The chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council has promised that the June 21-29 meeting in Nottingham, England, will include time for the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to set out the rationale behind recent changes to teaching on sexual morality. Time has also been set aside to initiate the listening and study process on homosexuality called for at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, said the Rt. Rev. John Paterson, Bishop of Auckland in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

“I have asked the design group to include in our program an opportunity for a consultation at which the major input will come from members of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, and it is hoped that delegates from other parts of the Communion will contribute also,” Bishop Paterson told the Anglican Communion News Service.

Bishop Paterson said the primates’ requests, which include among other items a suggestion that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada voluntarily withdraw their ACC representatives, contained in a recent communiqué raise questions “about the inter-relationship between the various Instruments of Unity” and that issue will also need to be examined “in light of the Windsor Report at our next meeting.”