June 18, 2010
By Mary Frances
The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, told the Episcopal Church's Executive Council June 18 that when Diocese of Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Mary Glasspool was ordained as the church's second openly gay, partnered bishop, the church ought to have known that it would face sanctions.
However, he said that in the recent removal of Episcopal Church members from some Anglican Communion ecumenical dialogues "the aim has not been to get at the Episcopal Church, but to find room for others to remain as well as enabling as full a participation as possible for the Episcopal Church within the communion."
Kearon claimed that the communion's ecumenical dialogues "are at the point of collapse" and said that the last meeting of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, of which Jefferts Schori is an elected member, "was probably the worst meeting I have experienced."
"The viability of our meetings are at stake," he added. . .
Garner told ENS afterwards that he had "never witnessed so much obfuscation in such a short period of time" in his entire life.
"We were polite," he said, "but we asked him questions he could not or would not provide answers to."
At the beginning of the session with Kearon, Jefferts Schori asked the council to vote on his request that the session be closed to all but council members. His request was decisively rejected by a show of hands.
Kearon said at the outset that he would tell the council "the way I see it because I don't think the way I see it is the way any of you see it."
He then began by saying that the "problem of increased and growing diversity in the Anglican Communion has been an issue for many years" and added that by the 1990s leaders in the communion began to name "the diversity of opinions in the communion and diversity in general as a problem and sought some mechanisms to address it."
House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson said at a later news conference that the Episcopal Church does not see diversity as an issue in the same way that Kearon presented it. "By the time we had finished talking I did not see any concrete evidence that there was a particular newly developed line of understanding coming, perhaps, both ways," she said.
At the same news conference, Jefferts Schori said that "we look forward to the possibility, upon further reflection, that all participants of this conversation this morning may have had their understanding increased."
Kearon said during his statement that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has limited authority beyond the ability to call meetings of certain communion bodies, make some appointments and "occasionally articulate the mind of the communion."
"Everywhere I go, everyone wants him to act as a sort of an Anglican pope as long as he does what [they] want him to do," Kearon added. . .
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