Anglican Consultative Council Digest

Much happens each day during the Anglican Consultative Council's (ACC) 14th meeting. In addition to Episcopal Life Media's regular coverage, here's some of what else went on May 12, the final day of the gathering, which began on May 2.
Council asks Primates Meeting to include ACC standing committee members
ACC members asked the Primates Meeting to include an equal number of non-primatial members of the ACC Standing Committee as non-voting members. The primates, or leaders of the Anglican Communion’s provinces, meet every one to two years to discuss communion-wide matters.

The six members of the Primates Standing Committee have voice and vote on the majority of matters that come before the ACC.

Five of the primatial members have attended most or all of the Kingston ACC meeting. Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda did not come to Jamaica and has not attended any of the three standing committee meetings held since his election in February 2007.

"We've heard a lot in this meeting about how the instruments of communion need to understand one another. They can only really understand one another if they are members of one another's meetings," Welsh Archbishop Barry Morgan, a standing committee member, told the council. The inclusion of the ACC members is meant to "create greater understanding" between the ACC and the primates, he added.

The ACC cannot compel the primates to act on the resolution. "I know that the primates might not look at the request too favorably," Morgan said.

The conversation about the resolution stressed that the ACC was not asking for its standing committee members to have a vote in the Primates Meeting. In fact, the primates rarely conduct formal votes during their meetings.

Two churches' request for extra-provincial membership gets ACC attention
A request from the Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain and the Lusitanian Church for full membership to the ACC was sent to the ACC/Primates Standing Committee for action.

The original resolution asked the ACC to admit the churches to the list, or schedule, of ACC member provinces included in the council's constitution. Anthony Fitchett, lay representative of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, and chair of the council's resolutions committee, reminded the ACC that two-thirds of the leaders, or primates, of the communion's provinces must approve such a request for full membership.

The ACC has full members, but the communion also includes in its general membership five "extra-provincial churches," such as Bermuda and the Falkland Islands, listed here.

More here-

http://www.episcopal-life.org/79901_107494_ENG_HTM.htm