KatherineTEO TO COMMUNION: BITE ME
J. Jon Bruno provides yet another example of why Anglican Christianity has become a sick joke:
Today’s Supreme Court decision on same-gender relationships is important because it reflects our baptismal vow[peace and blessings be upon it] to "strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being" and our commitment to justice and mercy for all people.
The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has been a leader in working for the rights of all people in the State of California, and that work is honored in today’s ruling. The canons of our church, under "Rights of the Laity" (Canon 1:17.5), forbid discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, disabilities or age. We affirm equal rights for all.
We will continue to advocate for equality in the future and will do so at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, which will meet in Anaheim in 2009.
I celebrate and give thanks for this decision of the court and look forward with joy and excitement to a future of justice and mercy for all people in the State of California and the Episcopal Church.
To paraphrase St. Paul, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, gay nor straight in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Considering that The Living Church reported yesterday that:
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ Pentecost letter to the bishops of the Anglican Communion was not the anticipated communication in which he reportedly would ask bishops to predicate their attendace at the Lambeth Conference this summer upon their willingness to accept the recommendations in the Windsor Report.
Double J's "we're out of toilet paper, hand me a Windsor Report" stance is either Episcopal hubris or inside information that, at the end of the day, Rowan Williams isn't going to call a press conference and announce, "The following invitations to the Lambeth Conference have been withdrawn." Which seems to be one of the reasons why Brad Drell sounds close to giving up.
Moreover, what everyone seems to be missing is that some sort of structural relief is necessary to provide conservatives some sort of safe haven within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. TEC was asked to provide this a number of times. They have not. The only thing that can be done is to excommunicate TEC from the Anglican Communion and recognize someone else. This is solely because of TEC’s intransigence and abuse of reconciliation.
TEC’s idea of reconciliation was personified in our past Presiding Bishop’s actions at the Primates Meeting and subsequent consecration of Bishop Robinson personally despite his acknowledgment that this later action would shatter the Anglican Communion. It is not so much that folks are heretics from a theological standpoint that is a barrier to reconciliation. It is the utter lack of respect toward conservatives both here and abroad. They think conservatives are stupid. They treat us as being stupid. This is the slight that needs to be reconciled before any peacemaking can occur. But, it will have to be acknowledged, and it just won’t be.
I still laugh inside when TEC claims it is Windsor Compliant when so many liberal websites have an avatar claiming not to be Windsor complaint with the recent complaints of Windsor stifling the Holy Spirit. They just don’t get it that same sex blessings continue apace, have not abated on iota, and have even been adopted in more places. TEC has never complied with the Windsor Report, so the border crossings don’t have to stop, in my mind.
As GAFCON and Lambeth approach, it amazes me that so many moderates bent on not rocking the boat continue to claim that “we just don’t know enough” to make some decision about structural realignment. Patience on the part of conservatives is wearing way too thin to play these sorts of games. I’ve often thought over the past years that some of the folks that left perhaps did so prematurely. I don’t think that anymore. Convincing moderates of the need for structural relief seems to me to be a waste of time at this point. What more can be said? Unless you have kept your head in the sand over the last five years, it blinks at reality not to see what is going on.
Excommunication of the Episcopal Organization and the Anglican Organization in Canada is probably not going to happen. As I've explained previously, Dr. Williams could not allow it to happen and still show his face in polite, liberal, Western society. Add to this the fact that South Africa, Central America, Brazil and the liberal half of the C of E would follow the Americans and Canadians out the door and Dr. Williams would find himself presiding over a Christian community whose theology is diametrically opposed to his own.
Which leaves the willingness of conservatives to walk away from Canterbury if the Canadians and Americans aren't disciplined. Thusfar, I've seen no evidence that walking away is on the table; everyone, regardless of their stance, has proclaimed their loyalty to the Communion and to Canterbury. How much that actually means remains to be seen but it still must be emphasized once again that western conservatives need a split far more than the Africans do.
Might Dr. Williams cut his losses and recognize Donald Harvey and Bob Duncan as co-primates of Canada and the United States regardless of how loudly TEO and the AOiC scream? It might be his only way to keep the Communion in one piece. Will such a move keep people like me in the Anglican tradition?
No. Mere accomodation of the orthodox within a heterodox "church," a so-called "safe haven," is no longer an option. I might just as easily "accomodate" myself to the Unitarians. When the issue concerns my soul and the souls of those around me, "you believe what you want and we'll believe what we want" is not an attractive philosophy.
ZZZZZ...
