Primates Meeting - Press briefing on 16 Feb 2007
Given by Archbishop Philip Aspinall, Archbishop of Brisbane (designated by the Primates as the official spokesperson for the Primates' Meeting)
It's good to be with you again to give you a brief update on today's proceedings; as I anticipated with you last evening, we spent the morning today considering further the Primates' responses to The Episcopal Church's reactions to the Windsor Report and the Dromantine requests from the Primate.Unfortunately I'm not in a position to tell you much about that because it hasn't reached definite conclusions yet; certainly we moved from the intense listening mode I described on the first day into much more of a discussion, exchange of views, debate, so there was free and frank exchange of views and certainly some areas of concern and tension. It would be wrong to give an impression that it's all sooth sailing; there are real tensions for us still to work through and hopefully there'll be more to report on that tomorrow, as those discussions mature.
We then moved on; the second major thing we tackled today was to receive the report from the Covenant Design Group, and Archbishop Drexel is the chair of that group and has been intimately associated with its work, so he may wish to speak and you may wish to ask Archbishop Drexel some questions about the work of the covenant design group.
Let me say that Joint Standing Committee considered the report of the Covenant Design Group earlier in the week and the Joint Standing Committee resolved in these terms:
'The Joint Standing Committee informs the Primates meeting that it wishes to commend the work of the Covenant Design Group for further study and reflection in the Anglican Communion.'
So the Primates today received with deep thanks the report from the Covenant Design Group which includes a draft covenant. Discussion, comment, suggestions for clarifying and improving the text have been made both by the Joint Standing Committee and by the Primates themselves; the Primates have requested the archbishop of Canterbury to prepare on behalf of the Primates a letter commending the report and the draft covenant to the provinces for study and response. The Primates noted an urgent need to translate the report and the covenant into a number of together languages so that it can be considered by the whole Communion and that needs to happen as a matter of urgency.
