Asked if the conservative provincial leaders are united as they prepare for their meeting in Northern Ireland, Archbishop Gomez said, "I think we are united in the sense that we maintain our position. We will be calling for the adoption of the Windsor Report and asking for compliance."

And he warned that U.S. Episcopal Church's non-compliance and "delaying tactics" on the homosexual matter "cannot go on indefinitely."

Gomez served on the Lambeth Commission, which produced the Windsor Report, an attempt to help the Anglican Communion resolve a crisis over homosexuality and authority sparked chiefly by the Episcopal Church's decision to make actively gay cleric Gene Robinson a bishop. The Archbishop spoke to the CHALLENGE briefly last night at Washington's St. Paul's, K Street, after serving as celebrant and preacher at the parish's glorious "Candlemas" service, marking the Purification of St. Mary the Virgin.

Gomez said that, as the Windsor Report requests, conservatives at the Primates' Meeting "will express regret for the consequences" of unauthorized moves by some of them to minister to beleaguered faithful in liberal-led U.S. and Canadian dioceses. And, they will "accept the principle of interdependence and the need to fight against unilateral action," he added. But they will urge an "adjustment" in the Report's condemnation of boundary-crossings, which they believe "was based on insufficient information on the intensity of the situation in many parishes in the Episcopal Church (ECUSA)."

At the same time, Gomez said he and allied primates will ask the Meeting to support a proposed "improvement" on ECUSA's "DEPO" (Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight) plan. A primatial endorsement of the (undetailed) proposal would represent another change in the Windsor Report, which backed DEPO even though conservatives said it fell well short of the primates' call for "adequate" alternate episcopal oversight for faithful Anglicans in hostile circumstances.

The conservative primates plan to support "in principle" the Report's recommendation that Anglican provinces help ensure unity by making a common "covenant" part of their provincial law, Gomez said. However, the leaders will try to keep the covenant-adoption process from becoming interminable. He said they want to see the covenant accepted by most provinces before the 2008 Lambeth Conference. (This may suggest that acceptance of the covenant could become a basis for determining which bishops are invited to the decennial meeting.) Asked about what some see as serious inadequacies in the covenant text put forward in the Windsor Report, he said that that is just an example, and that the covenant can be refined after the February meeting.

Will Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold be seated at the Primates' Meeting? Some believe that Griswold has been so disrespectful of the wider Communion that conservative leaders will lose much if they even sit down with him in Northern Ireland. Some primates were stunned when Griswold acted as Robinson's chief consecrator only a couple of weeks after joining fellow primates in stating that that consecration would have devastating consequences for the Communion. And recently, Griswold and his fellow ECUSA bishops issued the "regrets" the Windsor Report asked of them, but dodged the issue of a moratorium on consecrating or blessing those in same-sex unions, saying they needed more time for discussion. Indeed, one or two primates have said they would not meet with Griswold unless he repented. But Gomez said he's seen nothing-- "yet"-- to suggest that the P.B. won't be seated at the Primates' Meeting, but obviously could not rule out a clash over that issue.

But with ECUSA clearly unlikely to cease actions which sanction homosexual practice, or accept a better system of alternative oversight for conservatives, what is Plan B?

"We expect all members of the Communion to act for the common good of the Communion," Gomez said.

"If the attempt is made to avoid compliance, I think you will see some strong reactions from a large number of primates," declared the Archbishop, though he declined to elaborate. But he added: "You cannot have a communion if there is no compliance."

END