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ Pentecost letter to the bishops of the Anglican Communion was not the anticipated communication in which he reportedly would ask bishops to predicate their attendace at the Lambeth Conference this summer upon their willingness to accept the recommendations in the Windsor Report.
A spokesman said Archbishop Williams had modified his plan to write to bishops whose stated positions ran contrary to the colleagial gathering of equals he envisions for Lambeth. Instead, Archbishop Williams has been in telephone contact with a number of bishops, asking that they honor the integrity of the meeting, the spokesman told The Church of England Newspaper.
The response should be automatic by now. Or what?
BACK AT YA, BWANA
Henry Orombi responds to Katharine Jefferts Schori. First off, missy, do they have a postal service where you come from?
I received word of your letter through a colleague who had seen it on the internet. Without the internet, I may never have known that you had written such a personal, yet sadly ironic, letter to me.
I'm curious about something. Did the Pope need John Chane's permission to hold his recent Washington Mass? Speaking of which, they had a great turnout for that thing, didn't they? That's got to be, what, eight or nine years ASA for your organization.
I am not visiting a church in the Diocese of Georgia. I am visiting a congregation that is part of the Church of Uganda. Were I to visit a congregation within TEC, I would certainly observe the courtesy of contacting the local bishop. Since, however, I am visiting a congregation that is part of the Church of Uganda, I feel very free to visit them and encourage them through the Word of God.
Which these people respect and which your religion treats as just another "historic document."
The reason this congregation separated from TEC and is now part of the Church of Uganda is that the actions of TEC’s General Convention and statements of duly elected TEC leaders and representatives indicate that TEC has abandoned the historic Christian faith. Furthermore, as predicted by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in October 2003, TEC’s actions have, in fact, torn the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level.
If you're seriously trying to equate a bishop visiting his own flock to giving a pointy hat to a practicing and unrepentant homosexual, then, not to put too fine a point on it, but you're one of the most morally and ethically bankrupt people I've ever had the misfortune of knowing.
May I remind you that the initial reason the Lambeth Commission on Communion was appointed was because of unbiblical decisions taken by TEC in defiance of repeated warnings by all of the Anglican Instruments of Communion. The Windsor Report was produced and accepted in amended form by the Primates at our meeting in Dromantine, Northern Ireland, in February 2005. It is, therefore, quite ironic for you to be quoting the Windsor Report to me. Nowhere in the Windsor Report or in subsequent statements of the Instruments of Communion is there a moral equivalence between the unbiblical actions and decisions of TEC that have torn the fabric of our Communion at its deepest level and the pastoral response on our part to provide ecclesiastical oversight to American congregations who wish to continue to uphold the faith once delivered to the saints and remain a part of the Anglican Communion. Your selective quoting of the Windsor Report is stunning in its arrogance and condescension.
And did I happen to mention how much we all still appreciate the way you lied to our faces in Dar es Salaam?
You and your House of Bishops rejected outright the Pastoral Scheme painstakingly devised in Dar es Salaam, and to which you agreed. You have, therefore, left us no choice but to continue to respond to the cries of God’s faithful people in America for episcopal oversight that upholds and promotes historic, biblical Anglicanism.
An important element of the Dar es Salaam agreement was the plea by the Primates that "the representatives of The Episcopal Church and of those congregations in property disputes with it to suspend all actions in law arising in this situation." This was something to which you gave verbal assent and yet you have initiated more legal actions against congregations and clergy in your short tenure as Presiding Bishop than all of your predecessors combined. I urge you to rethink, suspend litigation and follow a more Christ-like approach to settling your differences.
So in closing...
Finally, I appeal to you to heed the advice of Gamaliel in Acts 5.38ff, "Leave these [churches] alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop [them]; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."
That's in the Bible. I'm sure you can turn one up somewhere. Try the New York Public Library.
YES AND NO BUT MAYBE YES ALTHOUGH NO HAS SOME GOOD ARGUMENTS
Apparently, the Lambeth Conference's complete-waste-of-time reading will be off the scale:
Rumor has it that Brian Mclaren, one of the leaders of the emerging church movement, has been invited to address the assembled bishops at Lambeth. This should not be a surprise as McLaren is wholly committed to repackaging all the vague, undefined, and frankly antinomian aspects of mainline protestantism and infusing them into evangelicalism under the guise of a sort of "hip" mysticism fused with bad hygene.
Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality. We've heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence so that we can say "it seems good to the Holy Spirit and us." That alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think. Even if we are convinced that all homosexual behavior is always sinful, we still want to treat gay and lesbian people with more dignity, gentleness, and respect than our colleagues do. If we think that there may actually be a legitimate context for some homosexual relationships, we know that the biblical arguments are nuanced and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex. We aren't sure if or where lines are to be drawn, nor do we know how to enforce with fairness whatever lines are drawn.
Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements. In the meantime, we'll practice prayerful Christian dialogue, listening respectfully, disagreeing agreeably. When decisions need to be made, they'll be admittedly provisional. We'll keep our ears attuned to scholars in biblical studies, theology, ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields. Then in five years, if we have clarity, we'll speak; if not, we'll set another five years for ongoing reflection. After all, many important issues in church history took centuries to figure out. Maybe this moratorium would help us resist the "winds of doctrine" blowing furiously from the left and right, so we can patiently wait for the wind of the Spirit to set our course.
Phil? Dan? Frank? If you guys make this into a T-shirt or coffee mug, I promise I'll buy one. In the meantime, I hope Bishops Venables, Duncan and Iker have begun preparing a few questions for Brian if he actually shows up.
ADVANCED CLASS
Captain Yips has a history lesson for Mrs. Schori:
One thing we do know about is that in the 420s, the Christian Church in what was still Gaul, not yet France, became concerned about a recurrence of Pelagianism in the British Church. We don’t know much about the British church of that time, except that there was one. We have little idea of how far Christianity had penetrated, what were the episcopal centers, or who the bishops were. But because one of the leaders of the Gaulish Church was the eminent Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, we know about his involvement with the British Church.
Germanus was a not unusual type of the time, the Roman secular governor and lawyer who moved into Church Administration. He had been a lawyer, politician, and soldier, was fond of hunting, and was governor of the area before he became bishop. The Church in Gaul, distressed by a revival of Pelagianism across the Channel, sent Germanus to look into things. They did not write polite letters to the British Bishops asking their permission - the British bishops may have been part of the problem, since the Pelagian revival was promoted by one Agricola, either a bishop or a son of a bishop, and the ruling class seems to have been persuaded by him. Hmm. This starts to sound familiar.
So Germanus went over - some stories hint that he may have been accompanied by St. Patrick, who may have spent some time in Germanus’s school in Auxerre - held a public debate with the Pelagians, and seems also to have led an army against some Saxon invaders. It’s a little confusing. He returned a decade later, because Pelagianism, as always, was restless in its grave.
The point being that, whatever other issues were certainly involved, the Church had no problems with sending a delegation to confront and refute a regional church establishment that had gone bad. Germanus’s biography, written about 80 years after his death, makes a point of saying that the Bishop of Rome gave his permission to the Gaulish mission to Britain, but whether or not that is the case, it’s sure that the initiative began in the local Gaulish synod, and there was no hand wringing about going into some other bishop’s territory. Christian truth is always more important that Christian polity, if a choice must be made. At the time of Germanus’s visit, the Church was unified. Germanus and Agricola or Agricola’s father and all the Pelagian-tinged Brits were part of that unified Church. No one said that Germanus and his companions were somehow schismatic, breakers of unity, for confronting the British Church in its vagrancy. Their business was to restore the witness of the errant branch of the Church, and its hard to see how that mission could be conceived as divisive - except by miscreants.
ZZZZZ...
Nothing substantive will happen at the Lambeth Conference if Rowan Williams can possibly help it:
I indicated in earlier letters that the shape of the Conference will be different from what many have been used to. We have listened carefully to those who have expressed their difficulties with Western and parliamentary styles of meeting, and the Design Group has tried to find a new style – a style more reflective of that Pentecost moment when all received the gift of speaking freely about Christ.
At the heart of this will be the indaba groups. Indaba is a Zulu word describing a meeting for purposeful discussion among equals. Its aim is not to negotiate a formula that will keep everyone happy but to go to the heart of an issue and find what the true challenges are before seeking God’s way forward. It is a method with parallels in many cultures, and it is close to what Benedictine monks and Quaker Meetings seek to achieve as they listen quietly together to God, in a community where all are committed to a fellowship of love and attention to each other and to the word of God.
Each day’s work in this context will go forward with careful facilitation and preparation, to ensure that all voices are heard (and many languages also!). The hope is that over the two weeks we spend together, these groups will build a level of trust that will help us break down the walls we have so often built against each other in the Communion. And in combination with the intensive prayer and fellowship of the smaller Bible study groups, all this will result, by God’s grace, in clearer vision and discernment of what needs to be done.
