Canterbury

By Allan Reeder
Lambeth Conference Communications

Lambeth Conference planners are working hard to avoid a final-week logjam of resolutions when the bishops emerge from their closed section meetings to consider resolutions in plenary sessions.

The procedure for handling resolutions is designed to make sure that the "key issues" emerge, Bishop Michael Nuttall (South Africa), chair of the conference Resolutions Committee, told an early press conference.

Bishop Nuttall told journalists that at previous Lambeth conferences in 1978 and 1988 "we found ourselves inundated with too many resolutions in the final week."

Under conference procedures, proposed resolutions will only be allowed from section and regional meetings, and not from individual bishops, he said.

Each of the sections and regional meetings are also being asked to keep their motions short. The Resolutions Committee wants "a limited number of focussed resolutions," Bishop Nuttall said. "We are requesting that the sections produce a maximum of three resolutions for the plenary sessions of the conference."

In another procedure designed to allow non-contentious issues to be addressed, resolutions can be added to an 'agreed list' which will not be subject to debate.

If bishops indicate an objection to the wording of a resolution on the agreed list, Resolutions Committee secretary Philip Mawer says the matter will be "taken to the Steering Committee and a way through will be found to deal with these objections."

The system is "genuinely designed to allow issues which are the key ones to emerge," he said.