Look at the contributors and see if you notice a pattern
The present text was developed from the remarks of JSC members in New Orleans and in consultation with them.
In electronic correspondence, the following members of the Joint Standing Committee have signified their assent to this text:
♦ Phillip Aspinall, Primate of Australia, Primates’ Standing Committee
♦ Barry Morgan, Primate of Wales, Primates’ Standing Committee
♦ Katharine Jefferts Schori, Primate of The Episcopal Church, Primates’ Standing Committee
♦ John Paterson, Chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council and of the ACC Standing Committee
♦ George Koshy, Vice-Chair, ACC and Standing Committee
♦ Robert Fordham, ACC Standing Committee
♦ Kumara Illangasinghe, ACC Standing Committee
♦ James Tengatenga, ACC Standing Committee
♦ Nomfundo Walaza, ACC Standing Committee
Responses have not yet been received from:
♦ Mouneer Anis, Primate of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Primates’ Standing Committee
♦ Philippa Amable, ACC Standing Committee
♦ Jolly Babirukamu, ACC Standing Committee
♦ Elizabeth Paver, ACC Standing Committee
Update: Mouneer Anis is ‘incredibly disappointed and grieved’:
His response, which reached The Times a couple of hours after the JSC report was published, indicates perhaps that hopes of reconciliation remain as distant as ever, as the JSC itself appears from this document to fear they might. Archbishop Anis said this evening: ‘It is very unfortunate that not all the members of the Joint Standing Committee were present when a response to the HOB of TEC was drafted. The lack of discussion and interaction will not produce a report that expresses the view of the whole committee.’ He said the TEC response merely represented a ‘superficial shift’ from their previous position and refuted the JSC’s claim that there had been a change in position since 2003.
‘Therefore I strongly disagree with the report of the JSC which states that “We believe that the Episcopal Church has clarified all outstanding questions relating to their response to the questions directed explicitly to them, and on which clarifications were sought by the 30th of September, and given the necessary assurance sought of them.” The reasons for my disagreement are as follows:
‘On Public Rites for Blessing of Same-sex Unions
‘The statement of the House of Bishops in New Orleans did not meet the request of Windsor Report that the “Bishops must declare a moratorium on all such public rites”. It also failed to meet the request of the Primates at Dar El Salam that the Bishops should “make an unequivocal common covenant that the Bishops will not authorize any rites of blessing for same-sex unions in their Diocese.”
‘They did not declare a moratorium on authorization public rites of the blessing of same-sex unions. Instead the House of Bishops pledged not to authorize any public rites of blessing of same-sex unions. I understand moratorium as “cessation of activity”. In the explanatory discussion they mentioned that “the majority”, not all, of Bishops do not make allowances for the blessings of same-sex unions. This means that a number of Bishops will continue to make allowances for the blessing of same-sex unions. I see this as an equivocal and unclear response.
‘While the House of Bishop’s response means that ‘authorization’ of the rites will not take place, but it also stated that some will continue to ”explore and experience liturgies celebrating the blessing of same-sex unions”. The exploration of liturgies celebrating the blessing of same-sex unions, keeps a window to continue such blessings under another title !! This unashamedly disregards the standard teaching of the Anglican Communion which is still torn over this issue.
Update: Here is perhaps a better link for +Mouneer Anis’ commentary on the JSC report.
Question: Is ++Henry Orombi no longer a member of the Primates Standing Committee? I know he wasn’t in New Orleans, but I thought he was still a member of the Committee? Anyone know? Kendall?
Clearly, the fix was in.
“Look at the contributors and see if you notice a pattern”
Both sets of names include GS and “Northern/Western” names, no?
(Is +Tengatenga from Southern Africa or from Central Africa?)
Who appointed this committee?
Who has the last word on the adequacy, or otherwise, of TEc response?
This committee, or the Primates – as a body?
The word: over-acceptance.
The strongest conservative voices were not even heard from, much less listened to.
Big surprise.
The Standing Commitee report has to be issued to all Primates and all ACC members for consultation in the provinces before reporting to +Williams by the end of October. Therfore there was obviously a deadline (probably Oct 1) for responses by the SC members, which 4 members obviously failed, or chose not, to meet. They have obviously seen the report – if they choose to dissent from it, they will obviously say so. Right? If the report had to be passed by a two-thirds vote then it has done so – with GS voices (Ceylon, South India, Central Africa, Southern Africa). Those who failed to repond include England, as well as West Africa, Uganda, and Jerusalem & ME.
This rather quietly released document might just be the “fat lady” really warming up to sing.
Polity trumps Holy Scripture (in the ACC’s eyes). If they can make a political win – hold the majority, then they consider themselves as having won. They put their trust in horses and chariots and Egypt. God, I doubt, is much impressed. Stephen, the martyr, was also outvoted at his great homecomming. S. Peter was outvoted when he was in jail singing his hymns to God.
I shall not be impressed with their polity.
I am surprised to see Mouneer Anis signing on, after his adress to the HOB. Seems inconsistent.
