Wouldn't the Church be better served if we all forgot about the covenant and worked to save lives in Uganda? I find it impossible at this point to take any admonitions from the Archbishop of Canterbury seriously.

So I suppose that, oh, the C of E could, under the provisions of the last part, call into question the Ugandan church's endorsement of the pending legislation? Of course, that won't happen until the covenant is accepted, and by then, lots of glbt Ugandans may well have been killed and imprisoned. Pity, that.

This could hardly be less opportune and the cringing covering letter will not help.

Good.

Let us move on. No document will cover our disagreements and no covenant will replace our responsibility to deal with each other maturely.

Oh well, it was much what we thought it would be. It will be like that Aesop's fable, won't it, where nobody is pleased.

I actually think it concedes as much as is reasonably possible to a conservative mindset, all the stuff about seeking a "shared mind" and "acting with caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy" just puts the brakes on ANY progress towards the full affirmation of LGBT people within the Church. Pretty dire!

It’s not going to solve all our problems,

This much is certainly true.

it’s not going to be a constitution,

Funnily enough it reads very much like one to me.

and it’s certainly not going to be a penal code for punishing people who don’t comply.

Strangely, that's exactly how I read sections 4.2.5-6. It is absolutely a penal code for punishing people who don't comply with the Standing Committee.

Dead on arrival. Neel's right, throw it in the wastepaper basket (rubbish bin) and start thinking about the horrors of Uganda (and Rwanda also by the way).

All authority goes to the Standing Committee!

http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/12/authority-to-standing-committee.html

(Sorry for posting this in the wrong place at first)

"The Anglican Communion is a fellowship, within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, of national or regional Churches, in which each recognises in the others the bonds of a common loyalty to Christ expressed through a common faith and order, a shared inheritance in worship, life and mission, and a readiness to live in an interdependent life." - Covenant section 4.1.1. -

How could this possibly be expected to become a reality with, for instance, the Anglican Church of Uganda, which declares LGBT persons as sinners and children of the Devil? The cultural gaps within the Communion have become more obvious with the Enlightenment. If the constitutent Churches of the Communion cannot agree the right to differences on matters other than the Catholic Creeds and the priority of the Gospels, then there will continue to be social and cultural barriers to agreement on the basis of partnership.

One reason we are not allied corporately like the Roman Catholic Church, is that Provinces of the Anglican Communion cherish their respective understandings of their different social and cultural contexts, which enable each to pursue their vision of the Gospel imperatives in situ. Africa has different cultural and social needs from those in the Western world. Are we looking for a 'one size fits all' Communion? If so, it may be that this never has and never will work within the different areas of mission.

We cannot remain in a 16th century mission mode.
This is one of the problems of the world-wide R.C. Church, where local needs are not being met by the ecclesiology of it's Roman Patriarch.

"A common loyalty to Christ" may mean different things in different contexts. Are we to try to homogenise our different social and cultural understandings of the Incarnate Christ in the local community? What did Jesus really mean when he said: "In my Father's house are many mansions"?

Well, the Welsh idiot has managed to put the final nail in the communion coffin.

It will certainly kill TEC, if it's adopted. If TEC adopts it, it won't get the orthodites back, because it still won't allow them to do as they please, and TEC will lose its primary supporters still in the church.

Perhaps, that's what the Welsh idiot wants.

When I was a university chaplain the Christian Union invited my bishop to speak at one of their meetings. They asked him to sign the Doctrinal Basis before he arrived. You can find this here:

http://www.uccf.org.uk/about-us/doctrinal-basis.htm

The bishop said that he would love to come to their meeting, but that he could not sign the document, not because it may or may not represent his views, but because he had already given his assent to the Catholic creeds and that he felt that he did not need to make any other declaration.
This is the position that members of the Anglican Communion now find themselves in. Within our member churches procedures exist for discerning vocations, and for training and for authorising ministry. The priests and bishops of the member churches continue to make the declarations and promises they have always made. These declarations and promises are based on a common understanding of the faith and of church order.
It is neither sensible nor right for some committee to frame a loyalty oath which overrides these declarations and promises and to require member churches to sign it before they can be acceptable.
The day that the Covenant is ratified will be the day that the churches which accept it cease being proper churches and turn themselves into Christian Unions.

Badman put it in so many words, methinks.

(1) Offensive language such as that used in one of the previous comments should not be approved , but (2) neither can the Covenant at least in the Anglican Church of Australia, which is an autonomous Church with its own Constitution, one that keeps us in communion with "the Church of England" but which simply is not going to be changed to incorporate any reference to the Anglican Communion or to a Covenant. We have innumerable links of many different kinds and of varying strength, Biblical, sacramental, personal, ecclesiastical, institutional, with Churches of the Anglican Communion of which we happily and informally are a part, links that we value, within the wider fellowship of the whole Christian Church. Through them - and not through any Covenant - we can each seek by God's grace to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Is the " Welsh idiot " Rowan Williams or Robert Williams....!

