The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard, Bishop Suffragan for Federal Ministries (Chaplaincies), is concerned about what message General Convention may have sent in approving D025.
“I voted against D025 with the reasoning that if the choice was between consoling ourselves on the one hand and not kicking sand in the face of our Anglican Communion partners on the other, I choose the latter,” he said. “There’s an anti-war play which tries to portray the damage done to war-torn society as the lead character places a box of butterflies on a table. One by one he lets them go except for the last one, which he burns with a lighted match. The point is that the invaded culture is fragile and easily harmed. It’s a horrific scene and the audience was so traumatized at the debut that the script was rewritten so that only paper butterflies would be incinerated.”
Bishop Packard added: “I maintain this consolation resolution is not the benign legislation we think it is. For my Lambeth friends, I judge it is the real thing, terribly unsettling, no paper butterflies here. Why do this if we already know the way things are among us? What is gained by stating it? There’s so much we could lose. I hope I’m wrong.”
Bishop Packard voted for C056, and was among nearly 30 bishops who volunteered to discuss their conflicting concerns outside of a plenary session.
It is no secret that The Episcopal Church has knowingly embarked on a road leading away from the Anglican Communion, yet they have said that they intend to remain. Bishop Packard knows this, yet all he can manage to deliver to his Church is a very mild rebuke for doing so.
While it is commendable for one to choose to remain in TEC and work for change from within, it is, I believe, all too clear that the leaders of the Church will permit no such change to ever happen, and so it is pointless to try to fight the good fight.
The deck has been stacked against reform from the beginning of the present controversies, and it is time for the conservatives remaining in TEC to take stock of their situation and decide where their loyalties lie; on the side of Christ and His Church, or the side of apostasy and heresy.
My jaw dropped when I read this. He didn’t vote for C056 because he agreed with it — he voted for it because he wanted to be collegial.
This is collegiality? Can anyone picture a “progressive” bishop voting against C056 because he or she wanted to be collegial? I can’t imagine this ever happening.
This church deserves whatever it gets.
Also, it took until for all bishops to support ordaining women, because that is how long it took ECUSA to either get rid of the ones opposed, or make it so untenable that they left.
That’s not “progress”. That’s domination.
Randy (#2),
I had much the same instantaneous reaction to +Charles Jenkins’ strange justification for his Yes vote on C056. By going along to get along, he was placing more value on the institutional process (or being collegial) than on the theological substance of the issue. Sad, very sad. After all, re’s retiring soon, so why does he need to worry about staying on good terms with his colleagues in the HoB?
David Handy+
A superb line from Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” when Norfolk asks Thomas More to affirm the succession “for fellowship’s sake.”
More: And when you go to heaven for following your conscience and I go to hell for not following mine- will you come with me then…”for fellowship’s sake”?
Brilliant, Anastasios (#4). A perfect response. I [b]love[/b] that wonderful movie.
David Handy+
I was a delegate at the diocesan convention that elected +Jenkins. I did not vote for him them, and this action reconfirms that my vote for one of the other candidates was correct.
[blockquote] The Rt. Rev. Charles Jenkins, Bishop of Louisiana, said he voted for C056 because his colleagues had responded well to his plea for graciousness.
“I felt I was honor-bound to vote for it because these bishops had done what I had asked them to do,†he said. “I felt that the process was a ray of hope for The Episcopal Church.†[/blockquote]
Bishop Jenkins seems to me to have reduced the whole matter to his own sense of personal obligation to the other bishops. This is perhaps understandable on a purely individual level but not, I think, the substance of firm Christian leadership that ought to govern a bishop’s actions.