Actually, it appears that ++Anis has not signed on. He has yet to respond. Let’s see how this plays out.
Jeff, he didn’t sign on. The committee published this report without receiving his response.
This is mostly a lie: politics at its worst, lobbyists and all.
#1,
I believe ++Orombi was elected to the JSC at the same time as the Presiding Bishop of TEC was this past February, see [url=http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/02/schori_triumphs.html] here. [/url] I guess whether he is still on the JSC is at question. Am unable to locate any resource indicating a departure.
Prayers for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the primates, the Anglican Consultative Council, Queen Elizabeth, and the whole Communion are being posted regularly at Lent & Beyond.
Kendall, perhaps you should consider an apology to Henry Parsley and the Birmingham News.
KJS is listed as the ‘Primate’ of the Episcopal Church: Isn’t she the Presiding Bishop? When did the shift occur and who voted on it?
Nadine
Bishop Tengatenga is from the Diocese of Southern Malawi in the Anglican Communion Province of Central Africa.
I know him personally and he is solidly orthodox.
The only thing I can think of is that he sleeps with the revisionists and therefore wakes up confused.
I find it totally inappropriate for The Presiding Bishop of the Episcoapl Church to have been an active participant and signatory to this document. There is an egregious conflict of interest and influence when a person who is the subject of the report sits in council with and as full participant in the discussions concerning this report.
Sorry, but it doesn’t pass the smell test.
So the other four folks are all don’t have their responses in yet because … ??????????
Interesting to note how the marginalization process works, isn’t it?
Kudos to PB Schori for not having the grace or wit to recuse herself so as to make this farce more seemly.
#15, do you read and digest reports and see if they are true and valid based on the evidence?
Is it clear that the other four have even seen this response?
Viamediator:
Please do not take this the wrong way, but as to your response at #17
Bishop Tengatenga is from the Diocese of Southern Malawi in the Anglican Communion Province of Central Africa.
I know him personally and he is solidly orthodox
How is it possible to be “solidly orthodox” and support a load of…cr….sh..drek like this? I must respectfully that good Bishop is less than orthodox or that he is a fool.
Perhaps you could impose upon your friendship for an explanation.
RSB
+Orombi was elected earlier this year as a member of the JSC, but was not in attendance in NOL. It seems he has not even been shown the report before its publication.
+Tengatenga is a supporter of the MCU – the modernist group in the Church of England which campaigns for WO, Gay Rights, Euthanasia, the Myth of God Incarnate, etc etc. http://www.modchurchunion.org/
There is an overwhelming stench of rotting gerrymander here.
20. dwstroudmd:
It has been suggested that sarcasm does not work for me. It is further suggested by some that sarcasm is not to be a christian response. Your post proves to me that sarcasm can work – very, very well. Your post embodies my very thoughts.
Now, if only I can get sarcasm to work so well for me….
Re #1 & 13: Only the members of the Joint Standing Committee who were present in New Orleans were requested to make this report. Since Abp. Orombi was not there, he was not asked to participate.
Re #6: I think you are precisely correct. The members of the Joint Standing Committee were asked to issue their assessment of their conversations with the HoB in time for the full group of Primates to consider the report. I’ll bet they were given a firm deadline of October 1. Most members of the Committee (69%) gave their assent by then. Apparently nobody formally indicated their disagreement. The four members who failed to respond at all by that date were listed as missing in action.
Re #19: The missing members missed the deadline for reasons personal to themselves. I would guess that the West African and Ugandan members tried to clear the report through their Primates, who expressed objections, leading to abstention. Bp. Anis probably opposed the report personally. I have no idea why the English member sat it out. We may eventually see a minority report.
Re #16: The title “Primate” was added to the title of the “Presiding Bishop” several General Conventions ago, primarily to clarify his right to attend the Primates’ Meeting. About the same time, the PB transitioned from being “Right Reverend” to “Most Reverend.” The metropolitical authority of the PB remains sharply curtailed by the TEC Constitution and Canons.
Re #4: The Joint Standing Committee consists of the members of the Standing Committee of the Primates’ Meeting and the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council. Each Standing Committee member is elected by the relevant Instrument of Communion. The Primates’ Meeting includes all of the Primates, including the American Presiding Bishop. The current PB was elected to the Standing Committee as a representative of this geographic region. If she declined to participate, the other provinces in this part of the world would be denied representation. Yes she has a stake in the outcome, but so does everybody else. The ACC members are elected by their own provinces according to a formula that grants the larger provinces more representatives than the smaller ones. In many cases, the Primate of a province also represents it on the ACC and that is increasingly the norm.
Like any other Standing Committee, the actions of this committee will be presented to the two parent bodies for action there. My suspicion is that a narrow majority of the ACC would probably ratify it, but that doesn’t matter because the Primates meet first. The vote there would probably be on the order of 21-17 (give or take a few moderate provinces either way) to reject the recommendations… and the HoB response.
The question then is what the majority of provinces will do, how the minority will react, and how the majority will treat the reaction as the Communion continues to unravel. As some comments above suggest, the next test of “orthodoxy” may not be how churches treat gay and lesbian persons, but how they treat TEC.
