Justin Welby Apologizes?

For those of you who are outside the loop of Anglican chat, the latest controversy that has been abuzz concerns next year's Lambeth conference and similar to the last time one of these meetings of Anglican bishops rolled around, the issues are who got invited and who got their panties in a wad. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury makes the guest list, and this year he made the decision to dis-invite the same sex spouses of those bishops who are in same-sex "marriages". This action came up at a recent  meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Hong Kong in which Archbishop Justin Welby expressed his dilemma (as reported by the Church Times),

“The most painful part, to me, of the decisions that have to be made, is that I know that, at every moment that I write a letter or make a decision, I am making a decision about people — and that there is no decision that will result in nobody getting hurt.
“If I’d decided differently on the decision about same-sex spouses — and it hurt a lot of people, by the way — I would have hurt a huge number of people elsewhere in the Communion. And there wasn’t a nice solution which I looked and thought, ‘Nah, I don’t want to do that, I’ll take the nasty solution.’ It’s not as simple as that.”

The ACC was was not free to discuss what it wished, the Archbishop explained. Unlike the other instruments of the Communion, it was legally set up as an English company with charitable aims, governed by trust deeds which defined what it could and could not do. “Doctrine is not one of the issues that it does.”

Archbishop Welby has one foot on the pier and the other foot in the boat, a boat that is no longer securely moored.

What to do?

Apologize to anyone and everyone of course (as reported in the Episcopal News Service), 

The archbishop of Canterbury is known as the “focus of unity” for the ACC, Lambeth Conference and the Primates Meeting. In that spirit, Welby said it is his “fault and my responsibility” that certain people are upset because some people were invited to the 2020 Lambeth Conference and others were not. 

“It may be that at the end of time, I will understand that I got that wrong, and I will answer for it in one respect or another on the day of judgement,” he said. “Where I handled it badly, which I am sure I did, for one group or another, I want to apologize to you because I have not helped the communion, either for those who are concerned by who was invited or those who are concerned by who was not invited. 

“I ask your forgiveness where I made mistakes.”

Although he may not be sure to whom he is apologizing, at least he believes in the judgement day, which for the Anglican Communion is coming sooner rather than later.