In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Book Silver Blaze we read this wonderful encounter:
[Scotland Yard Inspector] Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
[Scotland Yard Inspector] Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
I bring this up because I think the most important stories of General Convention are not what is being proposed, nor what is being opposed, but what is entirely missing–KSH.
Kendall – your comment is intriguing. What do you see as being missing?
Darin+
Compared to the storm of comments at the last two GCs, what’s most striking about this one to me is how few reasserting Anglicans there are that care anymore about happens at GC.
I must admit I’m wondering when the Dennis Cannon will come up
I’m not wondering when the covenant will come up. I don’t expect it to since it was bungled so terribly just a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, that would be another issue absent from much discussion.
For the first time in a long time, KSH+ is missing from GC. 😉
APB [#5], I haven’t figured out why Kendall closed the comments on the post linking to That Kaeton Woman’s* expression of genuine regret — which was in no way “shadowboxing,” as KSH claimed — about his absence from GC.
* Our English friend [url=http://revjph.blogspotcom/]The Mad Priest[/url] refers thusly to the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton.
#2, the reasserters decided GC was no longer the right place to fight for change with resolution battles (e.g see +Lawrence’s letter re: leaving Kendall back in SC). So I’m not surprised at the relative calm. It’s still sad though….
D.C.
Ranting sycophants.
What I find striking, and to me the “dog not barking in the night,” is the virtual absence of mainstream media coverage of this GC. I think 2003 got overwhelming coverage because of the shock value of Gene Robinson. GC 2006 got media coverage because the media played up whether TEC would split over homosexuality. At this point, however, the “Gay Church” (Robinson’s words, not mine) is old news, the shock value is gone, and frankly the media has pretty much dismissed TEC as no longer being newsworthy. Everyone knows it will just be more and more and more and more talk about things which the large majority of the churched and unchurched have no interest in. So now the revisionists are just singing to themselves and have lost their audience. Which is pretty symptomatic of what has happened in the organization itself. I think at this point most people have moved on, in one way or another.
I think people have figured out this is no longer a “church,” in any historic sense of the word. No Jesus, no Gospel, no Message, just Ubuntu, whatever that means. (Isn’t it symbolic that the focus of GC is a concept which apparently no one can even define?)
[blockquote]I think people have figured out this is no longer a “church,†in any historic sense of the word. No Jesus, no Gospel, no Message, just Ubuntu, whatever that means.[/blockquote]
It’s become MoveOn.org in purple shirts.
RE: “Ranting sycophants.”
Oh dear . . . whenever Brian strikes that tone he sounds merely frustrated and peevish.
Where’s the old lighthearted and frisky Brian?
To be specific, there seem to be no resolutions at this GC dealing with abortion and TEC membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (pro-abortion group). In GC06 there were several resolutions (all were killed and never made it to full votes) urging TEC to support life. This GC, nothing that I could find – although several dioceses have passed their own resolutions disowning the Executive Council action in ‘06 that committed the entire TEC to the RCRC. Interesting that this issue has been definitively decided at the national level as no longer worthy of discussion.
I forgot to add above that I know the Diocese of San Diego passed at their 2008 diocesan convention a resolution requesting that GC “end the officially sanctioned affiliation of the Episcopal Church with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice” – yet I see nothing on the GC resolution list. Since I am no longer in the Diocese of San Diego I’m not “in the know” on what happened here, but how sad that a Christian church refuses to support life and actively supports death.
Amen to Jim the Puritan. This is the non-event most worth noting. TEC has marginalized itself to such a degree that its power to draw attention to itself has diminished in proportion to its inability to shock.
TEC cannot address the causes of its decline because they are now systemic. Spraying the fruit will not stop the withering. Apple maggot has given way to fire blight. And I think blight is the right word here. If one lets a terminal disease into one’s orchard because sound measures to exclude it have been ignored or denied, then the orchard eventually passes from the death of new growth to the death of the trees themselves. Beware to us all: This blight is now widespread. What is happening to this orchard could happen to our own. Larry
“How can you have another revolution when the last revolution broke all the rules?”