L.A. Bishops Chatting

The Reverend Susan Russell posts detailed notes from a March 24 discussion session in which several bishops (including Los Angeles Bishop Bruno) participated. Click here to read her report on the question-and-answer session.

Perhaps the best quip from the report is this one:

Bishop Anderson expressed some of the strongest feelings of the bunch. "Forces in the Global South are trying to push a Covenant through for the entire Anglican Communion in less time than any parish worth its salt would spend crafting a comprehensive mission statement," he said. He felt the Communion was being "railroaded" into accepting this Covenant and called efforts to have it crafted by June "ridiculous."

She also reports that Bishop Bruno was "blown away by the the Chapman memo (written in 2003 by a staff member of the American Anglican Council) ... which has been around since 2003 but he just saw last week.

"All of a sudden I finally "get" why all that work and time and energy and money we've spent -- I'VE spent -- on trying to reach across to those on "the other side" hasn't worked," he said. "It hasn't worked because they didn't want it to -- their plan since at least 2003 and probably before has been to split this church."

The Rev. Canon John Peterson (former secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council) delivered a presentation at the same weekend event. According to this account in The Living Church, he warned that autonomy could become the next victim of the controversy that now engulfs the Anglican Communion over human sexuality.

“Many in the Anglican Communion are trying to impose a Roman form of governance,” the Rev. Canon John Peterson told 350 parishioners of the Diocese of Los Angeles at a ministry fair conference on March 24. “The Anglican Communion will be seriously weakened if it moves to a Roman magisterial form of governance.”

Episcopal Life Online has a fine article on the events in Los Angeles. Click here to read their story.