The alliance between the Anglican Communion Office, the Rev. Marta Weeks, and the Satcher Institute leaves many questions unanswered:
— Who decided this alliance was worth pursuing? The Anglican Communion Office? The Episcopal Church? The Archbishop of Canterbury?
— Who investigated the previous work of the Center of Excellence for Sexual Health and its directors? Did they assume Anglicans would not look closely at this next phase of indaba and miss the potential entry of a Trojan horse into the listening process? How will the ACO ensure that CESH does not influence Continuing Indaba in any way when CESH effectively holds the purse strings and this is exactly the type of process they are actively seeking to be involved in?
— Why is the ACO continuing to misuse the indaba process to bridge opposing theologies and moralities when the process is based on developing consensus within a village or tribe with shared values and morality?
All great questions and they should be answered honestly and truthfully. So if they come I hope you will post them.
The only ethical thing to do at this point — and I am not speaking as a theological conservative at all (I have a friend on the other side of the aisle who I am certain would agree with me) — is for the ACO to return the 1.5 million. Period. There are simply way too many appearences of impropriety connected with it:
(1) The initial nondisclosure by the ACO of the true source of the money.
(2) Claims that there are are “no strings” being contradicted by others involved in the grant process.
(3) The deep vested interest of the people supplying the money in a specific ideological outcome.
Note that “ethics” in this sense has nothing to do with people being moral or immoral. The word in this context (one uses it in business and govt work all the time) simply involves actions one takes to avoid not only impropriety but the APPEARANCE of impropriety. Thus, even if the ACO never intended to hide the ideological source of the funding, their action inadvertently created the APPEARANCE of hiding. Likewise there is the APPEARANCE of lying later on by the funding groups when they claim that they won’t have any role permitting them to affect the outcome. And so on.
Thus the money has to be returned because no one will be able to trust the objective outcome. It’s a bit like hiring a group to oversee free elections in Iraq and finding out that all the money funding the group came from Saddam Hussein.
I couldn’t help but note that this report about the control of the Episcopal Church by women like Weeks, Ragsdale and Schori appeared immediately before the report about the Episcopal order of sisters swimming the Tiber because they no longer felt at home in TEC.
so, is she saying that “indaba” = “pederasty”?
RE: “so, is she saying that “indaba†= “pederastyâ€?”
Heh.
Even JW sees what the Satcher Institute envisions.
[blockquote]RE: “so, is she saying that “indaba†= “pederastyâ€?â€[/blockquote]
Well, let’s take a look:
[i]This sexual ethic “applies to all persons, without regard to sex, gender, color, age, bodily condition, marital status, or sexual orientation.”[/i]
I’d say that Rev. Weeks isn’t going to [i]require[/i] clergy to sodomize underage boys, but she isn’t going to be caught dead suggesting they refrain either…so long as the clergy in question express “love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure” as they raise their vestments and beckon the acolytes perform, of course.
The revisionists seem strangely quiet – or dismissive, as is usual for Fr Gawain/JW – in the face of the disclosure of a leftist financial “conspiracy” to shape the Anglican discussion.
All depends on whose ox is being gored, I suppose.
Rev. Weeks must be very wealthy if she can make such a large donation and although wealth may not influence entry (through the eye of a needle) to the kingdom of heaven, it seems that it does influence decisions made at the Anglican Communion Office?
Having read it all, I have only one question: Is there anyone out there who didn’t see this looming?
Todd wrote:
[i]All depends on whose ox is being gored, I suppose. [/i]
Is that covered by the list Jeffersonian quoted?
[blockquote]Having read it all, I have only one question: Is there anyone out there who didn’t see this looming?[/blockquote]
He who says “A” must say “B.” As I’ve often said here, the arguments made by various and sundry within the AC in favor of today’s perversions and deviant sexual practices are so broad as to normalize virtually every non-physically-coercive practice known. This is just the manifestation of that ill-advised rhetoric. All that stands between Rev. Weeks and open pederasty (among innumerable other perversions) among the clergy is the law, whose foundation, of course, is eroded by normalization such as this.
The ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC cash cow, or if you prefer, gavy train is found under the covers when they are lifted! Oh, I am surprised!!! This from an errant organization whose gozpel of the New Thang is intended for all the Anglican Communion – is expected and predictable and inadabadaveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeda at its most precise achievement. Good go, Rowan!
#8, she apparently is, because at about the same time she also gave the prime gift for a new university departmental building in Utah, named for her father. In fact she’s a very busy person:
http://www6.miami.edu/UMH/CDA/UMH_Main/1,1770,2593-1;54839-3,00.html