The Canadian Church's
Council of General Synod (CoGS) has said that a “key message”
that it wants to send to the next meeting of the Anglican
Consultative Council (ACC) is that it doesn't yet understand what the
“relational consequences” would be for a Church that does not
adopt the proposed Anglican Covenant.
With all due respect to
CoGS, on which I have served, it seems to me that the real key
message here is that the members of CoGS haven't adequately studied
the proposed Covenant or the report that CoGS received a year ago
from the Governance Working Group on the legal and Constitutional
ramifications of the proposed Covenant.
Where to begin?
For starters,
“relational consequences”, though not clearly defined, apply only
to Churches that have adopted the proposed Covenant, and that only at
the end of a process of dispute resolution. Relational consequences
have been depicted by opponents as a punishment, and by supporters of
the Covenant as nothing more than the natural outcome of a Church
persisting in doing something that it has been told is “not
compatible with the Covenant.” Rather like a ticket is nothing more
than the natural outcome of driving over the speed limit.
So whatever relational
consequences are, they cannot apply to a Church that does not adopt
the proposed Covenant.
The Governance Working
Group said as much in its report to CoGS, which I would suggest the
members re-read to refresh their collective memory.
There might, I suppose,
be some political consequences in rejecting the proposed Covenant,
but that's not the same as relational consequences. And it's hard to
see what political consequences would ensue, given that the Church of
England has already decided that it doesn't want to sign up to the
Covenant. And Ireland, contrary to what the Anglican Journal reports
was stated by the Anglican Communion Working Group, has waffled on
its support for the Covenant. It deliberately did not adopt the
Covenant, but rather “subscribed” to it. Whatever that means.
Personally, I think the
key message to the ACC should be that the proposed Covenant was a
well-intentioned attempt to deal with the tensions in the Anglican
Communion, but it's dead in the water and it's time to move on to something better.
And CoGS needs to do
its homework.
