Updated Saturday afternoon
The Anglican Communion Office has published a Q and A document about this, titled What is the Standing Committee?
This body is, as it happens, meeting right now in London. The membership is shown here.
Here is the first report from that meeting:
The Standing Committee Daily Bulletin – Day 1
And the new Articles of Association are available as a PDF file here.
I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s quip that the Republic was in grave danger because Congress was back in session
Just how does Kearon and his ACO staff manage to make such a complete mess of all this.
They do indeed come very close to making the whole Anglican Church project a pantomime with those loudmouths at the ACI playing a credible evil stepmother!
Let’s see if I have this right; 8 Bps or Abps, 3 laypersons, and 2 clergy members – that seems highly representative (not!).
“Let’s see if I have this right; 8 Bps or Abps, 3 laypersons, and 2 clergy members – that seems highly representative (not!).”
Oh, but it’s very very representative because [pick one]:
[1] Each Archbishop or Bishop speaks on behalf of millions of mere priests and people.
[2] If we believe in the priesthood of all believers, there are actually 13 priests present.
[3] Purple is the most equal color.
[4] Shut up and listen to your betters.
I’ve pasted in a link from Washington Post below. Does the Catholic Church have a future? I’ve posted it not only because it speaks to some of the conservative Roman Catholic apologists who feel that “thinking Anglicans” need to be continually reminded about their Baltimore catechism era opinions; I’ve posted it because, as I read articles about our Communion structures and political infighting, I think the question the article asks about Rome is a valid one for thinking Anglicans to ponder with regard to ourselves.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/patheos/2010/07/only_the_saints_can_save_us.html?hpid=talkbox1
If you stop and consider, there will always be a preponderance of bishops because of where the membership of the Standing Committee is drawn. So it seems silly and childish to whine and make off-the-wall snipes about that fact. After all, we are not presbyterians or congregationalists, we are episcopal in nature, culture and structure. 1. The President of the Standing Committee will always be the ABC, by fiat. 2. The current chair happens to be a bishop, that is who was elected to the position by the full ACC. But that is not static, another time a clergyperson or… Read more »
But Primates are bishops, so why should the ACC seek to have equal representation from all three orders when there are already five bishops there from the Primates’ Meeting?
But David | Dah•veed, you only reinforce the point. This “Standing Committee,” formerly the JCSC, is still a relatively new thing, and it has been distorted via the addition of the entire Primates Meeting to the AC, and so many representatives of the Primates Meeting sitting on this “Standing Committee.” It’s all part of the undermining of the most democratic and representative of the Instruments, the ACC and what had been its own standing committee, in order to insert greater primatial control.
David’s response to David is on point — addition of the primates “overthroweth” “equal representation of the membership” (it is simply a successful attempt of seizure of power by the primates).
At present there are but 5 primates on the Standing Committee David, but the primates are actively seeking to increase that to 8. Obviously the primates do not consider themselves of the same order of bishop as the mere bishops who are on the Standing Committee from the ACC. What I would submit is in order is a reassessment of the entire concept of the Standing Committee. Not because it has bishops, but because it has primates. The Primates Meeting has no authority in the Anglican Communion. The Primates Meeting in its original concept at its inception was but a… Read more »
David/Dah-veed, I believe we are describing the same phenomenon of the primates’ power grab(s) and the consequent distortion of other bodies’ membership by enhanced primatial presence. My point was in reacting to this statement: “If you stop and consider, there will always be a preponderance of bishops because of where the membership of the Standing Committee is drawn. So it seems silly and childish to whine and make off-the-wall snipes about that fact. After all, we are not presbyterians or congregationalists, we are episcopal in nature, culture and structure.” The point is, no, even being episcopalians (lower-case “e”), Anglican ecclesiology… Read more »