Anglican Primates meeting to go ahead despite boycott

By Kieron Wood
09 January 2011

There are no plans to cancel the meeting of Anglican Church leaders in Dublin this month, despite a boycott by up to a quarter of the primates, a senior Anglican has confirmed.

Up to ten of the leaders of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces have said they won’t attend the biennial meeting because of the presence of Katharine Jefferts-Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopalian Church of the United States and a supporter of gay bishops and same-sex marriage.

The Church of England newspaper had reported that the head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, was considering scrapping the event because of the proposed boycott.

But a Church spokesman said the story was inaccurate and that the secretary-general of the communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, was adamant that there were never any plans to cancel the meeting.

The newspaper reported that Williams had suggested that, given the ‘‘number of difficult conversations’’ he’d had with some primates and the boycott threat, separate group sessions might be more appropriate.

But Kearon - a member of the Church of Ireland - told The Sunday Business Post: ‘‘The meeting will definitely go ahead.

We won’t know how many primates are coming until pretty close to the time because the primates make their own travel arrangements, but I think that less than ten will decide not to come."

The Church of Ireland primate, Archbishop Alan Harper of Armagh, is expected to be among those attending. Reservations have reportedly been made for January 25 to 31 at the Emmaus Retreat Centre in Swords for the primates and the Archbishop of York, who will represent the Church of England, but a spokeswoman for the retreat centre said that ‘‘we never give out information about any group coming to the centre’’.

In 2008,Williams refused a request to postpone the Lambeth Conference. As a result, some Africans boycotted the ten-yearly meeting of Anglican bishops.

Traditional Anglicans are predicting that a quarter of the primates won’t show up in Dublin, and that another dozen conservatives who do attend ‘‘will have a truly eye-opening time’’.

This article comes from The Post, Cork, Ireland
http://www.sbpost.ie/

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