Anglican Primates from all over the Communion are attending
their annual meeting this week. The only confirmed absentee is the Archbishop
of Hong Kong, the Most Revd Peter Kwong, who is absent because of SARS.
Once again, the meeting, in Gramado, which is in an inaccessible area of
Southern Brazil, is being held in private, and is designed to be more like a
retreat, with the eucharist and Bible study at its centre.
Nevertheless, there has been some indication of the agenda at the meeting. The
Archbishop of Cape Town is known to be reporting on the progress of the
intensive, Communion-wide strategy to combat HIV/AIDS, formulated at the meeting
last year.
Sexuality will arise again in a debate on the report True Union in the Body,
commissioned by the Archbishop of the West Indies, the Most Revd Drexel Gomez,
which calls for exclusion from the Communion of bishops who defy the Church’s
policy on sexuality.
It is believed that Dr Williams will attempt to heal rifts over sexuality by
emphasising the need for a higher standard of Christian education. Only when
there is a better grasp of different theological positions, he believes, can
the Communion come to an agreement about how to proceed.
The Anglican Communion Office denied reports that Dr Williams was to hear
representations from the bishops of the conservative Anglican Mission in
America (AMiA), whose consecrations in Singapore and Denver were regarded by Dr
Carey as irregular.
Completely inaccurate. The Archbishop hasn’t heard about any such meeting, and
we’re in the middle of nowhere, said a spokesman on Friday. The Primates of
South-East Asia and Rwanda, who performed the consecrations, were, however, at
the meeting, he confirmed.
The feasibility of an international lay congress to run in parallel with the
2008 Lambeth Conference is known to be a key item on the agenda. The idea
originated with Dr Carey, and was first mooted at a Primates’ Meeting in 1995,
surfacing again in June 1998.
Dr Carey spoke of it as a possible fifth pillar of Anglicanism, saying that
it might well take place in the African continent somewhere. It was suggested
that three or four thousand delegates, four or five from each diocese, might
meet for the two weeks.
The idea is said to be still very much alive. It is now envisaged that such an
event would not centre on debate, but on celebration. The model is the
Kirchentag in Germany, a lay movement established in 1949 to heal the isolation
of Church from state.