If those who failed to respond (why?) don’t agree with the report, all they have to do is say, “I don’t agree to this report”! We shall see. As for +Orombi, he refused to take part, despite being in the US, contributed nothing to the report, and yet people say he should have a vote!?
I know that a lot of you were pinning your hopes on the Dar-es-Salaam communique but that was a grave disappointment to me – especially in the light of the fact that ++Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected to the Standing Committee. It was always clear that the deadline of 30 September had no standing since there was no Primates Meeting scheduled. The tactic of the Anglican Communion bureaucracy is to keep all the participants in the Windsor Process separated in the hope that the disagreement will fade and die. Abhorrent though I personally find the consecrations of masses of ‘alternative’ bishops in the so-called TEC, I’m beginning to sympathise with the Ugandan, Nigerian and Kenyan Primates and understand why they found these measures to be necessary. We are all struggling against a dishonest bureaucracy.
First, I think it’s refreshing that a group would list who signs on to its statement and who does not. It’s a good lesson in honesty and transparency that could could be learned by some on the conservative side, be it the Common Cause-51 or the gathering in Kigali last year.
Second, it’s not troubling in any way that the JSC has decided to issue its report despite the fact that a minority of the group (less than a third) hasn’t responsed. The majority of the group — duly elected by two of the Instruments of Unity — has responded and [b] is unanimous in agreeing with the conclusions presented here. [/b] Archbishop Rowan made clear to the JSC — and publicly made clear that he did so — that he wanted a response back quickly. It’s been more than a week. If the Arcbishop of Abuja could respond in mere hours to the statement of the HoB, there’s not a reason in the world that people like the Primate of the Middle East could not have a response by now. Nine members of the JSC have responded, again, with all nine — including liberals, moderates, and conservatives — being unanimous. Four have not responded. Any real-world committee would consider it time to act in such circumstances, and we should be thankful that the JSC did.
Finally, as to the signature of the Primate of the Episcopal Church on this document, she was duly elected by her fellow primates with the full knowledge that participation in the JSC’s evaluation of TEC’s response to the Dar Es Salaam communique would be part of the work. Having her sign is no more, or less, a conflict of interest than her signing of the Dar Es Salaam communique itself. Still, though, one can take her name off of this and the results are still a unanimous 8-0 among those who did respond, with four people not responding. 2 out of every 3 members of the JSC responded, and each response was in agreement with the conclusion.
Day-by-day, it’s looking clearer and clearer that the ballgame is over for those seeking to sow schism (aka “realignment”) in the Anglican Communion. The JSC has spoken and said TEC has satisfied the Primates’ request. A majority of the Primates who have thus far spoken have said the same. One would expect a similar response from the Archbishop of Canterbury very soon. The mainstream of the Communion has decided that TEC is walking together in communal life of Anglicanism. The question now seems whether that handful of less-than-six TEC dioceses and less-than-six Provinces who seem bent on schism no matter what will decide to begin walking apart formally from TEC, Canterbury, and the majority of the Communion. I have my doubts that they will. Perhaps a handful will skip Lambeth, which will be a shame, but the light will be left on for them to return when they are ready. Meanwhile, the mission of the Church will continue.
I think the real question is not whether the text approved at the HOB meeting complies with the primates’ requests. At the very least it comes close in wording and would be acceptable if accompanied by the requisite intent and good faith.
The real question will be whether reevaluation is in order when (1) SSBs continue unabated without the local bishop withdrawing his implicit authorization of them and approval of their existence, and (2) when GC 2009 revokes B033 and authorizes SSBs. Then the facts and actions will conflict with the primates’ requests (and Windsor). At that point the AC must do something straightforward or put what little credibility it retains through the chipper.
SanderD, you can bet that a majority of the Anglican Communion’s membership will walk if nothing changes. What’s left will be an archipelago of little provinces sprinkled around the globe and the liberal ones slowly but surely shrinking.
[i]The JSC has spoken and said TEC has satisfied the Primates’ request.[/i]
Now let’s hear what the Primates actually think of the Report.
RE: “Day-by-day, it’s looking clearer and clearer that the ballgame is over for those seeking to sow schism (aka “realignment”) in the Anglican Communion. The JSC has spoken and said TEC has satisfied the Primates’ request. A majority of the Primates who have thus far spoken have said the same.”
[giggle]
So says the ECUSA national progressive. ; > ) Rather self-serving, yes?
Further . . .
Just a little reminder . . .
“The [ACC] has spoken and said TEC [should not consecrate Robinson]. [The Primates meeting spoke and said TEC should not consecrate Robinson. The ABC spoke and said TEC should not consecrate Robinson. The Lambeth meeting spoke and said TEC should not consecrate non-celibate homosexuals.]
And what did TEC say? “The dialogue continues — this is but one step in the process.”
And so . . . as a reasserter, in response to progressive calls to fold and triumphalist cries of early victory, I say . . . [drum roll] “The dialogue continues — this is but one step in the process.”
