Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Music has issued a statement condemning the proposed Anglican Covenant as an instrument of hierarchical control and accusing the Archbishop of Canterbury of favoring a Roman Catholic model of Church governance.
“It should now be clear to all that the result of the proposed ‘Covenant’ is not only to control those Churches that ordain openly gay and lesbian persons,” said “The Convent Station Statement on the Changing Ethos of the Anglican Communion.”
“Rather, the Archbishop has finally come out about the ramifications of the proposed ‘Covenant’: reshaping the structure of the Anglican Communion into a hierarchically centralized Communion,” the statement added.
Archbishop Rowan Williams has stressed that he does not consider the Covenant a means of controlling member churches of the Anglican Communion.
The statement continued: “The Episcopal Church’s Constitution and Book of Common Prayer (which is itself part of the Constitution) are founded upon a baptismal theology of the Church more Orthodox than Roman and certainly more Anglican than the vision of the Church which seems to guide the Archbishop. For we understand ourselves as a community of the baptized, governing ourselves by the consent of the governed not by the will of any hierarch. The punitive actions referenced are more to be expected from a Church with unitary hierarchical control, such as the Church of Rome.”
This is the 23rd statement issued by the APLM in its 64-year history. Most of the APLM’s statements bear the name of the city where its council has most recently met. The council’s leaders include laity, liturgists, priests and bishops, mostly from the United States and Canada.
The APLM’s first statement, issued in 1969, was about admitting children to Communion. Another eight years passed before the APLM issued another statement.
In recent years some APLM statements have been so detailed that they have offered specific advice on how General Convention should respond to proposed resolutions.
2 Comments
Of all the groups that should ride the coat-tails of the presiding bishop....the APLM seems to be singing the descant of her "Congregational" hymn to the Church! Having been weaned on Dix's "Shape of the Liturgy," and the history of the Church, I find it rather ironic that a bishop, let alone the "first among equals" of the American Church, can't deal with being in a Hierarchical Church when it means that she was caught talking out of both sides of her mouth; saying one thing to the Archbishop of Canterbury & Anglican Communion and saying another to her "supporters" here in the States. That the APLM says anything at all about this, to me, is a farce. Oh, I forgot...dazzle them with your fancy footwork...or when in doubt, blame Rome that we have an ancient Hierarchical Church. What does Acts 2:42 say, "And they continued in the Apostles Teaching and Fellowship, in the Breaking of Bread and in the Prayers." Oh my...the tradition of the Church with regards to the "Apostles Teaching & Fellowship" must have changed in the current administration of our pb. I must not have been sent the email.
An Orthodox Baptismal Theology works in an Orthodox Church, but for it to be grafted into an alien body will not give life but only putrescence.
To be Orthodox one must submit to an Orthodox Bishop and renounce the Western errors that have sunk most of the Church in the West.