As I noted when I wrote to you in Advent, this makes it all the more essential that those who come to Lambeth will arrive genuinely willing to engage fully in that growth towards closer unity that the Windsor Report and the Covenant Process envisage. We hope that people will not come so wedded to their own agenda and their local priorities that they cannot listen to those from other cultural backgrounds. As you may have gathered, in circumstances where there has been divisive or controversial action, I have been discussing privately with some bishops the need to be wholeheartedly part of a shared vision and process in our time together.
Stick a fork in it. The Anglican Communion's done.
CHUTZPAH
Although she's no Frank yet, Mrs. Schori, who presumably wrote this with a straight face, has begun to take on a certain Griswoldian quality:
The Most Revd Henry Luke Orombi
Archbishop of Uganda and Bishop of Kampala
PO Box 14123
Kampala
UGANDA
EAST AFRICA
My dear brother,
I understand from advertising here that you plan to visit a congregation in the Diocese of Georgia on 14 May of this year. The diocesan, Bishop Henry Louttit, has not given any invitation for you to do so, nor received any information from you about your planned visit[So? The parish in question withdrew from the Episcopal Organization - Ed]. I must protest this unwarranted incursion into The Episcopal Church[Which this isn't anymore. See above - Ed]. I am concerned that you seem to feel it appropriate to visit, preach, and exercise episcopal ministry within the territory of this Church[So to speak - Ed], and I wonder how you would receive similar behavior in Uganda[Why don't you send one of the ministers of your religion there and find out? - Ed]. These actions violate the spirit and letter of the work of the Windsor Report, and only lead to heightened tensions. We are more than willing to receive you for conversation, dialogue, and reconciliation[BOMRIC - Ed], yet you continue to act without speaking with us[Chances are, Bishop Orombi won't be speaking with any Muslims either on this trip. What's your point? - Ed]. I hope and pray that you might respond to our invitation and meet with representatives of this Church[So to speak - Ed].
I remain
Your servant in Christ,
Katharine Jefferts Schori
So how're you coming on that same-sex marriage ban there, Kate? Oh that's right. We never officially authorized them so they never happen. Wink, wink.
REMEMBERING THE PAST
GAFCON promises to have quite a turnout:
Over 1000 senior leaders from seventeen provinces in the Anglican Communion, representing 35 million church-going Anglicans, have registered for the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem at the close of the online registration process. They include 280 bishops, almost all accompanied by their wives. Final attendance figures will depend on smooth processing of requested visas, and other factors.
GAFCON leaders have met in the period leading up to Pentecost with the leaders of Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic churches and Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews in Jerusalem to brief them on the nature and purpose of GAFCON. GAFCON is concerned to affirm the continuing presence of the Church in the Holy Land.
Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney, the chair of the Programme Committee reports that the programme is almost complete. "Our programme will focus on the transforming love of Christ. We will be drawing from the scriptures of the Old and New Testament in our pilgrimage, and their relevance to the challenges facing the church globally today. These include secularism, other religions, poverty and HIV/Aids as well as moral and theological issues."
Pilgrims will visit traditional sites in Jerusalem during the pilgrimage June 22 – 29, 2008 including Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Ophel Gardens and Temple steps where at the first Pentecost Peter preached and people of all nations responded. The 1000 pilgrims will travel to Bethlehem to the Church of the Nativity and Shepherds’ Field, and then to Galilee.
Will GAFCON attendees go from Jerusalem to the Lambeth Conference, present a united front against the liberals, demand actual discipline for the Americans and Canadians and walk out if it does not come? Probably not:
The Church of the Province of West Africa (Anglican Communion) meeting in Douala, Cameroon, on the 11th day of April, in the year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Eight, having considered very carefully, among other pressing and very important issues, the current general state of the Anglican Commuion in the light of same – sex relationship receiving official recognition and approval by some dioceses and provinces, an issue which is seriously threatening the unity of the Communion, do hereby make the following statement:
1 i. That we are resolved to continue to be in communion with the See of Canterbury as we unequivocally and unambiguously remain in the Anglican Communion.2. We, however, out rightly condemn and reject the unacceptable action of some of the members of the Communion in the blessing and formal acceptance of same-sex marriages and relationships, the appointment, election and ordination to ecclesiastical offices of those persons who openly admit and declare that they are homosexuals and lesbians (cf Romans 1:26-27). That such practices of some of the members of our Communion do exist and that they are to be treated pastorally, we deny not. However, that they be given official recognition and acceptance by the Church of God as a standard form of life is quite another stand which we cannot and dare not accept.