We’ve learned a lot from progressives. ; > )
And we have folks like SanderD to thank for that.
Thank you SanderD, for teaching us reasserters so, so well.
Look at the contributors and see if you notice a pattern
Yes! They all are from countries that have electricity. Now Kendall+, if you are suggesting that orthodox christians do not know how to use computers/phones/faxes, then I think that should be seen as a mission opportunity. Or is it possible that this assertion that ‘the fix is in,’ without any proof, simply an attempt at riling up the sycophants? I’ll paraphrase what #21 said above: do you read and research reasons that people didn’t sign and see if they are true and valid based on the evidence? You should take his advice, he is usually pretty sound in his arguments.
I agree with Neal Michell about the Presiding Bishop’s actions, but that is but one part of this deeply flawed process that has a lot of questions to be answered about it.
How encourging for TEC! The only thing I get from the JSC report is that: The HoB have sufficiently clarified their positions for the primates and that if you are unlucky enough to find yourself orthodox in the TEC that you should only get the alternative oversight that the PB, HoB and TEC will dictate…I wonder if the ABC really sees this as an acceptable way forward in the current crisis? Seems rather Neville Chamberlain”ish” of him unless he is actually hinting his future vision for an Anglican Communion consisting of the remnants of the CoE, TEC, Canada and other like-minded provinces.
A final word is that we should be very careful in assuming that the four absentees, on the basis of their Province, would have disagreed with the conclusions of the report.
Philippa Amable from West Africa is a longtime and very dear friend and mission partner of the Episcopal Church who just recently spent nearly a week with a group of TEC bishops in Madrid focusing on mission. I would be surprised if anyone who knows Philippa would believe she would object to the conclusions presented here. She certainly signed the report to the Primates earlier this year finding that TEC had already complied with two of the three requests presented to it by the Windsor Report.
Jolly Babirukamu, similarly, has been a longtime friend of TEC, a member of the Anglican Peace and Justice Network that is convened by the ACO and chaired by TEC, and was a vociferous speaker at the ACC meeting in the summer of 2005 in opposition to cutting off all of the lifelines of communion between TEC and the Provinces that disagree with TEC. I would suspect that the reason Jolly did not respond to this is that the Anglican Peace and Justice Network is currently in the midst of its biennial meeting, in Burundi, well out of phone/blackberry connectivity.
I don’t know a great deal about Canon Elizabeth Paver in the Church of England, but like Philippa Amable, she signed the pre-Dar Es Salaam report that found that TEC — through B033 and the other actions of GC 2007 — had already satisfied two of the three requests in the Windsor Report.
The ONLY one of the four non-signers of this JSC document that I would feel confident in assuming to cast a vote against TEC would be the Primate of the Middle East.
So to Kendall’s request of trying to see whether a pattern can be discerned in those who responded vs. those who did not, the answer would have to be a fairly solid no.
The Anglican Communion News Service story of 18 Sept. 2007 [ACNS 4319] which states that members of the Joint Standing Committee have been invited to attend the HoB in New Orleans does not list Orombi as a member. Unless he has resigned, however, Orombi is on the JSC. A Feb. 21, 2007 letter [see Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa article [CAPA 070221-1 at http://www.anglicancommunion.org/provincialnews/capa/client/news/client_news_detail.cfm?naid=1049%5D is a copy of Archbishop Orombi’s letter to the Church of Uganda in which he thanks readers for electing him to the Primates Standing Committee.
Members listed in the ACNS story are as follows:
Primates Standing Committee
Chair:
Archbishop Rowan William – England
Members:
Archbishop Philip Aspinall – Australia
Bishop Mouneer Anis – Jerusalem and the Middle East
Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori – TEC
Archbishop Barry Morgan – Wales
ACC Standing Committee
Chair:
Bishop John Paterson – Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia
Vice Chair:
Professor George Koshy – South India
Members:
Mrs Philippa Amable – West Africa
Mrs Jolly Babirukamu – Uganda
Mr Robert Fordham – Australia
Bishop Kumara Illangasinghe – Ceylon
Canon Elizabeth Paver – England
Bishop James Tengatenga – Central Africa
Ms Nomfundo Walaza – Southern Africa
The good news is . . . “This is but one step in the process.â€
I’m sure that the “dialogue” will continue.
#37 so if that is the case then why not wait to get the feedback from every committee member?
Back in the days of seige warfare, it was an occasional practice to load on to catapults the bodies of a poor souls who had died from the plague and fling them into the fortress of the opponent.
I believe the JSC has just flung the corpse into the Anglican Communion.
The *orthodox* Episcopalians will get exactly as much pastoral oversight from Schori as her *Orthodox* mother got; none. If you want a funeral with a believing cleric, get it arranged for in writing before you need it.
#37. I think a remarkable pattern can be detected in the membership of this group. It seems that almost all are, in your words, “a longtime friend of TEC”.
It does not surprise me.
if that is the case then why not wait to get the feedback from every committee member?
