The Archbishop of Canterbury has conceded that ACC-14 in Kingston, Jamaica was a “failure” that disappointed many Anglicans across the Communion. However, the meeting of the Anglican Communion’s fourth ”˜instrument of unity’ had been a “glorious failure” that saw the Anglican Communion rise from its “deathbed” to address its own shortcomings, Dr Rowan Williams said in his closing presidential address on May 11.
It was unhelpful to establish criteria for success or failure for Anglican meetings, Dr Williams told delegates to the May 2-12 meeting in Kingston, Jamaica said, as there was “no absolute measure for achievement. In critical times ”“ small things might be large achievements. Our willingness in certain areas to act as one and to discover more deeply how we pray as one is, by God’s grace and gift, for no other reason, an achievement,” he said.
Blarney. I thought he was Welsh. Ah, well. He’s past postmodern into Witherspoonianism. I recall that ended badly, very badly.
But, the bright side is the BBC has appointed a Muslim head of Religious Broadcasting in line with the ABC’s call for Sharia. No place better than to begin it than at the top. Chap’s bound to be clearer than this, wot?!
I think it is disingenuous to call ACC 14 a “glorious failure” and then go on to say there is no absolute measure of achievement. If there are no measures of achievement, then he has absolved himself of all responsibility for the lack of progress toward the acceptance of a Covenant.
This is absurd. If this is the case then what was the point of the ACC meeting? The AC is dead and anymore time spent on it is wasted except for entertainment value.
Jamaica be nice this time of the year, mon. Real nice. Gotta have a reason to punch the ticket on church/company time. Other than that, the ACC meeting was a waste of time. The ABC himself saw to that. Not a little help from his friends in the ACC control unit and the minions of the Church of the Global North Colonialists&Imperialists;, INC., too, as you may have noticed. A sort of Kay-tee-a eleison moment.
And in Jamaica, mon. In May, mon. Nice.
Wow. This is supposed to be, uh, clever, right? Esoteric, “Spiritual”, enlightened and nuanced…Or it’s most likely just a regular garden variety failure. As usual. What a sad embarrassment this man is. And you know, I think he’s the best they got.
I think the real cost here is trust. The Archbishop has, of course, to interpret as hopefully as is possible. Yet for the Archbishop not to acknowledge honestly the serious questions about the politics of the process and seem to want to say that every outcome is as hope filled as every other destroys further the already deeply fractured trust within the Communion.
[blockquote]glorious failure[/blockquote]
I think that’s how the French describe Waterloo.
Actually, I don’t think the French describe Waterloo at all! (One suspects this ACC may soon not be being spoken about by the Archbishop too).
Here are a couple of quotes from the great Duke – one of which is rather relevant:
Reputedly said on receiving new troops in 1809
And perhaps more a little more relevantly:
driver8 (#6),
Yes, the inevitable outcome of the fiasco in Jamaica (which I’d call an abject, shameful failure) will be a dramatic rise in distrust, not only in terms of a new level of disillusionment with the weak, vacillating ++RW himself, but also in terms of a heightened distrust of the ACC, and above all in terms of a growing complete distrust of the utterly corrupted JSC. Sadly, the capital of goodwill on which any institution implicitly relies has been sqaundered like the Prodigal Son’s fortune.
And the tragedy, of course, is that trust is like the oil buried undeerground. It takes a long time to build trust, but it can be destroyed very quickly.
David Handy+
Smoking some good gonja? “All is well.” Where have I heard that before?
Seriously, to whom is Rowan Williams trying to pawn off this nonsense? Certainly not the TEClub and its cronies. This is a glorious success. Not the GAFConners who see the sham for what it is. Rather it is for the Charlie Brown’s who he keeps pulling away the football: “Don’t go home angry! Just one more time. Let’s talk some more! Everything is going peachy.”
Rowan’s words don’t match George Conger’s assertion that Rowan was angry after the parliamentary maneuvering – where Rowan played an integral part.
For a very informative pair of videos by Anglican TV go to :
http://tinyurl.com/qczbwd
Onward ACNA!!
The Archbishop certainly did not say that the summit ended in “glorious failure”. The headline is a misrepresentation of his address which can be read at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/news.cfm/2009/5/11/ACNS4625
But the ABC did not acknowledge it the FRANK failure that it was, did he? I believe he is trying to spin the cost, the CO2 produced, and the usurpation of inadaba by Global North parlimentian cock-ups. But perhaps the ABC needs to believe that something substantive came out of the obvious debacle and manipulation of him and the ACC by the real power brokers?
You can be sure that, for Schori and Company, the summit was a [i]glorious victory![/i]
#12. Barely. He clearly compared the meeting to other “potentially glorious failures”. In other words, while he clearly said it was a failure, it was only potentially glorious. Sounds about right to me. If the global south create their own instruments of communion to hold together in communion because of the destruction of the formal Instruments of Communion, that would be the glorious, Dostoyevskyian bit.