The Most Revd John McDowell, the Church of Ireland’s Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh, with the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin have issued the following statement on the relationship between the Church of Ireland and the Anglican Communion following the recent communiqué from Gafcon:
In view of the recent communiqué issued by Gafcon, entitled The Future has Arrived, we feel it might be helpful to members of the Church of Ireland if we clarified some matters of fact, with particular reference to the Anglican Communion.
The Anglican Communion is a body of autonomous Anglican Provinces (including the Church of Ireland) who voluntarily join together in clearly defined ways. It has existed in a formal sense since 1867, when the Archbishop of Canterbury issued invitations to what became the first Lambeth Conference. From the beginning, the Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the convening of the Lambeth Conference were expressions of Anglican unity and identity which, as the Communion grew over time, were supplemented by two further instruments of unity – the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).