Report from ACC 14-Day Four

By the Rev. Can. Dr. Chris Sugden, Anglican Mainstream
and the Rev. Philip Ashey, C.O.O, American Anglican Council
May 5th, 2009

So what are we presented with? In essence it would appear that the Archbishop is preparing himself and the communion for a significant change. He admitted it could no longer be the communion it was 20 years ago. Therefore the proposals are not an attempt to put the clock back, put Humpty Dumpty back together again or the toothpaste back in the tube.

Rather they could be seen as a time-honoured process, whereby a group with senior power seeks to retain that power while all along seismic shifts are taking place at other levels. These proposals are not about solving the current crisis or bringing the divisions in the Communion to an end. These proposals are about continuing the listening process, enabling people to restate their positions over and over again without any time limit, and accepting that there will be some ruptures and breaks but still keeping them within the current instruments of communion which are being modified to take account of them.

I tested this observation on two senior Episcopal participants in the current meeting who agreed with this analysis.

Now on to the Rev. Philip Ashey’s comments on the Pastoral Visitors Scheme and the idea of mediated conversation on parallel jurisdictions....

And here:
Those who left TEC after years of "dialogue" over the fundamentals of the faith and issues of human sexuality understand the futility of this process. They crossed the Red Sea (figuratively speaking) and were rewarded by inhibition, deposition, loss of income, costly litigation, and/or loss of their churches. At present, during this post-Alexandria Communiqué period of "gracious restraint," (1) the Rev. Don Armstrong and his wife are today being evicted by TEC litigation from the home they purchased with the vestry of Grace Church; (2) the 18 volunteer vestry members of Grace Church are being sued by TEC and the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado individually for the mortgage on the church buildings from which they have just been evicted; and (3) the vestry of St. James Newport Beach is also being sued individually for $6 million in legal fees by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

For such victims of TEC’s attempt to literally destroy them corporately, individually, and financially, all such talk of "professionally mediated conversations" by the Archbishop of Canterbury, his representatives and the ACC is pure fantasy and utterly divorced from reality.

They will not be repatriated to Egypt-and certainly not under any arrangement that views them as the problem, and not TEC.

And there lies the rub with a "provisional holding arrangement". Anyone familiar with legal language knows what a "holding arrangement" or "holding tank" is: it’s the room where "troublemakers" are held before they are brought before judge and/or jury for a plea, trial and sentencing.

the rest-full report