All seems oddly quiet on this day when Canon Mary Glasspool will be ordained and consecrated at a Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles. Yet the consequences may well be graver than ensued after the Bishop of New Hampshire was consecrated in 2003. Then it could be said with some plausibility that no one in TEC realized what a fuss would emerge. No one is in any doubt this time. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it clear that there will be consequences for TEC in its relationship with the Communion and there will be consequences within the Communion.
I read this morning an interview in the Baltimore Sun with Canon Glasspool which includes a short video. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/anne-arundel/bs-md-glasspool-bishop-consecration-20100507,0,73
A number of points were raised which invite comment….
“I would love to sit them both down with the Archbishop of Canterbury for a chat about ecclesiology. Indeed I would like to hear some explanation about why a Communion is not a Church and why a Church cannot be a Communion. There was also some mention that the Episcopal Church is growing in its self-understanding, as if it were a patient undergoing therapy”.
Strong words from Fr. Clavier, whom I don’t usually find this direct(no fault in either).
You could sit the two of them down with the AB of C, but, of course, the two of them would not listen, despite all the faux talk re: “the listening process”…or, they might listen, and then run off and do what they want, anyway.
Were I the therapist in the picture, I surely would not say that TEC was growing in its self-understanding; I’d say instead that it was living into all of its narcissism.
The correct link for the video is found [url=http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/anne-arundel/bs-md-glasspool-bishop-consecration-20100507,0,730992.story]here[/url].
TEC indeed “grows in its self-understanding” as it grows in its differentiation from the remainder of the universal Church in time and space. It is much easier to define oneself on the basis of over-and-against exceptionalism. And, given the diminishing numbers, one should expect to see an even more homogenizing ideology of self in days ahead.
Perhaps when all the “bishops” are homosexual it will be more homogenized or should that be fully homogenized? To be more self-centred and unilateralist is hard to imagine since it styles its operations as the communion of the episcopal “church”, but once the restraining hand of the Holy Spirit has been removed, as it has, all bets are off.
It’s interesting to see the moderate-leaning-right institutionalists making noise about this.
I don’t see anything new, personally, from 2003.
RE: “TEC may cling to the hope that the support it gets from Canada, perhaps New Zealand, Brazil, perhaps Mexico and some parts of its own mini-Communion, and from individuals in Western churches may prove strong enough to deter anything more than a vague wrist slap.”
Oh I think they can depend on not receiving any kind of even vague wrist slap and it has nothing to do with any kind of support from the other liberal shrinking provinces, and everything to do with the fact that the current head of the Communion has decided that he is willing to lose conservative provincial fellowship to keep TEC.
That’s fine — I don’t think there’s any question about what will not happen.
And that’s why there’s been so much silence from so many conservatives like me in TEC — I don’t see any difference between this consecration and what happened in 2003, and I understand that nothing will be done to TEC. What we will all have to watch and note is the continued division within the Anglican Communion as the traditional Provinces steadily — slowly but steadily — withdraw from active involvement.
That’s how it goes when a body does not discipline itself and set boundaries. Those who actually are Anglicans decide to “move on” from such bodies.
I agree.
I must put MLRI after my name in future. (grin) I am not a bit moderate about the cardinal doctrines of the Faith. I am patient with its institutions, for Anglicanism at its most pastoral is patient and gentle; although I have never been a particularly reliable “institutionalist”. Anglicanism is no place for those who uncritically adore all that it is, for it is an untidy and often wrong-headed part of the Body of Christ, the more so when its local manifestation has grown in on itself. As for “leaning”, that’s been the case since I broke my pelvis and now have one leg shorter than the other.
Like I said . . .
; > )