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A Toronto Star report on the upcoming meeting of Anglican Communion primates in Dar es Salaam includes a few upbeat words from The Most Rev Andrew Hutchison, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC).
Canada will have a key role to play at the meeting of 38 Anglican bishops in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, this week, acting as a mediator between the rival groups, Hutchison says.
"In a fairly highly charged discussion, Canada has much to contribute," he says, adding the Canadian experience of debating issues across diverse backgrounds could help others.
"We've learned how to listen to each other, and we've learned how to talk to each other."
He's got to be hallucinating kidding. Does he really think the Global South primates will accept Canada as an arbitrator? That is most unlikely because they see the ACC not as a potential mediator but as a member of a contending group—the one opposed to restoration of historic biblical Anglican Christianity throughout the Anglican Communion. Barring a miraculous eleventh-hour repentance by the ACC, its "role" in Tanzania is that of trouble maker, not mythical proverbial Canadian honest broker.
As for more fudge baffle-gab listening and talking to each other, the time for that has passed. The Global South primates are looking for actions and decisions.
Has our primate forgotten that the ACC took the lead in promoting acceptance of same-sex unions in the Anglican Communion? The Global South primates see the ACC as The Episcopal Church's junior partner in encouraging normalisation of non-celibate homosexuality in the church.
And then there's the ACC's treatment of the Anglican Network in Canada. The ACC has steadfastly refused to recognise the Network, but the Global South primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury have explicitly endorsed its ministry. (The endorsement first appeared in paragraph 26 of the October 2005 statement from The Third Anglican Global South to South Encounter and was re-iterated by paragraph 10 of last September's Kigali Communiqué.)
As well, Bishop of New Westminster Michael Ingham's ongoing harassment of orthodox Anglicans in general and Anglican Network moderator Bp Donald Harvey in particular—neither of which has been publicly questioned by Archbishop Hutchison—is unlikely to endear the ACC to the Global South primates, either.
All in all, I'd say Abp Hutchison's chances of facilitating debate "across diverse backgrounds" at the primates’ meeting are less than a snowball's chances in Dar es Salaam (alleged climate change notwithstanding).
h/t: Pat Dague at Transfigurations
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