Ridely Draft committee announced

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev'd and Right Honourable Rowan Williams, Primate of All England and titular and spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, has announced the committee members charged with the official "review" of Section Four of the Ridely Draft of the manifesto, I mean "Covenant."

I will give credit where credit is due, and ++Williams has selected two liberals and two conservatives.

• The Most Rev'd Alan Harper OBE, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
• The Most Rev'd Dr John Chew Hiang Chea,
  
• The Very Rev'd Gregory Kenneth Cameron Cameron, bishop of Asaph (Wales) who was former chaplain to Williams
  
• Dr Eileen Scully of the Anglican Church of Canada (I couldn't find any biographical information on Dr. Scully)

That's a rather august group of people, in my opinion. The problem is that they must come up with a compromise on Section Four (discipline) that will be acceptable to everyone - and it will not and cannot be acceptable to everyone.

The recently ended meeting of the AC Primates was not a congenial meeting and it was evidence that many wish a major change in the structure of the Communion. Religious Intelligence reports

Commonly observed rules of parliamentary procedure were not observed, she noted, as the chairman of the meeting exercised “a great deal of discretion in referring or declining to entertain resolutions; elections are not straightforward ballots for a single individual; discussion of any proposed amendment requires the support of 10 members; the president (the Archbishop of Canterbury) steps in fairly frequently to ‘steer’” the sessions.

And here is what is even more troubling to me. According to Canon John Rees, legal adviser to the ACC,

The ACC was not bound by rules of parliamentary procedure. The ACC had moved away from a “western parliamentary way of doing our business,” and now relied upon its chairman to discern “the general assent emerging” from its meetings.

The translation of that last bit is "We are headed for an Anglican Curia where the primates have all the power and the peons have no say in the governance, theology, or worship of the Anglican Communion."

If I wanted Roman Catholic monarchy I would be Roman Catholic. As it is, I rather enjoy our historic Anglican polity.

It seems clear to me that TEC and The Anglican Church of Canada with a handful of other provinces are the only churches interested in being the continuing Anglicanism. The rest simply want to play power games in the name of Christ.