This is a further selection of what other blogs are saying:
wannabepriest An unplayable delivery? Reflections on Tanzania
Raspberry Rabbit Time to quit the Jiggery-Pokery
The Ugley Vicar Charlie Brown’s football: why the Covenant is an irrelevance
Tony Clavier The Primates Speak
Anglican Scotist A Tacit Liberal Triumph at Tanzania
Scott Gunn More thoughts on the cost of Communion
Ken Arnold Giving Up Church for Lent
Caught by the Light A Personal Manifesto
Anglican Centrist Ash Wednesday
MadPriest Shite
I see that some liberal leaning blogs are more positive about both the Communique and the Covenant. I’m not sure I am, but the view I’m going towards is how unhealthy all of this is. Looking at some of the responses these bloggers get in the merry-go-round of messaging, one thing that comes out is how the process buys off peoples’ integrities. We already know the loops and hoops that Rowan Williams has jumped through by which a once thoughtful theologian has become some chairing bureaucrat of impossibilities and looking like he’s had brain surgery, where someone responding ends up… Read more »
Pluralist — One can make the case (although I am not convinced) that ++Katharine felt she did not have primatial authority to refuse to sign, since the Communique give the responsibility to respond to the HoB. I HOPE they say, “We said what we meant & we meant what we said & other changes would require a change in canons & thus the actions of TWO General Conventions — your turn!” I FEAR they will try to sacrifice a few gays & lesbians only to be told (AGAIN) that it is not good enough. I am also concerned that ++Rowan… Read more »
Ken Arnold’s words about trafficking SEX SLAVES need to be taken seriously. Once again Nigeria is at the hub of the sex traffic. Not only does the Primate and Metropolitan of Abuja encourage hate-legislation against Gays and Lesbians in his own country and in Africa, but he is silent on the SEX TRAFFIC. By dancing around “Big Pete” at Tanzania, the Anglican primates are complicit in dehumanizing a large group of human beings, while, hypocritically, expressing repentance for the slave trade two centuries ago. How about their silence about the present abuse of many people on the margins of society?… Read more »
“One can make the case (although I am not convinced) that ++Katharine felt she did not have primatial authority to refuse to sign, since the Communique give the responsibility to respond to the HoB.” I would seem plausible that she has as much authority as she needs to issue a minority report. It also seems plausible that the folks who elected her to the standing committee were not willing to support her in doing that. The statement she did issue after the meeting reflects no expression of dissent on her part or of deferring action to the broader polity of… Read more »
I honestly shake my ancient monastic and 50-years-ordained head in disbelief over all of this. As far as I can see it, all we have is B033 writ large and the unprecedented intervention of foreign primates into the life and polity of TEC. The tear-stained sacrifice called “B033” earned what? A grudging invitation for +KJS to Tanzania’s senatorial table (with 7 primates still refusing to be with her at that “other” Table). And, having accomplished that, that “temporary” B033 is now expected to be made both more exclusive (i.e., the replacement of “restraint” with plain old unqualified “exclusion”) and, for… Read more »
The Charlie Brown article with the dynamics of Lucy’s consistent conduct probably epitomises my concerns. It doesn’t matter how fair, how perfect, how reasonable the wording; thugs are going to be thugs. The same as it doesn’t matter how many new books are added to the bible, how many new prophets are sent, how many new religions are spawned. Thugs will be thugs. All of the holy texts rebuke the thugs, the thugs gloss over those parts. Or remove the inspiring passages and/or books that show how to protect yourself from their predatory behaviours or that God sends emissaries to… Read more »
On an up note, I have come to understand that the endorsement of the Nigerian camp’s flying Bishop and alternative primal oversight is a wonderful blessing. No censure, no “you shouldn’t be doing that”, no “that’s unbiblical behaviour”. So now the precedent has been set, I am looking forward to the email telling me who will be providing alterntive primal oversight for the liberals in Sydney Diocese. I am looking forward to linking up with them. 🙂 Oh, and why did I stop sharing communion? Because people were starting to get hurt e.g. the Nigerian affiliates tried to make out… Read more »
Kudos to MadPriest for the briefest (AND truest) analysis of all this: “Shite”! :-/
The Mad Priest has a really marvelous paste up of KJS as Neville Chamberlain.
I want to offer a slight correction here because this is something that keeps popping up all over the place. Amendments to the Canons of the Episcopal Church do not require two sessions of the General Convention, only the concurrence of both houses in a single session (Canon V.1.1). Changes to the Constitution and BCP require two “regular” sessions (special meetings don’t apply). (Articles X and XII).
Tobias —
Thanks for the correction!
FWIW, I have always been told that the way GenCon1976 approved the ordination of women (i.e., by saying that “man” in the canons was generic) was that it was the only way it could make it happen in one convention — is this the origin of the “urban legend”? Is there some other reason for that (angrily denounced by its opponents at the time) legal strategy?
Ahem! Now that I have had a chance to draw a breath, after reading the Primates’ Communique and the appended schedule – a few thoughts. First, I think that the bishops of TEC should ask their canon lawyers if they have the authority to consent to the primatial vicar scheme as presented to them by the primates, without referring this matter to General Convention. I believe that they do not have the constitutional authority to consent to this scheme. Although ++Katherine proposed a primatial vicar, this person was to have functioned under her jurisdiction, within TEC. Parishes to be gathered… Read more »
This is a sorry spectacle. And the worst of it is that +Katharine and ++Rowan, who are probably fine people, have issued the most damning, un-holy, mendacious statements that could be imagined. Call down Tennessee William’s Big Daddy to curse this dreadful “compromise.”
“the peace of God, it is no peace,
but strife closed in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing-
the marvelous peace of God”
W.A. Percy(Hymn #661, to Georgetown,1982)
Prior Aelred – I don’t think they will go into reverse. There are two developments: bishops are showing that the price is unacceptable, and Akinola is threatening to walk out of communion with *Canterbury* in September if nothing is done about the Episcopal Church. Plus the arguments, from Rowan Williams’ own hand, for the Communion of these opposites, is very thin. You know, it is just possible now that the TEC bishops continue with a prophetic, ethical, inclusive church and provide some minimal statement, that therefore in September there is another fudge attempt to hold all sides, and then either… Read more »
If PB KJS truly believes that a season of fasting would benefit the largest number of Anglican or other believers round the world, I am willing to consider giving her the benefit of a doubt. She was, after all, in the real Anglican rooms with the other Primates. It is a blessed miracle of our era that she sits now on the Primates Standing Committee. So yaaaay God. Thus I am willing as a pilgrim to say adios muchachos for a while. Let TEC settle matters with the support of my absence. All that is needed is the clear word.… Read more »
Prior Aelred (begging Simon’s indulgence to answer this slightly off-topic question in this forum): This appears to be a bit of urban legendry. The idea of approving the ordination of women via a reading masculine language in the Constitution, Canons and BCP as generic was voted on (and defeated) at the General Convention of 1970. The 1976 action successfully amended the canons by adding to Canon III.9 the statement “The provisions of these canons for the admission of Candidates, and for their Ordination to the three Orders: Bishops, Priests and Deacons, shall be equally applicable to men and women.” This… Read more »