Earlier this month, the Witness published a lengthy article about the new American Presiding Bishop.
Katharine Jefferts Schori Takes Office on a Wing and a Prayer.
Sarah Dylan Breuer draws from an interview with the Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori as well as experience of serving alongside her in two church bodies for an in-depth profile of the 26th Presiding Bishop and some personal predictions of what the church might expect in her tenure.
More recently, the New York Times Magazine published an interview with her headlined State of the Church. Some of this drew criticism, but as Fr Jake explained both here and here, her replies are factually correct.
It is interesting that the Church Times has reported that Bishop Katharine has not received ANY response from her request to meet informally with the four overseas bishops who have been visiting the US.
Not a “no thanks, we’re too busy” – just silence. How rude is that? What justification is there for such boorish (one might even say un-Christlike) behaviour?
David, I haven’t seen the Church Times report. But you seem a little hasty to condemn:
http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/comments/a_statement_by_the_global_south_steering_committee_on_consultations_apo/
The thing that struck me about The Church Times Article was that it titled her “Dr. Jefferts Schori” and referred to her constantly as such. I wondered whether that was her preference.
I’m not sure if the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA gets to be “Rt. Revd” but surely she is a “Revd Dr”?
The article does claim that she has had no answer from the visiting African bishops.
Standard CT style: the same issue also refers repeatedly to Dr Williams.
Her lumping of Roman Catholics with Mormons is as theologically misleading as such phrases as “Anglicans and Unitarians” or “Anglicans and Jehovah’s Witnesses” would be, and her account of Roman Catholic teaching is not factually correct — the Church, as the French Bishops declared before Vatican II — “is NOT natalist at any cost”. “Responsible parenthood” is a mantra of the Vatican, stressed in Humanae Vitae and in Gaudium et Spes. The ethical problems posed for governments and parents by the population explosion were taken very seriously in those texts. I admire the Presiding Bishop and place great hopes in… Read more »
Neil, The link you provided comes from 8th November and says: “A number of the primates have also been sent an invitation by Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori. They will be responding to her in due course through private communication.” The Church Times of 24th November states that no such response was in fact received. The article, by Douglas LeBlanc, does not give a source for this statement, but appears on the surface to have come from Dr Jefferts Schori’s office. Perhaps someone with a link to the Primates concerned (Nigeria, West Africa, West Indies and Kenya) might be able to… Read more »
I have no problem with calling Bishop Jefferts Schori, “Dr.” since she earned her PhD. However, the technical title for the Presding Bishop is the “Most Reverend” as opposed to “Right Reverend” for other bishops.
“There is a tradition of snide remarks on RCs from Anglican lips, one that both churches are anxious to bury forgivingly in the past; the Presiding Bishop should be aware of the poisonous tradition her remarks are likely to evoke.”
SpiritV2, in the 21st century, can’t we get past this game of “out-victimizing” one another? Let go of ALL our “poisonous traditions”? (And let *both* Thomas Cranmer and Thomas More rest in peace!)
David, I wonder if you are really expecting a “private communication” to involve the Church Times or the internet?
Seems unreasonable to me to band about words like “rude” and “unChristlike” at this stage when they have said what they have said. Unless of course your mind is already made up and they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t?……
I certainly am not in favor of a victim culture. But consciousness of past venomous traditions should guide our present speech. When US Bishops talk as they do about gays, for example, they seem oblivious of the evil tradition to which they themselves belong, in that the execution and imprisonment of gays has been an episcopal forte and in that bishops have never spoken up against it. If they had reflected for a moment, they could not have trotted out biblical texts about gays “deserving to die”. I agree, of course, that the bishops’ utterances and behavior is evil, as… Read more »
Spirit of Vatican 2 wrote, “Her lumping of Roman Catholics with Mormons is as theologically misleading as such phrases as “Anglicans and Unitarians” or “Anglicans and Jehovah’s Witnesses” would be, and her account of Roman Catholic teaching is not factually correct — the Church, as the French Bishops declared before Vatican II — “is NOT natalist at any cost”. “Responsible parenthood” is a mantra of the Vatican, stressed in Humanae Vitae and in Gaudium et Spes. The ethical problems posed for governments and parents by the population explosion were taken very seriously in those texts.” I don’t know what spirit… Read more »