The ACoC has a document to help attendees prepare for the General Synod 2010 discussion – or waffle – on the Anglican Covenant. Read it all here. Section 4 of the Covenant is the potentially contentious part, since it seeks to reign in Provinces such as TEC and the ACoC that have decided to go their own way on issues like same-sex blessings. Conservatives complain that section 4 has no teeth and liberals that it interferes with matters that are internal to a Province. It has no teeth.

In Section Four, affirmations and commitments are offered relating to processes and principles that should be followed in situations of conflict between provinces. The particular issues of potential or present conflict are not named, and the processes laid out work within the present structures of the Anglican Consultative Council, with the standing committee of that council serving as the mediating agent. The standing committee’s power is only to recommend courses of relational consequences to the council’s own constitutionally formed processes.

Member churches of the Anglican Consultative Council are invited to enter into this covenanted relationship, which makes tangible affirmations and commitments about our common heritage, participation in God’s mission, and mutual responsibility in the bonds of affection. When a situation of conflict arises, churches are enjoined to seek the mind of Christ, and the affirmations and commitments in Sections One, Two and Three provide tools for discerning dialogue. The possible outcomes cannot be predicted. Common mind may include, for example, the agreement to disagree on a particular issue, but to keep walking together. What is clear is that Section Four does not supplant the existing authorities, the canons and constitutions of provinces, or the constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council.

So to summarise the document’s preparation for discussing section 4:

• If a Province breaks the Covenant, the consequences are “relational” resulting, no doubt, in a severe scolding.
• If there is disagreement after signing the Covenant we’ll have some “discerning dialogue”. TEC and the ACoC have had a lot of practise at this: each could single-handedly bore the balls off a buffalo, let alone shrivel the resolve of all but the most hardy opposition.
• If TEC and the ACoC fail to subdue the enemy by focussed, concentrated magniloquence, then the “common mind” simply changes its meaning to “we disagree”. Black is white, up is down, and so begins another normal day in the ACoC.
• Who cares anyway because section 4 has no teeth.