The Covenant Revision Committee writes:

"Traditionally, Anglicans have asserted the ecclesial character of the national Church as the privileged unit of ecclesiastical life. The Church of England’s very existence was predicated upon such an assumption at the time of the Reformation. Recognised in most cases as “Provinces”, these national or regional Churches are the historical bodies through which the life of the Anglican Communion has been expressed, and they are the primary parties for whom the covenant has been designed. If, however, the canons and constitutions of a Province permit, there is no reason why a diocesan synod should not commit itself to the covenant, thus strengthening its commitment to the interdependent life of the Communion.”[

Oh, swell. So it will still be possible for particular dioceses of TEC to sign on to the Covenant, even if TEC itself does not. "If the canons and constitutions of a Province permit" will be read as "if they do not explicitly forbid," and of course they don't forbid it! Until ++Rowan's disastrous primacy, no one ever envisaged such a situation in Anglicanism. So when your lot kicks TEC out, as they are even now maneuvering to do, these provinces and parishes of TEC will remain in "your" Communion.

Swell. The extreme right will, with ++Rowan's help, have achieved their goal of breaking apart TEC. The C of E, having poached off a goodly number of TEC dioceses and parishes, will claim their buildings and endowments for itself, and ++Rowan will claim it was all done legally. After all, why let Rwanda and Uganda have all the fun? Let's us in the C of E grab some of the TEC loot for ourselves.

I say the Anglican Ordinariate that is causing ++Rowan and the C of E such grief is just payback for what you are trying to do to our church. After all, it's the identical maneuver.

Oh, and while I am at it, here's the take in the Telegraph article:

"If the provinces sign up to the document, whose final draft has been published online, they agree not to carry out any contentious actions such as putting their clergy in another country without its agreement, electing openly homosexual priests or blessing same-sex unions in church."

It is priests, not bishops, they mean to forbid. NOTE THIS. They intend to drill down to the parish level in the US, interrogating our priests to find out if any are less than robustly heterosexual, then demand we remove them, or out we go from their Communion. I am sick to my stomach at these actions.

It's a messy mess indeed. As other's have noted, the Baptismal Covenant stated in TEC's BCP is good enough for me.

What griped me about the ABC's video announcement was the sweetness and nice about our wonderful "Anglican family." Then he proceeds with his hypocritical, top-down, paternalistic clap trap! I don't buy it at all.

"If the provinces sign up to the document, whose final draft has been published online, they agree not to carry out any contentious actions such as putting their clergy in another country without its agreement, electing openly homosexual priests or blessing same-sex unions in church."

So it's no longer acceptable to be gay but celibate? And they think that any person with a shred of moral conscience can sign this?

If any Western province does indeed sign this, they will do nothing more than perpetuate the state of lying about what's truly going on in their parishes. Because of course, the priests who have blessed same sex unions until now will continue to do so, and gay people will continue to become priests. It's just ridiculous to believe that you can genuinely legislate for absolute immoral "la la la la la, no gays here" nonsense.

This is just so deeply sad.

Today's 'Magnificat' whose words are put into the mouth of Mary, the mother of Jesus, ought to reassure us that God's way will triumph in the end. It is not through any sort of papal primacy, or ambitious designation about'who's in and who's out?' of the Communion, that will determine the future of the Anglican Communion (if it remains); but rather the Wisdom (O Sapientia) of God.

No future Covenant, which seeks to exclude certain Provinces on account of their perceived liberal interpretation of the Gospel's imperative for justice and love, will in the end prevail. So please, my dear friends in TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, do not lose heart at what you perceive to be the all-encroaching determinism of any Covenant. Many of us who are Anglicans in other provinces around the world are empathising with you in your pain - but whoever said that justice would ever come to fruit without pain?

Stay in there; there are more with you than you might be presently aware of. We salute your prophetic actions with LGBT people whose human rights are at stake in the Communion.

"Drop down you heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness" - our common Advent cry!

"[T]here are more with you than you might be presently aware of."

If so, it is time -- high time -- for those who are "with" the churches of North American to say so publicly.

Here is one Kiwi's reflection:

http://www.liturgy.co.nz/blog/anglican-covenant/2171

Robert, I've never known you to behave like an idiot.

Well, the papist thing aside. :D

Responses to the Final Draft of the Covenant have already been received from 21 of the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. Here is a significant extract from the response of the majority of the New Zealand Tikanga Pakeha (European) Dioceses:

"As with earlier submissions, a number of respondents in the New Zealand Dioceses consider that the Covenant is a reactionary response to poor individual behaviour rather than a carefully discerned manifestation of God’s will and direction at this time. It is believed that a Covenant will not achieve unity, will exclude rather than include, will judge one part of the Church with the expectations of other parts of the Church, will stifle change and innovation and will curtail the ability of Provinces to respond to their own mission context."

Interestingly, the Tikanga Maori (indigenous) response, though not submitted as yet, seems to be a simple reiteration of it's initial response to any form of Covenant: Negative!

If other Provinces are substantially against the Covenant, I cannot see how it could be imposed - especially as it's provenance, derived from a newly-formed 'Standing Committee', seems to be a sort of fifth 'Intrument of Unity' formed for the purpose of administering the Covenant - without the express permission of the other four.

Toby, thanks for linking to that UUCF `doctrinal basis'. It's been bugging me, on & off, since my days in Edinburgh. I could not now sign it.