Amended
Episcopal News Service has published an audio recording of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori speaking to people who work at the Episcopal Church Center in New York last week. You can find it here.
It is a little less than 25 minutes long, but I strongly recommend listening to the whole of it.
There is a detailed ENS news report of this, Presiding Bishop briefs Church Center community on Primates’ Meeting by Mary Frances Schjonberg. This quote has drawn some attention elsewhere:
The “low point” of the Primates’ Meeting came, Jefferts Schori said, when one primate equated homosexuality with pedophilia and another said he couldn’t see why the Anglican Communion should study homosexuality if it doesn’t need to study murder.
The Living Church also has a report, Presiding Bishop Outlines Discernment Process, Schedules Webcast.
Next Wednesday, while the English General Synod is debating Private Members’ Motions, there will be a live webcast featuring the Presiding Bishop, see Presiding Bishop sets live webcast to discuss current issues. The recorded programme will be online for viewing afterwards.
I was quite heartened to hear ++KJS’ vision of the communiqué as an opportunity for evangelization rather than as a threat to TEC. While I am sure that those who insisted on the somewhat draconian conditions of that document saw it only as a way to constrict TEC’s freedom, I am just as sure that they never considered that relationships such as those that will exist through the Pastoral Council will allow for two-way communication. Listening to her speak I once again rejoiced that God has given ++KJS to us at this most difficult of times.
Using http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_82812_ENG_HTM.htm _The “low point” of the Primates’ Meeting came, Jefferts Schori said, when one primate equated homosexuality with pedophilia and another said he couldn’t see why the Anglican Communion should study homosexuality if it doesn’t need to study murder._ Yes, and they are primates. What a disgrace. Did anyone take the minutes? _She said that a “saving grace” of the primatial vicar proposal is that it would eventually end the incursion of other primates into the Episcopal Church._ No it won’t – they are not going. This has been made clear now. They’d only go if TEC became something… Read more »
PB Schori’s remarks addressed to the staff at 815 just opened the door for a rebuttal by Abp. Venables, another Primate who keeps invading TEC’s dioceses. To quote him: “Tragically, in the Presiding Bishop’s remarks to the Church Center community just two days after the close of the meeting she misguidingly argues that there was agreement and understanding among the Primates that blessings of same-sex couples could continue as “pastoral care” as long as there was no official published liturgy for it. That assertion quite scandalously demonstrates the very concern that the Communiqué addresses in identifying this situation. ‘There appears… Read more »
No request for deposition of Bishop Robinson.
Bishop Jefferts Schori elected to the high counsels of the Communion
No Primate objects to her on grounds of her gender.
No statement that TEC will be expelled for non-compliance.
Breakaway parishes in confusion as to their reaction to a pastoral council.
Legal cases continuing in Virginia
If this is a conservative victory, it’s a hollow one.
Robert Ian – The strategy is to claim victory. Up the ante. Make it seem like TEC can’t comply anyway – so why try. Hope that TEC walks away. If we don’t – their goose is cooked and they know it.
C.B.
Robert: What’s going on is more important than whether this is a “conservative” victory. Two important principles are evolving/developing. The first is a “Bill of Rights” type limitation on Provincial power: Thou shalt not eliminate the right of believers to worship in accordance with the ancient faith, even if your provincial direction is otherwise. We see this in the recent declarations related to non-acceptance of female leadership by an American Diocese, as well as in the continuing accommodations made for “flying bishops” in England. It can also be seen in the guarantee of a primatial vicar in the TEC for… Read more »
She makes a very good point. It would be very easy, and a lot less costly (both in monetary terms and in personal cost to many involved) for TEC and its allies to walk away and get on with its mission. But that would abandon LGBT Anglicans in the rest of the Communion, and put an end to the listening process (to the extent that it has even started) in most of the Global South. It is very easy to be inwardly focused and to say the rest of the world “I have no need of you” (cf. 1 Cor… Read more »
Yes part of the struggle now will be to get beyond dueling sound bites. I have to admit I sometimes find myself asking, as I listen to Venebles and the like: Who are these people, for real? If Venebles were having dinner in my home with my non-straight family, what in the world would we be doing together? Would he have anything to say to a six year old or ten year old or seventeen year old son or daughter of two mommies or two daddies? Why are Venebles and others so interested in counting my orgasms or lack of… Read more »
I do hope the HoB will speak up for LGBTQ folks all round the world, because the conservatives never really wish to speak of them except in negatives. I hope that if the HoB speaks of leaving, they will clearly leave the doors open to all who might ever wish to return, even as guests or visitors. The parable of the prodigal son, not the penance of the king standing in sackcloth and ashes in the snow for three days outside the pope’s villa. I hope that if burdens must be born, we will all share them as much as… Read more »
We also gotta do something more constructive about where our TEC money goes and why. People much more in the know about our money than I probably need to figure that one out, and present it to us as akin to weighing whether and how much we used to invest in South African apartheid.
Dont’ worry Jim – this ‘staying in’ to keep the listening process alive is not an argument because other provinces (not least the CofE) will continue to ensure that. Huge numbers of priests are happy to offer (unauthorised) blessings of God’s gay people.
>>>Why are Venebles and others so interested in counting my orgasms or lack of them? Here is my admittedly cynical but, I think, correct answer to that question. Obsessing over The Gays provides an excellent way for: 1. Irrelevant backwater clerics like ++Cone to become Major Players on the World Stage. 2. Victims of colonialism to stick it to whitey at long last, after all these years, without alienating the Western financial/political establishment. 3. Political reactionaries in the U.S. to wreck the mainline churches, which have traditionally been a principal voice for justice in this country. 4. Fundamentalists in the… Read more »
“If this is a conservative victory, it’s a hollow one”
Doesn’t matter tupence whether it’s hollow or not, unless you play by the rules ;=)
JPM, that’s an OUTSTANDING analysis. Bravo! (or Brava! —whichever)