Posted on 01/12/2007 5:24:07 PM PST by sionnsar
Might the Episcopal left wash its hands of the Anglican Communion before the Episcopal right does? Jim Naughton sounds like he's ready to bail:
My question is whether we should continue to be so generous in our support of a body that a) requested that we not exercise our voting rights at its last meeting; b) permitted the Akinola-led opposition to use our withdrawal to push through legislation that would not have passed had we participated; c) has become increasingly curial
There's that TECleft anti-Rome blast again.
in its functions as the Archbishop of Canterbury has pursued his plan for an Anglican Covenant and d) houses the odious Panel of Reference, created at the behest of foreign Primates eager to meddle in our affairs on behalf of those who oppose the full inclusion of gays, lesbians and women in the ministries of our Church?
Kind of makes one wonder why you've hung with the bigots this long. Why haven't you guys broken communion with Nigeria yet? It takes two to sign divorce papers, you know. And if Dr. Akinola's so evil(after all, your boss once basically called him a bigot), I'd think that that would be on the top of the diocesan agenda.
I will grant that I have phrased this question in a loaded way. But our relationship to the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to be deteriorating rapidly--witness his arm’s length treatment of our Presiding Bishop, his unwillingness to request civility from Primates who have attacked her, and his unwillingness to pay a public visit to any of our churches.
The relationship with the Communion office does not seem to be much better. If one looks at the roster of the Covenant Design Committee released yesterday, and, even worse at the roster of those asked to comment on papers presented to the committee, it is clear that the deck is being stacked against those who favor many of the positions our Church has arrived at through its democratic processes in recent years.
Jim? You are aware that it is entirely possible for "democratic processes" to produce really bad results, aren't you? Ask any German who was alive in the 1930's.
If one reads through the Panel of Reference’s recent attempt to pressure our Church into rewriting its canons on women’s ordination, the threat to our self-governance is evident, as is the threat to the progress we have made toward the full inclusion of all of the baptized in the ministries of our Church.
Moving on, if the primates are mean to Mrs. Schori, ask her too many questions or demand anything at all from TEC, Lionel Deimel will personally fly to Africa and punch their lights out.
The Presiding Bishop should privately and politely ask the Archbishop of Canterbury for an apology for suggesting that she is present only by his sufferance. He had no right to exclude her, and to have suggested otherwise was an affront to her and to the church that she represents.
I guess Anglican churches spring full-grown from the brow of Zeus or something. Which is nice because that means that the Anglican Communion Network just got the recognition it seeks. After all, if Dr. Williams can't exclude Kate from the Primates Meeting, he certainly doesn't have the right to decide which churches are Anglican and which are not.
I have assumed that ++Katharine will be included in the “session” that ++Rowan has announced will take place before the primates’ meeting, but this is not totally clear, nor is the exact purpose of the gathering or whether other primates will be present clear. The Presiding Bishop should certainly protest if she is excluded. She probably should not walk out and return home, however, as we do no want to lose the symbolic value of having the primates sit down at the same table with her (or not!).
Assuming that the “session” is some sort of fact-finding affair, ++Katharine should protest, even to the point of declining to participate, if the American invitees do not fairly represent The Episcopal Church. The Presiding Bishop, of course, represents the entire Episcopal Church, so that a meeting of, say, Katharine Jefferts Schori and Robert Duncan, would be wildly unrepresentative. (Significantly, at this meeting, the Archbishop of York will represent the Church of England, since, in a very real sense, the Archbishop of Canterbury represents the whole Communion.) Assuming that all the American participants are bishops—another assumption ++Rowan has given us no data to evaluate—there should be nine +Chanes, +Brunos, and +Jenkinses to every +Duncan, +Iker, or +Salmon. Moreover, it will be hard to justify excluding Bishop Robinson, whom the primates constantly talk about but never talk to.
Go ahead. Make that demand.
Looking now at what is presumably the main event, ++Katharine should insist on being treated as an equal by the primates generally and by ++Rowan in particular. Other primates should not receive special dispensations such as being seated at another table because their “theology” does not allow them to sit at the same table with ++Katharine. Jesus, remember, had no such sensibilities. One hopes that the Presiding Bishop will not have to walk out of the meeting to preserve her dignity and the honor of The Episcopal Church. Support for her being treated decently should be discussed with other sympathetic primates in advance of the meeting. Episcopal News Service should be prepared to document any indignities the primates try to visit upon its leader.
Even for a liberal Anglican, Lionel's arrogance is off the charts.
I’m sure that ++Katharine does not need to be reminded that the primates have no right to discipline The Episcopal Church or to exile it from the Communion. Our church has suffered enough at the hand of the self-important autocrats at this meeting, and ++Katharine should refuse to be a part of any discussion even that requests concessions from our church. I would suggest that ++Katharine announce to the group that The Episcopal Church rescinds its decision not to participate for a time in the Anglican Consultative Council and will never again consider a similar request to be in order.
Basically, Lionel's asking the primates to run TEC from the Communion immediately.
Now a word on some of the particular matters to be discussed at the primates’s meeting. I would hope that ++Katharine will make it clear that all bishops of the Communion must be invited to Lambeth. In particular, if Bishop Robinson is not welcome, it is likely that no loyal Episcopal bishops will attend. She should also make it clear that The Episcopal Church will not likely approve any Anglican covenant that places any ecclesiastical authority above that of the General Convention. She should reiterate the fact, repeatedly articulated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, that he has no authority over The Episcopal Church. She should emphasize that the primates and the Archbishop’s Panel of Reference, likewise, have no such authority.
We examined Mad Boy's views on the subject the other day so there's no need to go back over them. Susan Russell to the rest of the Anglican Communion: kiss off!
The problem is he doesn’t get to say what the problem is. We do. The people of the Episcopal Church. Straight and Gay. Women and Men. High Church and Low Church and In-Between Church. And the problem we have identified is the challenge of becoming more and more fully and wholly the Body of Christ in the world. And the way we have addressed that problem is to continue to live into our call to widen the embrace of the Institutional Church to better model the embrace of the Incarnate Christ.
The increasing stridency and hysteria out of the Episcopal left lately, of which these are only a few examples, seems to suggest that the Episcopal left may finally be reading the handwriting on the wall. They realize that their views will never prevail in the rest of the Communion, that a split is probably inevitable and so, like the petulant children that they are, they now profess to hate what they once claimed to love.
And since they cannot accept the fact that by a democratic process(which was a bad thing at the 1998 Lambeth Conference but has mysteriously become a good thing now), the Anglican Communion came to a radically different conclusion about homosexual activity than they did, suddenly that thing they once valued and fought to keep, the Canterbury connection, has now become an object of scorn and derision. TEC and its allies will be Anglican on their own terms or they won't be Anglican at all.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Lionel Deimel is simply quite mad, a total loon.
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