I think the obvious answer to this is the critical nature of the document. TEC was given until 9/30 to respond to the Primates. They made their response. The JSC was there and should bhave published this by end of day 9/30. That they did not implies that they tried to contact everyone.
if that is the case then why not wait to get the feedback from every committee member?
I may have written too fast. It could also be to completely silence the orthodox christians who have absolutely no electricity or means of communication. Perhaps next time carrier pigeons should be used;)?
#29 SanderD
I am troubled, not only by +Katherine’s being a signatory, but also at her not having recused herself from the deliberations. Any lawyer knows that duly elected judges who have some conflict of interest in a matter must recuse his or herself from hearing the case. The same for attorneys. Her very presence in the room and at the table as an equal member of that discussion process would make it much more difficult for certain members to speak freely and simply taints the process.
No, this is not sour grapes because the response that I wanted was not given. As Kendall has pointed out, it is part and parcel of the whole process. Instead of outlining a procedure for the orderly consideration of these issues, the whole process has been marked by:
–spur-of-the-moment procedural changes (‘to invite or to disinvite’),
–inconsistent procedural expectations (‘the primates issued the Communique, now the primates and and Joint Standing Committee will weigh in’ but ‘no meeting of the primates has been scheduled’),
–deconstruction of language (‘public rites are not authorised’ but ‘privately authorized public rites will continue’).
Not only must the process BE fair; it must also APPEAR TO BE fair. Sorry, but the process has lost any semblance of appearing to be fair that it undermines the confidence of many people in the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury and of confidence in the Communion.
++Orambi declined to attend because he does not think it appropriate that one primate should be involved in the decisions of the province of another. That was his statement. It is my understanding that every JSC member elected at the Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam also had an alternate elected. Schori’s alternate should have been the one to attend and to vote.
It is perplexing to read complaints about process from folks who were silent after the bizarre shenanigans at Dromantine and Dar es Salaam, to hear questions of authorship coming from supporters of the Global South Primates who have a habit of affixing people’s signatures to documents which they have not read, and to read calls for recusal from people who were silent about Drexel Gomez’s participation at the consecration of Atwood, et. al. while serving as chair of the covenant design group.
“Recuse?” Is this a trial of TEC’s HoBs? Is there a judge and jury? Whose prosecuting? Whose representing the defense? Gosh – I thought this was a process whereby the leaders of a Christian communion are seeking to understand and assess the words and actions of their fellow brothers and sisters who share in the Body of Christ! If this is to be treated as a pseudo legal proceeding the Communion truly is lost.
Look, it would be good if some of you would begin to pay attention. This is hardball politics. The report was rushed out deliberately to get it into the public arena BEFORE the capa leadership meeting going on right now finished.
49. C.B.:
Yes, it is a trial. The jury is trying to answer the question: Shall TEC remain a part of the Anglican Communion? TEC is not giving them hardly any opportunity to answer in the affirmative. This little sand-in-the-gears is just one more problem.
I think that the idea that ++Katharine should have ‘recused’ herself is a legitimate ethical question. But I also think it is purely academic. The question is more pragmatic: what undue influence, if any, did ++Katharine have in the authoring of this recommendation to the ABC. The reason I use undue is that she necessarily had to have influence by virtue of her being the Primate of the Province responding to the Primates requests.
51 – That’s why you keep getting blind sided and are unable to properly assess the Primates and the ABC words and actions. GS wants to cast it as a trial. It’s not! GS wants TEC to have committed a crime. But the ABC and other Primates do not see it in those terms. You will not get the response from the Primates and the ABC you are seeking, because your basic assumption as to what TEC has “done” is wrong.
SanderD,
Your notes are always very informative — I know I have especially appreciated your thoughts on the development of the Liturgy (and for that reason I lay aside your grumpy thoughts on grammar last week).
I appreciate you disclosing the fact that both Mrs. Philippa Amable of West Africa and Mrs. Jolly Babirukamu of Uganda are “friendly” with TEC and are therefore conflicted and will not render judgment impartially.
Also, you write above “First, I think it’s refreshing that a group would list who signs on to its statement and who does not…” although you then use this as an opportunity to slam those whom you disagree with. I agree with you that groups should disclose who signs the statements and who does not. I deeply wish the HOB had used a formal voice vote or other means for recording its votes in NO.
Moreover, I would like to up the ante a little — I’d love to know who actually wrote the JCS statement (and when the first draft was circulated).
#48, Jim Naughton, I gather then that you agree that ++Katharine should have recused herself from work on this?
His response, which reached The Times a couple of hours after the JSC report was published, indicates perhaps that hopes of reconciliation remain as distant as ever, as the JSC itself appears from this document to fear they might. Archbishop Anis said this evening: ‘It is very unfortunate that not all the members of the Joint Standing Committee were present when a response to the HOB of TEC was drafted. The lack of discussion and interaction will not produce a report that expresses the view of the whole committee.’