3. We reiterate that while we remain members of the Communion, we shall continue to abhor such practices and, therefore, appeal to those members to reconsider their actions in the light of Biblical Teachings and Christian Principles.
And if the words, "Been there, done that" popped into some of your heads just now, LP explains why:
In 1977, after seeing PEcUSA unreservedly commit itself to the revisionist abandonment of basic elements of orthodox & catholic doctrine, teaching and practice, a sizeable number of Episcopal clergy & laity (both “anglocatholic” and “angloprotestant") concluded that the only way effectively to preserve genuine Anglicanism was to break off communion with PEcUSA.
An even larger group of traditionalist Episcopalians, though sharing these same concerns, decided that they proper strategy was to “fight from within.” These people & parishes formed what was for a while known as the “Episcopal Synod of America”, and over the course of about 15 years they saw parish after parish succomb to the heresies and apostasies of PEcUSA, saw their members (both clerical and lay) driven out of the church, and all their efforts to warn their fellows or preserve their own practices rendered largely impotent. In the end, a small number of the surviving parishes (including the largest and richest ones who were able to weather the storm better) formed the nucleus of the AMiA. Once having left PEcUSA they immediately started experiencing more growth and success than they did in the many years they tried to “fight from within” and had to expend all their energies just to survive and defend themselves from revisionist bishops and an apostate institution.
And yet even those parishes which survived had had their theology and practices compromised over the intervening years. Regardless of what you think of the W.O. issue (discussion of which needn’t detain us here), the fact is that many congregations and parishes which opposed that innovation and departure from catholic practice in 1977 found themselves accepting it (as well as some of the various unorthodox innovations of the ‘79 BCP) by the time they finally escaped PEcUSA. (As we know, since then the AMiA has been reconsidering its possition on many of these innovations.)
The point here, though, is that the “fight from within” strategy has proved, historically, to accomplish two things: (1) to divert a great deal of time, money, energy and “spiritual capital” away from growth and witness and into political infighting, into struggles to defend oneself from apostates with whom one is jurisdictionally linked, etc… and (2) to permit the “creeping crud” of apostasy because of that continued affiliation, which subverts and defeats some members and contaminates (to a greater or lesser degree) others.
It's this simple. If you have convinced yourself that you are "prophetic," as TEO has, then you are not wrong. Consequently, you will not be swayed by ANY efforts of people who share the same tradition you do to convince you that you're wrong and need to repent.
Indeed, such efforts may have exactly the opposite effect. After all, TEO apologists will no doubt claim, were the prophets of Israel popular? Were they not scorned and reviled? In any event, conservatives who will not cut ties with those they claim have perverted the Christian faith cut the ground out from under their own words.
After all, how seriously do conservatives truly take heresy and apostasy if they refuse to consider the idea of disassociating themselves from heretics and apostates? If a split is not on the table, if walking away is not possible, then there is no point in holding GAFCON or anything else.
DIALING IT DOWN
How likely is it that the Americans and Canadians will be shown the door at the upcoming Lambeth Conference? How likely is it that a united conservative/Global South front will emerge that will demand that the Archbishop of Canterbury declare the Canadian and US responses to the Windsor Report to be completely unacceptable and that both churches were expelled from the Anglican Communion until such time as both decided to respect Anglican teaching?
Short answer: not very. For one thing, Rowan Williams couldn't countenance an action that flies in the face of everything he has ever written and spoken on the subject and continue to show his face in polite European society. Even if he did, a large segment of the Church of England would rebel. Assuming the Archbishop of York stayed put, the liberal C of E bishops, along with western Europe, South Africa and Central and South America would join the US and Canada to form the Episcopal Communion the very next day.
(Which brings up an interesting side question: would Mrs. Schori become, for all practical purposes, an "archbishop?" Would the Americans get the primacy of such a group? They'd have a good claim on it. After all, the Episcopal Organization could point out, because of its leadership, it's taken the bulk of the abuse for the last five years.
And as Willie Sutton would have put it if he'd cared about Anglican Christianity, TEO is where the money is. If push comes to shove, I think Mrs. Schori would be wise to turn such a position down but I also think that many in TEO do not want to be put in a position where they'd possibly have to take orders from Third Worlders ever again.)
The other reason why I don't think a permanent split is likely at Lambeth is that the Global South doesn't need it as much as western conservatives do. When you get right down to it, all men like Peter Akinola, Henry Orombi, Emmanuel Kolini and Gregory Venables really have to do is withdraw themselves from Anglican affairs for a while.
