Updated Monday afternoon
The Anglican Communion News Service is carrying some reports of this event:
Seventeenth meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council begins on Sunday
This article includes a timetable for live video coverage of events.
The agenda for the conference is over here. And there is this list of council members. More background is here. And over here.
Yesterday there was an opening press conference, and you can watch a video recording of it here.
The Episcopal News Service has published a report of that event: Welby: British law prevents ACC from debating his decision to exclude same-sex spouses from Lambeth.
The members of the Anglican Consultative Council, meeting here April 28-May 5, cannot formally discuss Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s decision to exclude the same-sex spouses of bishops invited to the 2020 Lambeth Conference.
Welby told a news conference on April 27, in response to a question from Episcopal News Service, that the ACC is the only one of the Anglican Communion’s Instruments of Communion that is governed by British law. It is incorporated as “an English company with a charitable aim.” Via the ACC constitution, the trustees “very clearly specify what it can and cannot do,” he said.
“Doctrine is not one of the issues that it does,” Welby said of the council…
But do please read the entire report which contains further responses to questions asked.
Coverage of the meeting on Twitter is using the hashtag #ACC17HK.
There is also a video recording of the presidential address.
Further reports:
Church Times Paul Handley
ACC-17: Sex off the agenda, but still on the mind
ACC-17: Welby bangs the gong for discipleship
ACC-17: Anglicans cannot afford to be disunited, Welby warns
ACC-17: GAFCON are not behaving as Anglicans, says Idowu-Fearon
Episcopal News Service Mary Frances Schjonberg
Communion must deal with ‘ignorance’ and possible schism, Secretary General tells ACC
ACNS and Lambeth Palace
Text of Secretary General’s report
Article 4 of the ACC’s Articles of Association reads as follows:
Objects
4. The Council’s objects (“the Objects”) are specifically restricted to the following: to advance the Christian religion and in particular to promote the unity and purposes of the Churches of the Anglican Communion in mission, evangelism, ecumenical relations, communication, administration and finance.
And certainly the inclusion or exclusion of certain spouses at Lambeth is a matter of the “unity” of the Communion.
Welby is quite right that the decision whom to invite is his alone. The ACC is free to pass a resolution urging the inclusion of all spouses, and Welby would be perfectly free to disregard it. (As when the ACC disregarded the Primates’ desire to exclude the Episcopal Church representatives).
I fail to understand how the inviting or not inviting of spouses to a meeting is in any way a matter of “doctrine”.
From debating it? Oh, please. What a control freak.
If parliamentary maneuvering is the game, then the rest of the ACC surely knows what to do.
You appeal from the ruling of the chair, you outvote him, and thus overrule him.
And then you have the debate that he wanted to stifle.
Sometimes the person in power needs to be told, quite directly, that it is he who is out of order.
I thought the Archbishop of Canterbury was one of the supposed Instruments of Communion. Surely the Archbishop is under British law as much as the ACC. And for that matter, isn’t the Lambeth Conference too, now that it has a business entity with legal residence in the UK?
Justin has claimed that the decision who to invite to Lambeth 2020 is the personal perogative of the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury – him. If his assertion is correct, and it probably is, then discussion does like outside the ACC Objects.
But then he also claims that the ACC is the only Instrument of Communion subject to British law. This must surely be incorrect because it is essentially an assertion that the Archbishop of Canterbury is above all law, for if not subject to British law he obviously isn’t subject to the law of any other territory. Reductio ad absurdum
The power to invite may be Cantuar’s alone.
But that doesn’t mean he can shush the ACC up if they want to discuss what he has done.
If he rules this discussion out of order, he will be acting out of a massive conflict of interest.
And if the ACC is subject to British Law, then perhaps someone should read up, right quick, on the duties of officers and directors to stand aside from discussions in which they have a personal interest and stake.
‘Welby told a news conference on April 27, in response to a question from Episcopal News Service, that the ACC is the only one of the Anglican Communion’s Instruments of Communion that is governed by British law. It is incorporated as “an English company with a charitable aim.” ‘ I really do wonder where ++Justin is getting his legal advice. The ACC is not the only instrument of communion that is governed by British law. The ACC is Registered Charity No. 1137273 and Company No. 7311767. The Lambeth Conference is Registered Charity No. 1121679 and Company No. 05985741. If the… Read more »
You’ve got to hand it to an increasingly desperate and insecure Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to be able to embody the methods of Trump, Putin and Assad all in one. Not only his dodgy take on to British law and the ACC, but his easy recourse to emotional blackmail, by telling the ACC that division is an indulgence in today’s world. That’s the best I’ve heard for stifling uncomfortable debate, any challenge to his rather limited view of Anglicanism, and his determination to silence the voices of diversity that challenge his control freakery. And they all sat there and… Read more »