OK. Now I get it. This is meant to be a joke. The reasserters are having some fun at our expense. ++Mouneer is able to respond to this news in “a couple of hours” but he can’t respond to the ORIGINAL document sent to him??????? Kendall posts unsubstantiated claims of a bizarre and flawed process and then closes comments. Reappraisers, we are being played here. These people can not possibly be serious.
So the “will of the majority” only works in the WIDER global Anglican Communion — not in the JSC process? Methinks you can’t have it both ways … nine members weighed in. Time to move on.
Kendall, #40, every committee does not need to operate by consensus. Majority vote — or in this case, super-majority vote — is a reasonable principle. Any committee that sets a date (9/30) for responses from its members to a communication — and then gets a supermajority (69% percent), [b] all of which hold the exact same conclusion [/b] — it is difficult to respect the intellectual honesty of suggestions that the process was somehow compromised because four persons — whose views we have no way of knowing — did not take time to respond by the Committee’s internal deadline. Just last week, you criticized the HoB for operating by “consensus” rather than recorded vote in adopting the statement of the House. Even if I granted that all four absences in the JSC’s final vote are “no’s,” that’s still a 69% supermajority in favor of assessing that TEC has responsed adequately to the Primates’ questions. (It’s very striking that of the members who did respond, several of the signers of this document would have to be judged — by any semi-aware observer — to be quite a bit more conservative than at least 2 of the 4 who did not sign, so like I said above, I don’t concede that all 4 would have been NO votes. Even if they were, though, a 69% supermajority is dispositive by any reasonable standard.)
Given all of the charmingly legalistic language used by critics of TEC above (“recuse,” “any good lawyer knows” etc.), it should seem that a baseline modicum of fairness should govern the speed of the Committee’s response. If 9/30 was a deadline, as so many conservatives insist it was, then TEC deserves a response back immediately after that as to how it did. This was the body asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury — the Communion’s Focus of Unity — to prepare such an assessment, and it has spoken with an overwhelming majority in agreement.
Neal, #46, as to recusals, I wonder if you would agree that the Archbishop of Nassau should recuse himself from the Covenant Design Group given his role in cross-boundary consecrations in explcit violation of the Windsor Report, which he helped produce. I actually don’t believe he should because I don’t believe any council in the Church of Christ should operate by the principles of a court of law. I trust each and every one of the 38 Primates — as well as the other duly serving officials of the Communion’s various Instruments of Unity — to execute their duties fairly and without bias as members of a Christian concillar community. Anyone unable to do that should not be a bishop or an alected member of an official Communion body. Should you like to make such an assessment of Bishop Katharine, feel free; I would never do so with respect to Bishop Gomez. Once again, the Primates of Bishop Katharine’s region who elected her to the Standing Committee knew that the JSC’s work in evaluating TEC’s response to the Primates’ questions would be part of the job. They elected her anyway. I think we ought to respect the Primates’ decision and trust the motives of all those involved.
To do otherwise, it seems to me, is a further symptom of the poisonous climate of deep distrust that is, more than anything else, at the heart of why it seems so hard for the Anglican Comunion to move forward together at the present moment.
It’s the old – I was traveling and didn’t have a laptop with me so I couldn’t respond excuse. On top of I didn’t know when the deadline was excuse. Which has to be the oldest excuse in the book.
You will remember it was the ABC who asked the JSC to attend NO with him.
You will remember Orombi took himself out of the process of taking part in the role the ABC created for the JSC.
As near as I can tell (I’m no expert on this), the Joint Standing Committee isn’t a judicial body, it’s more or less a political / legislative one.
I think a better analogy (albeit not a perfect one) might be, say, Sen. Lindsay Graham, who’s a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Here, the Ag Committee would be roughly analogous to the JSC: the former does “staff work†for the full Senate, whereas the latter does so for the Primates and the ACC.
We certainly wouldn’t expect Sen. Graham to recuse himself from voting in the Ag Committee on a farm bill, on grounds that the bill would affect South Carolina’s farmers. Nor would we expect recusal on grounds that he and his staff had a hand in writing the bill.
Quite the contrary: Kendall’s fellow South Carolinians would demand that Sen. Graham vigorously represent their interests, including aggressively pushing the bill both in committee and on the floor, and voting for its passage in both forums. Anyone who claimed he should do otherwise himself would seriously jeopardize his/her credibility.
By the same token, it’s naïve (IMHO) to think +KJS would recuse herself from voting on the JSC report. As Dale Rye points out, she was elected to represent the interests of the U.S. and other provinces. Her constituents presumably expect her to represent their interests.
Sure, one sub-constituency in the U.S. doesn’t like the way +KJS voted on the JSC report. But the anti-smoking lobby wouldn’t like it if Sen. Graham voted in favor of a bill that would benefit tobacco farmers.
SanderD – Thank you for saying quite eloquently what I attempted to say rather bluntly.
Unfortunately, I tend to think SteveatMI5 (#50) is on to something when he suggests that the timing of this was an attempt to beat and thus mute CAPA.
I can only hope and pray that leaders from other areas of the Anglican Communion — +Venables, +Gomez, +Chew, and other non-African Primates and leaders will speak out and stand with their African brethren once CAPA has spoken.
