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ACC chair apologizes to U.S., Canadian churches

Anglican Communion News Service

Bishop John Paterson, chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council, offered an apology to the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church for the way their members were treated at the June meeting of the ACC in Nottingham, England.

He spoke during the November meeting of the Canadian Council of General Synod. Paterson is a former Primate of New Zealand.

The ACC is the most comprehensive gathering in the Anglican Communion and offers advice on a variety of policies.

The primates, during their meeting in February 2005, had requested that the Canadian and American churches “voluntarily withdraw” from the ACC meeting last June as a step toward restoring unity within the Anglican Communion fractured by the issue of same-sex blessings in New Westminster and the ordination of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.

Paterson said there was “a great deal of unease” expressed by ACC members at the possibility of the body being dominated by primates.

 “The primates decided on an action against two churches who are members of a body mandated by the constitution to be consultative. How can it be consultative if two important churches are not able to take part?” he asked.

He commended both the Episcopal Church of the United States of America and the Anglican Church of Canada as “exemplary” in the attention they have given the Windsor Report and for meeting all the requests that are contained in the report.

Paterson noted that while a lot of attention is placed on Communion-wide divisions, not enough attention is placed on work done at the regional level.

“We need to revisit links like partners in mission and companion dioceses that allowed us to talk to each other,” he said.

A ‘no’ to primates?

Paterson said he doubted whether the member churches of the Anglican Communion would ratify a move to make all primates members of the ACC by virtue of their office. “I don’t think it will fly. I don’t think it will be approved,” he said, noting he was basing his assumption on “a great deal of unease” that he has picked up from a number of churches.

The move to include primates was made at the June ACC meeting. Currently the ACC is made up 120 people from around the Communion, including bishops, priests and lay people.

“It will take a full two-to-three-year period for all the member churches to meet and engage in a process to find the answer,” Paterson said. “In that space of time the word will move around as to why people don’t agree with it.”

Paterson also said that the idea of having a common covenant among members of the Anglican Communion, as proposed by the Lambeth Commission on Communion, “may be the last hope of finding something that helps us stay together.” He also said the divisions within the Communion are now so “serious and it may be that unity, as opposed to communion, is now something that’s in our past.”