more correct as well. Jesus built His Church upon our Rock, not the Pope's."

The big unintended consequence is that the Anglican Rite will become the liberal stronghold of the RC. All the priests who want to get married, and they are usually somewhat liberal, will sign up to be priests in the Anglican Rite. Also, for Anglicans to join the RC in any Rite, there will have to be allowances for divorce and birth control. When even one part of the RC starts to show leniency on those issues, well, Katy bar the door! All the gay-hating, women-priest hating Anglicans will have to stand in line behind the Catholic married priests, divorced couples, and couples who use the pill.

Point 6: "we stand in communion with our fellow bishops, clergy and laity who are steadfast in the biblical teaching against the ordination of openly homosexual clergy, the consecration of such to the episcopate, and the blessing of homosexual partnerships." So it's ok to ordain and consecrate homosexuals who lie about their orientation and activities? And no mention of the authority of Scripture and all the other "more weighty" issues, of which homosexuality was only the symptom, that they used to insist were the "real" causes of the problem.
Rowland Williams saw this coming a century ago:
"If we are to retain the old Anglican foundations of research and fair statement, we must revise some of the decisions provisionally given upon imperfect evidence; or, if we shrink from doing so, we must abdicate our ancient claim to build upon the truth; and our retreat will be either to Rome, as some of our lost ones have consistently seen, or to some form, equally evil, of darkness voluntary."

"The big unintended consequence is that the Anglican Rite will become the liberal stronghold of the RC."

"Liberal" being relative in this context. This sounds just as funny to my Canadian ear as when I hear Americans refer to the Democrats as "liberal"!

"The motion "Welcomes Archbishop Duncan's assessment that the recent Vatican offer of a Personal Ordinariate 'will not be utilised by the great majority of the Anglican Church in North America's bishops, priests, dioceses and congregations' and urges all Anglicans to reject the Vatican's proposal". - Virtue on line -

This V.o.L. posting, quoting a motion passed at the recent Sydney Diocesan Synod, denotes the Sydney Diocesan equivalence with Bobby Duncan and ACNA's distaste for the new Roman Catholic offer of 'Ordinariates' for disaffected Anglicans.

The Sydney Synod - under the leadership of its Archbishop Peter Jensen (clothed in collar and tie for the occasion) - also officially affirmed its Communion Fellowship with ACNA and Duncan in a formal statement of collegiality with what it calls the 'New Province of the Anglican Communion'
which it urges all Anglican Provinces to recognise.

It surely is now time to disabuse this bumptious, recalcitrant Archbishop (Jensen) that the world-wide Anglican Communion has not yet recognised ACNA as a province within the Communion. Jensen's hubris in accepting ACNA before the rest of the Communion does so, is typical of this prelate's lack of regard for Anglican protocols. He should be advised by his Australiam Primate that he is speaking out of turn with this recent bit of one-upmanship in the Communion.

I have just noticed today (Thursday, 5 November) the following item from the V.o.l. web-site, which outlines a TEC priest's view on a problem associated with Rome's current offer of an accommodation with dissident Anglicans:

Quote: "At the time of Pope Leo's encyclical, for many, the luster of the papacy faded, and the papal curia, looked at calmly and dispassionately, was seen to be but a piece of skillfully constructed human machinery. This situation continues today, and presents a major issue for clergy who cannot deny the validity of their own Sacraments. Unless there is a resolution, corporate union with Rome, without an act of utter cognitive dissonance by Anglican clergy denying the validity of their very ordained lives, is beyond the range of human possibility, and not the terminus of the Tractarian movement, or the leading of Divine Providence."
- Canon Charles Nalls, SSM, 4 November 2009 - TEC

What, one wonders, does this say to those clergy of F.i.F. who are considering joining one of the proposed 'Ordinariates'? Will they consider their present ministry as Anglican priests to be, in any way, invalid, or at least defective?