#56, yes, it is interesting, isn’t it, that the Primate of the Middle East has no problem whatsoever in responding in a timely fashion to press requests but does not respond to the JSC draft in the timeframe appointed? If these kinds of actions were not so self-parodying, I would perhaps take offense. I can only imagine that the Archbishop of Canterbury finds such behavior as silly and ultimately irrelevant as others do.
#54, please don’t put words in my mouth. I never said that Mrs. Amable and Mrs. Babirukamu were friendly with TEC and therefore could not be trusted to be impartial. I said that their friendship and mission partnership with TEC in the years since GC03– as well as their past public statements — give us some idea as to how they might come down on the questions addressed in this Communique. I don’t presume to claim that they would definitively come down with the 69% majority on this; I do, however, think that Kendall’s implication that there is a pattern of exclusion of voices critical to TEC is rendered pretty hollow by an even cursory examination of the prior records of the four non-voters.
Dear Jim (#48),
For the record, I was troubled by +Drexel’s attendance at the consecration of +Bill Atwood. I have long gone on record as being opposed to the incursions that are based upon theological grounds but in favor of African Archbishops appointing missionary bishops for their immigrant congregations in the United States. That may seem inconsistent, but it is based on a more Celtic model of missional necessity.
As for the other concerns you addressed, that is too wide a swath for me to comment on regarding the specifics. I would say that the reasserters do not have a corner on bizarre shenanigans and would encourage you to put those rocks back in your pocket, as those whom you argue on behalf of in this instance, are not without sin. There are enough rocks to go around for everyone to have target practice.
Sander, #64, your comment assumes +Anis received the JSC report and delayed his response. It’s not clear to me from his remarks that he ever saw it to begin with.
Since the JSC was, in fact, rendering a judgment or appraisal of the response of the House of Bishops, it was, in fact, acting as a board of judges.
Since it was acting as a board of judges, any member with a conflict of interest, i.e., Jefferts Schori, should have recused themselves, for precisely the same reasons judges and lawyers do in certain cases.
The Covenant Design Committee is not rendering any kind of judgment for or against anyone, so there is no reason for anyone to recuse themselves from that.
To compare the JSC to the Covenant Design Committee is to compare apples to oranges.
#56, BfT19, this is the portion of “read it all” you missed and failed to quote from:
[blockquote]Archbishop Anis is among those most offended. He is said to be ‘incredibly disappointed and grieved.’ Apparently, the JSC sent out their draft report while Bishop Mouneer was in Syria and Lebanon with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Upon his arrival back, he asked for two days in order to study the draft before responding. By the time he responded, they had already published their official report.
His response, which reached The Times a couple of hours after the JSC report was published, indicates perhaps that hopes of reconciliation remain as distant as ever…[/blockquote]
Since the JSC was, in fact, rendering a judgment or appraisal of the response of the House of Bishops, it was, in fact, acting as a board of judges.
Since it was acting as a board of judges, any member with a conflict of interest, i.e., Jefferts Schori, should have recused themselves, for precisely the same reasons judges and lawyers do in certain cases.
Randy Muller is, in fact, rendering a judgment or appraisal of the JSC statement.
Since he is a reasserter and has an interest in opposing the conclusions of the report, I must say “Randy Muller, please recuse yourself.”
#48 is referring to the meeting when members of the subcommittee showed up to find their names on a report some of them had never even read.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!â€
Sir Walter Scott: Marmion. Introduction to Canto VI.
I see too much deceit and shall await the Primates’ own response that shows in their eyes who are the deceitful.
There are interesting and frightful times ahead. The JSC report settles nothing. I see many more tangled webs being spun before the TEC is left in or removed from the Anglican Communion!
Meantime us pewsitters in the TEC are in limbo, either praising or condemning our National and Diocsesan Leaders.
A pattern?
W-H-I-T-E folks from R-I-C-H country revisionist churches.
Perhaps no one else is qualified to do the job white.
Particularly when the job is a world-class W-H-I-T-E-W-A-S-H.
I pretty much agree with Mr. Toedt, #61, on the recusal issue. This does not seem to be a big deal.
I do think, however, that if this was to be a committee report, all the members of the committee should have had an opportunity to respond. For some, I guess, it’s just about power and then it’s time to move on.
I must add that the actions taken and not taken in NOLA better describe a bitter political campaign than a church gathering. Satan must be clapping his approval.
Again, – He doesn’t have a laptop??? He’s traveling with the ABC and doesn’t know the deadline??/ The JSC last week in their statement said that they would be getting the report to the ABC by the end of last week. He didn’t know that??? It’s not credible.
#70. I understand that the report in question had been “signed” by at least one of those who had never read it. I have this on very good authority.
William Sulik
I was trying not to say that ++Mouneer was being disingenuous so that he could use this as further point of division, but, as the quote says, he received the document. He knew it was coming. And now he wants to cry foul. It shouldn’t have taken that long to read and he probably knows what his own opinion is.
The recusal issue matters because this is supposed to be a Christian Church.
