From David Ignatius in the Washington Post:
Investors keep pounding Europe in part because they don’t yet see the mechanisms that will enforce discipline. The European Union just established a trillion-dollar bailout fund, but what happens when it runs out? There’s a pledge to impose strict conditions on Greece, Portugal and the rest in exchange for loans, but it still isn’t clear how Brussels will make this austerity regime work.
The problem is the one Napolitano describes: Europe remains a union of convenience, which can be discarded by national governments when it suits their purpose. Northern European nations such as Germany like to chide their spendthrift southern counterparts for lack of discipline. But it was Germany and France that demonstrated the toothlessness of the eurozone’s enforcement mechanisms in 2005 by refusing to pay fines when their budget deficits exceeded the limits of the E.U. Stability and Growth Pact.
There are very useful parallels here for Anglicans for those who have eyes to see–KSH.
Hmmm I guess I can see some parallels. Greece is financially bankrupt and TEO is spiritually bankrupt. Greece is endangering the entire Euro-Zone and TEO is endangering the Anglican Communion…
Yep. There are some similarities.
Isn’t this the kind of environment that the little anti-christ, Hitler, stepped into?
Don
Kendall, I think you’re right. And the lack of disciplinary mechanisms is one of those disturbing but illuminating parallels.
Here are some others (IMHO):
1. [i]”Europeans must finally accept that union ‘implies a partial transfer of national sovereignty.'”[/i] In the same way, Anglicans must finally acknowledge that a true worldwide communion implies a partial relinquishment of provinical autonomy. But I see little readiness to accept that yet among Anglican leaders, even in the Global South.
2. David Ignatius’ op ed piece ominously concludes that there is a fundamental conflict between “the dictates of economics and politics” in Europe. Similarly, I’d say that the AC is being torn apart because there is a fundamental conflict between the dictates of sound theology and “politics” in the sense that the cultural mainstream in the Global North is heading in an amoral/immoral relativist direction that’s flagrantly contrary to Scripture and Tradition. Ignatius worries that the stern economic policies that are necessary to solve the problems the euro faces may be politically impossible to achieve. I suspect that the same is true in Anglicanism, at least in the spiritually weak, post-Christendom Global North.
However, there is a crucial difference that renders the parallels less than exact. At least the necessary economic mechanisms theoretically exist in Europe, if its leaders only summon the courage to employ them. Sadly, the same isn’t true in Anglicanism. We’ll have to CREATE the necessary international mechanisms (in church teaching and polity) for effectively putting the Doctrine and Discipline back in the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of Anglicanism worldwide.
Thus, sadly, I think the Anglican Communion is even less likely to weather this storm than the European common currency system. Anglicanism itself (as a distinctive, prayerbook-based style of Christiantiy) will survive and thrive, but not the AC.
David Handy+