They can respond favorably to US and Canadian parishes who request their oversight knowing that it will cost them little or nothing. As important as their American and Canadian parishes or diocese are, these men realize that their primary responsibility is the Anglicans of their own dioceses, which is as it should be.
So I think that the most western conservatives should hope for out of Lambeth is a suspension of TEO and the AOiC. Of course, even that might prompt the liberals to wash their hands of Canterbury which wouldn't be that big a deal for them since historical rationalization is embedded in Anglican DNA.
But all that gets Anglicans in the pews to the basic question. Do you still want to be part of a church that is connected to TEO, even if that connection is only theoretical and has little or no impact on your parish? Or is it time to make a complete and final break with the Anglican tradition?
I've been asking myself that question a lot lately.
EQUAL TIME
I pile on leftist Episcopal goofballs a lot here so it's only fair that leftist Catholic goofballs occasionally get some attention. Don't want 'em to feel left out.
Via Uncle Di comes word of a recent West Coast conference of a LibCat group named Call to Action. How prog are these people? There's a link to an article by Spong on their web site. And the concluding service(unlike Di, I won't dignify this by calling it a liturgy) started off with a Buddhist meditation "to set mood for Mass."
But wait, there's more. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to make a video of this thing. According to Di, if you can last longer than the first couple of minutes, "your stomach is stronger than mine." I actually found it funny but I'm used to liturgical abominations.
If you want to watch this, a word of warning. It contains liturgical dancing. I don't know about you but I would prefer to have the celebrant repeatedly hit me over the head with a crucifix than to have to endure women(and men in this particular case) prancing up and down the aisles of the worship space.
But that's just me. Anyhoo, this video contains one feature that has to put it in the conversation for inclusion on the list of all-time greatest worship atrocities.
Giant papier-mâché puppets of doom.
UPDATE: For those of you who haven't been able to see the giant papier-mâché puppets of doom in action yet(since the original link is now dead) but still want to, somebody posted edited highlights at YouTube.
HOME STRETCH
Bob Duncan and Henry Scriven are going to Lambeth:
Bishops Robert Duncan and Henry Scriven confirmed today that they will be attending both the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jordan and Jerusalem in June and the Lambeth Conference of Bishops in Kent, England, this July and August.
"After consulting with the people of Pittsburgh and our friends around the globe, we have come to the conclusion that it is necessary for us to be present at both gatherings," said Bishop Robert Duncan.
Both bishops believe it is important that the diocese be represented throughout the Lambeth Conference, if for no other reason than to provide an alternative perspective on the situation in The Episcopal Church. "Those who accuse us of abandoning the Anglican Communion will certainly be present and vocal. It is important for us to be able to respond directly to their claims about the situation in The Episcopal Church and our place in the Communion," added Bishop Duncan. As with the Global Anglican Future Conference, both Pittsburgh bishops will also work to strengthen missionary partnerships with bishops from every corner of the world.
The risk in their going, though, is that without Akinola, Orombi and Kolini to exert some pressure at the primatial level, the odds of +Iker and +Duncan being able to engineer a takeover of the agenda are slim at best. Of course, we don’t know that that’s even their intention, which raises the question: Short forcing Lambeth to deal with the problem, is there a point at all for them to go?
I've said over and over that the only reason conservative bishops should attend Lambeth is to demand that the American/Canadian question be settled, will Dr. Williams or nil he, and to walk out of the Conference and get on with the work of the Gospel if any more delays are suggested.
But is that likely to happen? That's hard to say but I wouldn't put any money on it. Right now, I see three possible scenarios for how this thing might play out in the next few months and none of them are particularly encouraging.
(1) At GAFCON, the conservative bishops and primates who have stated that they will not attend Lambeth are convinced to change their minds. The conservatives go to Lambeth, present a united front, declare that the US and Canada are not in compliance with the Windsor Report or anything else and demand that the Canadian/American problem be solved right then and there or the conservatives will call it a meeting.
Faced with the destruction of the Anglican Communion in front of the international media, Dr. Williams informs the Americans and Canadians that until such time as the entire Anglican world declares them in compliance with the Windsor Report, he has no choice but to ask them to leave and to suspend them from Anglican affairs until such time as they are declared in compliance.
Likelihood - Negligible. Dr. Williams and the rest of the Anglican establishment have spent the last five years either whitewashing the evasions of Church House and 815 or avoiding making any kind of decision at all(see, well, the Windsor Report). There's no reason to suggest that this year will be any different.
