When the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops met in 1998, they did more than issue a controversial statement on homosexuality. The 750 bishops who assembled for the 13th such gathering adopted other resolutions, including one that enabled the primates of the 38 Anglican churches (provinces) to exercise "an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters."

When the primates meet at Kanuga conference center, near Black Mountain, N.C., March 2-9, we ought to get a good idea just how serious they are about this enhanced responsibility matter. Actually, enhanced responsibility isn't all that new. It was addressed at the 1988 Lambeth Conference in an attempt to develop more collegiality, but in 1998 the bishops took matters a bit further. Concerned about the status of same-sex blessings in the Episcopal Church and elsewhere, and equally interested in the American church's desire to force acceptance of ordination of women upon its members, the bishops voted to ask "that the primates' meeting, under the guidance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, include amongst its responsibilities positive encouragement to mission, intervention in cases of exceptional emergency which are incapable of internal resolution within provinces, a giving of guidelines on the limits of Anglican diversity ..."

With all this in mind, a group of conservative Anglicans, led by the primates of the Southern Cone (South America) and the West Indies, have put forward a proposal for the exercise of this enhanced responsibility. It is contained in a book titled To Mend the Net: Anglican Life and Order in Renewed Mission, published by the Ekklesia Society, an international Anglican organization headquartered in Carrollton, Texas. The authors (it is not clear who they might be) put forward their proposal and five essays in support of it in hopes that the primates will take it seriously. Copies of the 128-page book were sent to the primates and to all bishops of the Episcopal Church. One was also sent to me.

The editors of the book are the Most Rev. Maurice W. Sinclair, Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, and the Most Rev. Drexel W. Gomez, Archbishop of the West Indies. Both seem like reasonable men, genuinely concerned about the possibility of the Anglican Communion being torn asunder. But they and their cohorts may be optimistic in anticipating that the primates are actually going to do something about the American church.

The primates' meeting, like the Lambeth Conference, has no legislative clout. The primates can do all the admonishing they want, but chances are American bishops will ignore them, just as most of them did when the Lambeth resolutions were adopted. To Mend the Net anticipates that, and includes strategies to deal with such a situation:

• Primates should agree at an annual meeting to "any significant innovations in doctrine, discipline or ethics, even on an experimental basis" in any province of the Anglican Communion
• If a province or diocese defies the primates, it could be demoted to "observer status," and unless it conformed, steps could be taken to set up a new jurisdiction in the same territory.
• Communion with "the intransigent body" would be suspended.

All this is complicated by the fact that the American Anglican Council has issued "An Urgent Appeal to the Anglican Primates" [TLC, Feb. 4], which is a petition that can be delivered to the primates at Kanuga and calls for a different strategy than that proposed by Bishop Sinclair and Archbishop Gomez. At the least, this has to be confusing to primates.

So what will happen? My guess is nothing. The primates will probably spend some time talking about how naughty the Episcopal Church has been, and may even go so far as to issue a statement. Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, not wanting to preside over the admonishment of the Episcopal Church, will make an erudite presentation about the health of the church. And the primates will go on their way, pleased to have avoided the matter for another year.

David Kalvelage, executive editor