After two emotional days of debate on women bishops, Synod members’ reactions ranged from joy to deep disappointment.
Owing to the number of amendÂments to the draft legislation, its reÂvision stage was a long haul last weekÂend. But every bid to give opponents bishops with their own jurisdiction ”” even “co-ordinate”, as proposed by the two Archbishops ”” fell.
Though supported by a majority of Synod members, the Archbishops’ amendment lost by five votes among the Clergy when a vote by Houses was required. An amendment for hardÂship provision for clergy resigning office also fell. Traditionalists are left with a code of practice (as yet unseen), which they have repeatedly said “will not do”.
Writing to his clergy, however, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, said that it was “emphatically not true to say that the Measure as it stands contains no provisions”. But he recognised there was anxiety among traditionalists because the contents of the code had not yet been worked out.
The entire process is byzantine to the point of parody. And to what end? Will endless committee meetings and revues and votes and reviews of votes and processing of alternative amendments and votes thereon – will that change the outcome a jot (or a tittle)? Not a bit of it.
This involuted machinery and its cause should suggest to all who see it as a common as dirt power struggle that it is time for the CofE to close up shop, for it has failed to maintain its definition and so has lost its identity. Walk away. Or as someone else said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” He knew something about this matter.
NRA has said again and again that we need a renewal or revitalization or an old approach, a reestablishment of self discipline and standards without which no identity can ever be more than a passing fancy. He has never specified how this is to be undertaken, as far as I know, but we have ACNA as an initial mold, young enough so it can be poured into new molds without compromising its essential matrix.
Several things can be done by those who have the will: 1. Christianity as a soft, warm and fuzzy substitute for courage and independence should be washed clean from the church’s fabric. It’s time for “love” to mean something much tougher and more honest than gushing sentimentality and bathos. Christ was and is not a wimp with pale skin, soft hands, and a Breck shampoo. We know why he came, and we need to say it in hard words, and our attitude should be, “If you don’t like it, that’s too bad; go somewhere else. ” We either set and keep standards or we don’t deserve to exist.
2. Accordingly, Christianity is not a religion designed for women; it is not Rule By The Altar Guild.
3. Enough of the “Judge not that he be not judged” business that is taken to mean that no Christian should ever render judgments about the behavior of others. Christ judged constantly and he did not hesitate to condemn. By his own rule, if we judge rightly the “log” in our own eye, we may judge the mote in others. Consider that the RC’s and the pope would never have done anything about their own corruption if the world had not sat in judgment and condemned roundly.
Rendering sound judgment requires courage – which we consistently lack, which explains why we can never reach a decision and why the committees and meetings are interminable. Rendering sound judgment and punishing because you like punishing are not the same thing, and this is surely what Christ was talking about. A church which rolls its eyes and forgives everyone everything isn’t Christian, its merely spineless.
Face it, for Heaven’s sake, there are people you don’t want in the church just as there are weeds you don’t want in your garden. You don’t forgive the weeds, you pull them. Would Christ pull a weed? Remember the fig tree.
Ah well, this is all pointless, for Anglicans chatter like the Bandarlog and are as inconstant and vacillating, the blog before blogs existed. No wonder Mowgli and the other animals despised them. Rowan Williams is the archetypal Anglican. well meaning, weak, ambivalent, and toothless, a perfect flag for shifting winds. What will it take to find an Anglican who will act? Must we go to Africa? Running to the Tiber is simply another piece of cowardice, an admission that you want someone else to make your decisions for you. The churches that have bailed put from TEC have yet to stand up and say in hard words the kind of contempt they should have for Schori et al. That’s right: Render a judgment and say it clearly. Say it: Dirty hands don’t wash dishes clean. We want nothing to do with you.
By the bye, the above is not an admonition to stifle dissent or doubt. The is a hell of a big difference between rational dissent, which seeks to remedy – that is, pull weeds – and fanatical dissent – the attempt by the weeds to take over the garden. But first, before all else, the Anglicans have to admit that there is such a thing as a weed. Larry