(2) Dr. Williams calls the conservative bluff and suggests more yammering. The conservatives, including the Americans and Canadians, walk out, the Anglican world splits apart and a strong, vigorous conservative Anglican body is formed centered around Abuja, Kampala or Sydney.
Likelihood - Given that Bob Duncan doesn't sound like a man who thinks that an Anglican split is on the table and given that, despite Cardinal Kasper's encouraging words of the other day, Rome apparently still believes that Canterbury is the only Anglican game in town, this might be more likely than (1) but only marginally.
(3) The Anglican Communion continues to muddle through. Some conservatives attend Lambeth, others don't and the Conference is basically a waste of time papered over with minority reports and open letters. After the Conference, an amorphous Opposition gradually springs up which continues to attract parishes and the odd diocese or two which will outrage of Church House and 815,
Both of whom will essentially begin officially treating the Windsor Report and the various primates statements as the toilet paper we all know they have always considered them to be. In other words, nothing changes at all except for more same-sex marriages here and there and another homosexual bishop or two.
Likelihood - Probable. Which is where this stops being primarily a diocesan or parochial matter and starts being a personal one. I spent the first 48 years of my earthly existence in the Anglican tradition so walking away has not been as easy as some people think it should be and for that reason, I have given it many more chances than I probably should have.
But faced with the prospect of this business dragging on indefinitely, I, for one, plan to finally call a halt. If conservatives will not ACT this year, they will never act. And if they do not act this year, the possibility of their ever acting at all becomes progressively more difficult even if they finally decide to.
Conservatives know what they need to do. So if they don't do anything this year, if I'm asked to once again "wait a litle longer," I'm done and I suspect a great many other loyal Anglicans will finally be as well. When conservatives finally do get around to acting, if they ever do, they may find that there are a whole lot fewer people left in their pews.
It's now or never.
CHOOSE THIS DAY
Walter Kasper bottom-lines it for the Anglicans:
The Vatican has said that the time has come for the Anglican Church to choose between Protestantism and the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy.
Speaking on the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury met Benedict XVI in Rome, Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity, said it was time for Anglicanism to "clarify its identity".
He told the Catholic Herald: "Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?
"Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions."
He said he hoped that the Lambeth conference, an event which brings the worldwide Anglican Communion together every 10 years, would be the deciding moment for Anglicanism.
Cardinal Kasper, who has been asked to speak at the Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "We hope that certain fundamental questions will be clarified at the conference so that dialogue will be possible.
"We shall work and pray that it is possible, but I think that it is not sustainable to keep pushing decision-making back because it only extends the crisis."
Sound advice. Will the Anglicans take it? Of course not. Anglicans are Protestants whether they like it or not. But the via media fiction is too embedded in the Anglican identity. And since, as we have seen, the principal raison d'être of the Anglican Communion is to avoid making "certain difficult decisions," the idea that they'll settle this question any time soon is too ridiculous to contemplate.
GOING YARD
In their attempts to clear the Episcopal Organization of the charge of violating its own canons in order depose William Cox and John-David Schofield, many on the Episcopal left, including Mrs. Schori herself, have fallen back on the following. "I know how the canon reads," they say. "But we did it this way in this case and that one and no one complained." In an addendum to the previous memorandum listing Mrs. Schori's numerous canonical violations, the author of that memo jacks that "defense" into the left-field seats:
A defense now proffered by the Presiding Bishop and her supporters is that the same procedures were followed in the recent cases of Bishops Davies and Moreno. Past violations of the canon’s clear provisions are said to justify current ones. In considering this defense, it is necessary to distinguish three senses of “precedent” in legal usage. One is the well-known sense of precedent as a formal ruling on a legal issue by a competent juridical body. This is clearly not the case here as no one has suggested that the prior cases were determined to be canonical by any body reviewing the canonical issues. These cases are not offered as reasoned legal rulings, but as a fait accompli.
A second sense of precedent is that in which the actions of parties to a contract are used to interpret terms that are vague or ambiguous. In civil law this concept is referred to as “course of performance,” and this type of precedent is often used as an aid to interpretation for vague or ambiguous contractual terms such as those relating to timeliness or quality. For example, terms like “promptly” or “standard grade” are ones that can sometimes be interpreted by the parties’ performance. The applicability of this principle can be seen in the present context by noting that the meaning of the vague term “forthwith” in Canon IV.9 is given meaning by the Presiding Bishop’s own action in giving notice to Bishop Schofield within 48 hours of receiving the certification from the Review Committee. But the requirements of inhibition in IV.9 and for consent by a majority of the whole number of bishops entitled to vote are not vague or ambiguous terms. They are expressed in mandatory language using precise terms that are clearly defined and used elsewhere in the canons. Express terms control when in conflict with arguable interpretations based on prior actions.
