On the eve of the closing of the Anglican Consultative Council 14 meeting in Kingston, Jamaica the Archbishop Of Canterbury delivered his presidential address. The Council has a chair and the Archbishop functions as the president. The address came after the evening worship and was followed by an opportunity to express thanks to Bishop John Paterson who retires as the chair at the end of this meeting, Mr. George Kosay who retires as the deputy chair and Bishop Gregory Cameron who was recently consecrated as the Bishop of St Asaph in Wales and attended the meeting to complete his work as the deputy Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.
‘Litotes’ involves a double negative: ‘the expression of an affirmative by the negative of its contrary’ (OED). It is used as a peculiarly Latin and English manner of expressing subtle comments.
However, ‘litotes’ is not obvious and when clear, concise, lucid comments are called for, it may be better to avoid these expressions. The Archbishop’s sentence:
[blockquote]we have not in this meeting given evidence of any belief that we have no future together[/blockquote]
is an admirable comment but, since it is an example of ‘litotes’, people have had to reread again and again to get its drift.
Other comments in this Presidential Address admit problems:
[blockquote]the quagmires of detail and procedure that we waded through last Friday…[/blockquote]
and others are encouraging, in that the death of the Covenant, predicted soon after Friday, was indeed an exaggeration and the Archbishop is enthusiastic for immediate discussion and discernment of it in the Provinces:
[blockquote]We’ve talked about the Covenant, and we have sanctioned a measure of delay about some of its details, though as I said earlier, we have affirmed our commitment to the basic timetable. And in connection with that I would want to say with great emphasis, don’t please put off discussion of the Covenant simply because of that detail we are finalising. The texts are out there. Please pray them through and talk them through, starting now. The official processes will no doubt take longer and be more complex. We are trying – and the Secretary General and I have already discussed a timetable for this in some detail – we are trying to make sure that any delay is as brief as possible. But meanwhile the texts are on the table. Talk about them. Begin the discernment. Begin that intelligent engagement with those texts as soon as you can. [/blockquote]
Another key passage, which relates to some of the responses to the Friday vote at the ACC in Jamaica, is:
[blockquote]Oh, and think also about what makes life-giving exchange impossible, because what makes it impossible is a ceaseless rhetoric of fear and competition directed backwards and forwards in our fellowship. And that is fatal to life-giving exchange if all we have to speak of is fear or competition, rivalry and resentment, there will not be the flow of life and so we will not be able to do together the things we shall still, believe me, want to do together[/blockquote].
This is a crucial and pivotal – if, in places, ponderous – presidential address. It is worth pondering.
Pondering the lack of leadership and evident derailment of the Covenant and the person who did it, Rowan the Imponderable. Now there’s a cheery thought. A living litotes, eh.
Bishop,
I wondered if you might comment on the relationship between actions taken because of ‘fear, competition’, etc and the perceived erosion of any moral authority, which is the only authority the Anglican Communion (post 1867 of course) has had, for ordering their common life together?
Thanks.