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| (Photo: Nick Spurling) |
There were no surprises in the recommendations Windsor Report 2004, which have already been criticised by an army of adversaries, led by former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, as ‘lacking teeth’. But in one respect the Report was very surprising indeed.
In paragraphs 12-21 the Report gives an approving account of ‘Recent mutual discernment within the Communion’. It is a highly coloured and grossly inaccurate overview of the continuing crisis over the ordination of women. The Lambeth Commission has deluded itself that this innovation was introduced by due ‘process’, and that that process provides an example for future conduct.
‘Anglicans can understand from this story that decision-making in the Communion on serious and contentious issues has been, and can be, carried out without division, despite a measure of impairment. We need to note that the Instruments of Unity, i.e. the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates' Meeting, were all involved in the decision-making process. Provincial autonomy was framed by Anglican interdependence on matters of deep theological concern to the whole Communion.’ [Windsor Report, para 21]
Such an account owes more to the historiograpical techniques of the Soviet Encyclopaedia that it does to accuracy or common sense. The truth is very different.
The ordination to the priesthood of Florence Li Tim Oi in 1944 was undertaken (though admittedly under exceptional circumstances of war) without the permission of the relevant ecclesiastical authority, the Archbishop of Canterbury. With the resumption of normal conditions in 1945 the Archbishop sought to regularise the situation and Florence Li Tim Oi ceased to exercise any priestly functions.
When Bishop Baker and his Synod sought to ordain further women they approached, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had immediate oversight of the diocese of Hong Kong and Macao, but the Lambeth Conference. The Lambeth Conference referred the matter to the newly formed Anglican Consultative Council, which was yet to meet. The two existing ‘Instruments of Unity’ (the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference - the Primates’ Meeting had not yet come into being) were being by-passed in favour of a third, whose role was as yet undefined and whose authority was undetermined.
The terms in which the Lambeth Conference encouraged this referral are quoted: ‘The Conference recommended that before any regional or national church or province made a final decision to ordain women to the priesthood they should consider carefully the advice of the Anglican Consultative Council.’ [Windsor Report, para 13]
The Lambeth Conference of 1968 had effectively stated (though that was probably not the understanding of its members at the time), that the interchangeability of orders between different parts of the Anglican family was no longer a requirement of ‘communion’ between them. This the fledgling Anglican Consultative Council confirmed by a narrow vote [for 24; against 22]. The diocese of Hong Kong and Macao went ahead.
It took a long time for Anglicans to catch up with this new ecclesiology. As late as 1998 they were still requiring, in ecumenical dialogue (as an essential part of ‘full visible unity’) that ‘reconciled common ministry’ which had been abandoned between provinces of the Communion in 1968! Meanwhile two Commissions (the Grindrod Commission and the Eames) were given the task of providing the intellectual justification for a new ecclesiology which had been developed and adopted under pressure and without due consideration.
Time passed and events at the Anglican Communion level were remarkably serene; a result, no doubt, of the long intervals between meetings of the Lambeth Conference. But within provinces the issue was raising mayhem.
The Windsor Report gives a sanitised account of the ordination of women to the priesthood in Canada, the United States and New Zealand, which omits entirely the turmoil which those decisions created (especially in the United States) - the illegality of the first ordinations there, and the tragic division which the legalisation of those ordinations caused. A major schism resulted, with the ‘continuing Anglican’ diaspora spreading to other provinces and continents. To ignore in any summary of the process by which women were ordained in some provinces of the Communion (however brief) the plight of those Anglicans who were thereby driven out of the church of their baptism is a grave offence against honesty and charity.
As it seeks to avert another impending schism, the Lambeth Commission is merely deluding itself by ignoring the serious ecclesial consequences of the ordination of women. Across oceans, the impact of the ordination of women to the priesthood may have seemed minor, and was contained. Within provinces, however, the effect was seismic and has not gone away. In both the United States and in Australia bishops acted contrary to the canons of their respective churches. The ordination of women to the priesthood was carried forward with a degree of wilful anomy which can give the Lambeth Commission little confidence that its pleas for recollection and restraint will now be heeded.
The Windsor Report refers, in passing, to the Eames Commission, as a body monitoring the ‘process of reception’. It does not, naturally, admit the essentially cosmetic nature of the Commission’s work. Only in England and Wales were any of its recommendations for the care of dissentients put into effect. In Canada, the United States and Australia such provision was ignored. In the United States and Canada the provisions in the original legislation for the respect of conscience were rapidly removed. In the United Sates a ‘Task Force’ was set up by the General Convention, whose express intention was to bring dioceses which do not ordain women into line with the new policy.
To offer the manner in which the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopacy was managed (either in the Communion at large or within individual provinces) as a model for future development is as ludicrous as it is dangerous. The facts incontrovertibly demonstrate, not that all is well when the ‘Instruments of Unity’ of the Communion are consulted, but that the pirates are determined to take over the ship by any means, and that there is no one at the helm to repel boarders.