The third type of precedent is one that is often encountered in commercial litigation and corporate law. This is when clear contractual or legal duties are repeatedly violated. Here the past misconduct is to no avail absent an explicit waiver. Especially relevant to the current context is a pattern familiar to any corporate lawyer: that of a closely-held corporation that does not follow its own bylaws. Such corporations, owned by one or a small number of shareholders, have many of the same duties in terms of corporate formalities and procedural regularity as public corporations traded on national stock exchanges. Corporate law requires that proper procedures be followed in order for an enterprise to receive legal recognition and protection as a corporation. Often the sole shareholder of a corporation pays no attention to these formalities or the requirements of the corporate bylaws. The business is simply run as the shareholder sees fit.
But when the litigation arises and a hostile party asks the court to disregard the corporate form and permit a suit directly against the shareholder, those past “precedents” of ignoring the corporate rules are to no avail. In fact, the naked “we’ve done it this way before” becomes evidence for the other side, the primary evidence that the corporate form is a sham. The frequent result in such cases is that the law disregards the corporate form --it “pierces the corporate veil”-- and the shareholder’s assets are no longer protected as intended by the corporation. Corporations that seek the law’s recognition must follow the legal requirements and their own rules. Past malfeasance is not a defense; to the contrary it is proof of a pattern of abuse that exacerbates the current violation. It is a supreme irony that Bishop Lamb is now petitioning the California courts to defer to TEC’s polity and recognize him as the bishop of San Joaquin when the clear provisions of TEC’s canons indicate Bishop Schofield has not been lawfully deposed.
And if you're wondering why no names have yet been released in connection with the original memorandum and this addendum to it, a commenter at Kendall's explains:
The reason is attorney-client privilege, Brian. The recipient of the memo has released the memo’s contents and waived the privilege as to that, but by redacting the name(s) of the author(s), the client is signalling that he/she/it does not waive any privilege with regard to the rest of the entire engagement which resulted in this Memo (and its Addendum, linked above).
Mad props to the Anglican Communion Institute for making this material available. But who asked for these memoranda? The ACI? Conservative bishops? If the ACI commissioned this, they are to be commended for laying the facts out before the Anglican public.
But if it was conservative bishops, they would seem to have all they need to proceed against Mrs. Schori. So why haven't they? Are they holding their fire, waiting to move until just before the Lambeth Conference in order to inflict the maximum amount of damage on Mrs. Schori and the left going into the Conference itself?
Or is this yet another display of conservative Anglican inertia, the expectation that somebody else will do something? As I stated before, I don't think a presentment will go anywhere but I think one needs to be brought forward. Are the bishops waiting for somebody to do their work for them?
I honestly don't know. I suspect that the first possibility is what's going on but the latter, alas, wouldn't surprise me.
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN AT LAMBETH?
Short answer. Not this:
In his video address, Dr. Williams said he hoped Lambeth would not be “a time when we are being besieged by problems that need to be solved and statements that need to be finalised, but a time when people feel that they are growing in their ministry.”
Lambeth will be a place where “bishops learn how to be better bishops. And because of what we believe about the Church overall, we believe that bishops learn to be better bishops when they are learning from one another.”
“At the heart of the whole Anglican Communion is relationship,” Dr. Williams said. “We have never been a body that is bound together by firm and precise rules and that is often, as it is at the moment, a matter of some real concern and some confusion in our life as a communion.”
To put it bluntly, conservative Anglicans who attend the Lambeth Conference need to inform my gracious lord of Canterbury that the problem of the Canadians and the Americans is going to be solved, or be put on its way to being solved, at the Conference. Indeed Dr. Williams needs to be informed that the Canadians and Americans will be the first and, if necessary, the only order of business, regardless of His Grace's plans.
If the Archbishop attempts to stall or temporize in any way, he needs to be quickly brought back onside with the information that either the Can/Am problem will be solved or His Grace will preside over the death of the Anglican Communion in front of the whole world insofar as the conservatives will shake Canterbury's dust from their feet right then and there. And then, if need be, conservative Anglicans should walk out of the Conference and be prepared to never come back.
Anything other than