The Network of Anglican Diocese and Parishes (The Network), lead by Bishop Duncan of Pittsburg, is holding its annual council meeting. During a speech by Duncan in Trinity Cathedral, it seems to me that he has issued an ultimatum to Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
Either you agree to our request for ‘alternative primatial oversight,’ or you seal the fate of the demise of the Anglican Communion as we have known it. Frankly, it sounds like blackmail. Do it our way, or the fault will be yours for the destruction of Anglicanism. Yes, well, there you go.
Fr. Cullen and I had a long talk last night over dinner about this problem within Anglicanism and its sister problems within our national political landscape and in world affairs. When one side or the other of any issue is determined to destroy the opponent and refuses to engage in honest dialogue to reach common understanding and compromise, democracy or any type of self-rule is impossible. All we are left with is fascism or some form of dictatorship. We are truly in sad days, even perhaps strange days, and possibly even dangerous days.
From the Episcopal News Service:
Network meeting opens with challenge to Canterbury
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan, speaking July 31 to the opening session of the Anglican Communion Network’s (ACN) Annual Council meeting in his role as the group’s moderator, said that the Archbishop of Canterbury faces a critical test.
Duncan, speaking in the nave of Trinity Cathedral, said he is “hopeful…if not necessarily optimistic” about the appeal of seven dioceses for “alternative primatial oversight” or what he called “an extra-ordinary pastoral relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”
If the Archbishop of Canterbury finds a way to recognize the claim of the Network dioceses and of Network parishes in non-Network dioceses, “then Canterbury sustains and renews his claim to be ‘gatherer” and ‘moral voice’ of the Communion,” Duncan said.
“If he fails, any hope for a Communion-unifying solution slips away, and so does the shape and leadership of the Anglican Communion as we have known them,” he warned.
Duncan’s full address can be found here.