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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. We have written often about the Anglican Consultative Council and its Standing Committee over the last year. After the chaotic session in Jamaica in May 2009 we noted that the ACC had not followed its own rules in conducting the crucial vote on the Covenant with the result that the vote to defer Section 4 probably did not effectively pass the Council. And we also noted that in the confusion in Jamaica, it is doubtful that the members sufficiently understood what they...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. Michael Watson, Esq. The crises in the Anglican Communion in recent years have revealed two distinct problems confronting the Communion, one theological and one structural. The two halves of faith and order. The theological problem is whether the Communion has theological coherence on major questions of faith and practice. Slowly over the last decade and a half an affirmative answer to this question has been evolving. In particular, on the presenting crisis of human...
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The meeting of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (hereafter the Standing Committee) has just finished its deliberations. It was reported in The Standing Committee Daily Bulletin that Dato' Stanley Isaacs had proposed, "The Episcopal Church (hereafter TEC) be separated from the Communion." This proposal was rejected because it was believed, "Separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces." This brief notice is yet another signal that the Anglican Communion stands in unparalleled danger. The way in which TEC does business poses a...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. Michael Watson, Esq. Yesterday the Anglican Communion News Service published an interview with Canon John Rees, legal advisor to the Anglican Consultative Council, that responded in part to questions we previously raised in our paper, "Contrasting Futures for the Anglican Communion: A Transformed ACC and the Anglican Covenant." We are grateful to the Anglican Communion Office, Canon Rees and the ACNS for responding directly on this matter of wide interest and for...
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The Reverend Canon Professor Christopher Seitz The Reverend Dr. Philip Turner The Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner Mark McCall, Esq. Michael Watson, Esq. Although we have written before of our concerns over the substance of the new Articles of Association of the Anglican Consultative Council, until now we have said little about our concerns over the procedures followed by the Anglican Communion Office in managing the development of these Articles. Others voiced complaints and we remained hopeful that the ACO would respond to these complaints with transparency and by providing satisfactory answers...
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As we have noted several times in recent months, the final text of the Anglican Covenant assigns important tasks defined in Section 4 to a committee designated the "Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion." There is currently no committee in the Anglican Communion bearing that title or capable of performing those tasks. The ACC standing committee was briefly referred to by the Section 4 title, but that name was not given it by the ACC. In any case in July 2010 the standing committee of the new company intended to replace the former ACC, noting objections to the title, agreed that it...
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Alan Runyan is a partner in Speights & Runyan, Beaufort, South Carolina. He has been a practicing trial attorney for 33 years and he is counsel for the Diocese of South Carolina. Mark McCall is a member of the New York bar and former partner of an international law firm where he practiced in the firm’s New York, Washington and Paris offices. Introduction On July 1, 2011 complex, far reaching and polity changing revisions to the disciplinary canon (Title IV) of The Episcopal Church (“TEC”) become effective. The revisions are a product of a multi-year process begun in 2000 whose stated purpose...
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It has become commonplace for those supporting the current majority in The Episcopal Church to claim that a bishop's ordination vow, particularly what is called the "Declaration of Conformity," is a vow to accept the majority's interpretation of TEC's polity that would grant unfettered supremacy to General Convention's actions. For example, Fr. Mark Harris made this argument when criticizing proposed resolutions in the diocese of South Carolina: Now, lets see: The Constitution of The Episcopal Church says this: I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of...
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When the turmoil surrounding Gene Robinson's consent and consecration arose in 2003, everyone knew that the Anglican Communion was in for some rough times. But even more pessimistic observers believed that these times would be relatively limited, and that somehow the Communion would muddle towards some stabilizing resolution. Few could have imagined how quickly and how completely the organizations that held the Communion together would fragment and crumble. Yet this is where we have arrived: a seemingly single incident in one small corner of the global church's reach has managed to unravel...
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REFLECTIONS ON KENNETH KEARON'S LETTER TO BISHOP TITO ZAVALA OF THE SOUTHERN CONE The Anglican Communion News Service has posted a notice from the Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) stating that he has written Bishop Tito Zavala who represents the Province of the Southern Cone on the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO). In his letter the Secretary General withdrew Bishop Zavala's membership in that body, but asked him to continue on as a consultant. The problematic nature of the Secretary General's action has forced us to ask (a)...
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