Episcopal Press and News
Council Makes History; Meets in Province IX
Episcopal News Service. March 4, 1988 [88032]
GUATEMALA CITY (DPS, March 3) -- "Until now, 'Edmond, our primate' has just been a phrase but now when we pray for Edmond, we will be praying for a person," said Guatemalan Bishop Armando Guerra-Soria in welcoming the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church here.
For the first time in its history, the Council met outside the continental United States and the members prepared for their meeting with visits to every diocese in Province IX and all the extra-provincial dioceses to see and take part in the varied ministry of that vast region of the Church. In groups of three or more Council members, and staff, they were taken to the rural parishes, barrio churches, preaching stations, cooperatives, homes, schools, and theological training centers of the 14 dioceses that range from Puerto Rico in the Caribbean to Ecuador in northern South America. Although limited somewhat by time constraints and the unsettled civil conditions of many of the countries, they met with parishioners, lay leaders, deacons, priests, bishops, and diocesan and provincial officers in conversation, meals, and worship as they tried to gain an understanding of ministry in some of the most grueling conditions in the Church.
Although many of the results of such a visit are necessarily intangible -- the impressions blurred and hurried -- it was clear from the reports and reflections heard after they gathered here that Council members are committed to renewed support of what was seen as a caring and vitally important element in the lives of thousands throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
The great concern of Council member Bishop Leopold Frade of Honduras was that this heightened awareness and sense of mission not be lost. Frade, a native of Cuba who was a parish priest in the United States for many years, asked his companion councilors a series of challenging questions designed to elicit active response.
"Thank you for being with us, for trying to understand. We hope you have seen a missionary church able to do a lot with a little. Of course, if we had more, we could do more. Now I am asking: what kind of follow-up is planned? What will you say to General Convention? The budget from the Church Center this year is the same as last, so we actually have less. Do you now see us as a Bible Church rather than just a budget item?"
Guerra had offered a similar idea in his welcome to Council when he asserted that "we are not just a line in the international budget, but a church trying to find its identity in Anglicanism."
But it was clear, too -- as expressed by Guerra -- that the effort of the visit was deeply appreciated by people who often see themselves as marginal, geographically and otherwise, to the concerns of the Church.
The agenda for the visits was prepared by each diocese and designed to introduce the councilors to the latent potential within the Church as much as to the problems and struggles that grow out of poverty, isolation, civil strife, and international politics. Visitors saw parishes ranging from the oldest continuing Anglican parish in Central America -- in Guatemala -- to the newest diocese in Anglicanism: the Littoral in Ecuador which already claims nearly 2.5 percent of the population in that overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. They saw parishes founded in the 1960's by missionaries from the United States that minister now with deacons and lay people and provide a core to the lives of isolated rural people. They saw parishes founded by Central American priests that are now planning to establish their own remote missions.
Almost universally, the Council members carried away impressions of parishes that would dry up and blow away for lack of resources in the United States, but which, in Province IX, were able to provide the stubborn, sturdy core of community wherever they were. All reports spoke of the emphasis on pastoral caring and the fruit that has borne: parishes that are the only focus of community in a region; people empowered to care for each other; priests "doing just what priests are ordained to do rather than trying to cope with expanding job descriptions."
They spoke of churches less concerned with survival than with meeting need, of a "simplicity" -- due partly to a lack or resources, partly to newness -- that can offer the churches in the United States a clearlydefined sense of the varied roles of ministry. They referred to congregations rooted in the caring ministry and moving from that -- if possible -- into social ministry; of churches that grow by word-of-mouth. The parishioners themselves, well aware of what they share, telling of their community to others in a way that led one Council member to say "I need their sense of gospel."
Less frequently articulated, although implicit in much of what was said, was the pervasive poverty, the violence, the repressive regimes, the mass murders, the border struggles, the influence of foreign powers, the burden of debt, the ambivalent view of the United States, and the tribalism and racism that shadow all life in the region.
These "external conditions" sometimes limit mobility of sacramentalists and catechists, inhibit attempts to move into what is taken as normal social action and advocacy in the United States and can be murderously chilling even to simple farming cooperatives. At a diocesan and provincial level, communication and program coordination are stifled. Consequently, the Council members found what they characterized as an extraordinarily diverse approach to programs, many of which reflect purely local need and constraints but some of which, Council members implied, could become broadly applicable models. These might include the potential of the church community as a stabilizing influence within a culture that is still capable of admitting to tensions within church practice and between church and society, as just tensions rather than irremediable fractures.
This sense was summed up in a sermon at the Council's opening Eucharist preached by the Rt. Rev. James Ottley, bishop of Panama, bishop in charge of El Salvador, and president of the Province. Ottley told the Council "there are many things that unite us here. We cannot say we are all in agreement in doctrine. We certainly cannot say we are all of one mind on how to apply the teachings of our Lord to the complex problems of the World. However, if we are not united in anything else, I am sure that we are united to Christ in his servant ministry to the world; a ministry that understands that in today's world you don't just give a man a fish. Even teaching him how to fish is not sufficient. He must be enabled to apprehend the importance of keeping and sharing the fish."
Dioceses that were part of the trip also included Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic.
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