What it means to me…it gives the excuse the ABC needs to say everything is fine and the Communion will just toddle along. Unfortunately, his whistling past the graveyard will most likely NOT prevent those Primates unwilling to swallow this swill from pursuing their already stated belief traditional Anglicanism does not necessarily need Cantebury to survive. So in order to keep a highly vocal but incredibly small portion of the Communion happy, it certainly appears the ABC is willing to gamble on the great majority (in numbers of people rather than numbers of dollars) under his care leaving to continue their pursuit of the saving Gospel of our Lord over whatever it is the CoE and TEC et al are pursuing.
The process bypassed the agreement between Rowan and the Primates. There was no need to rush the report. The report was to go to the Primates who would then digest it and sift it as in Tanzania.
It is super clear that the ACO office intentionally set this up so the primates would be bypassed since at the last meeting the ACO office didnt get what they wanted.
#76, I have heard reports this afternoon that Canon Elizabeth Paver, one of the four who did not respond in time, has since responded and given her concurrence to the opinions of the other 9 who did respond.
Can anyone confirm this? I have not seen anything in writing yet. If this is correct, then the vote would ostensibly be 10-1 with two unknowns at this point.
As I read the comments above, especially those by SanderD and others of like mind, I find Jeffrey Steenson’s reasons for resigning his see and seeking to be received into the Roman Church more and more compelling.
There is a worm at the heart of Anglicanism – and that worm will ultimately be its destruction – if not in this generation then in the not too distant future. There is no authority in the Communion – there is no real Communion in the Communion – and there can be none as long as provinces believe they can act autonomously with no regard to other parts of the church – as long as Anglicanism insists that it is of the nature of the church to tolerate and accept as equally authoritative, contradictory views about the Trinity, the Second Person of the Trinity, the mission of the church, the nature of God’s revelation and the form it takes, the meaning of the moral law revealed in the Ten Commandments, and the meaning of “catholicity” and the church itself.
Anglicanism had its roots in the corrupt power politics and personal behavior of a despotic king, and was sustained by its close relationship to the authority of the state. It thus comes as no surprise that it uses the sleazy tactics of power politics to advance and solidify its position. Its bishops claim no authority save the authority to sue, intimidate, threaten, bluster, and posture. Its titular head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently believes he has no authority at all (save sending out invitations) and is incapable of exercising even a moral authority.
Given all this, given the less-than-glorious history of Anglicanism’s attempts to present a coherent theology to the world, why are we surprised when stacked committees like the Primates’ “Standing Committee” and the bureaucracy of the Anglican Consultative Council show themselves far more familiar with instruments of corruption and dishonesty than “instruments of unity”?
okifan18 [#78], the recusal argument seems to depend on a frame of people piously and passively waiting for a Holy Spirit-inspired consensus to arise. That’s highly unlikely to happen (it doesn’t even seem to have happened in Acts 15), especially given all the aggressive rhetoric and -action we’ve seen from +Akinola & Co. in the past couple of years. So “politics” is precisely what we should expect.
Sander
The Ann Coulter of orthodoxy, Ruth Gledhill, is reporting that Paver+ has replied:
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/10/tec-gone-far-en.html?cid=85000624#comments
O, D.C., your naivete about who is “politic”ing is refreshing. Obviously wrongheaded and so-last-century, but refreshing. I didn’t know Akinola was on the JSC. Who clued you in?
DC,
I was happy to listen to and basically agree with you, until you wrote “especially given all the aggressive rhetoric and -action we’ve seen from +Akinola & Co. in the past couple of years.”
Then for me all your good remarks went down the drain. Sorry.
Oldman [#86], I’m using the term “aggressive” in the sense of “non-passive.” Perhaps “muscular” would have been a better choice.
Surely you’re not denying that +Akinola & Co. have been aggressive / muscular in their rhetoric? And if consecrating missionary bishops to supervise separating parishes isn’t aggressive action, what do you think would qualify?
If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn’t disagree that bringing litigation against separating parishes is also aggressive / muscular action (albeit eminently justified and even necessary IMHO).
In taking a hard line on church-property disputes, ECUSA revisionist leaders love to prate about their FIDUCIARY DUTIES under the secular law of corporations and trusts. Let’s take a look at fiduciary duty. To underscore the point, let’s also look at law governing federal employees’ CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.
I trust most T19 readers will agree that Christians—in dealing with the church of Jesus Christ—should generally follow standards of conduct AT LEAST AS HIGH as those applicable in business corporations or government agencies.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
FIDUCIARY DUTY OF LOYALTY
Assume that:
— KJS is chief executive officer of ECUSA Corp. and is also a director of Lambeth Corp.
— Lambeth’s board of directors must decide whether ECUSA has breached its contract with Lambeth (and, if so, whether to take legal action against ECUSA).
KJS owes a duty of loyalty to ECUSA as well as Lambeth. Thus she cannot be an impartial judge of whether ECUSA has met its obligations to Lambeth. State corporation law disallows any vote she casts in ECUSA’s favor. The only votes that count are those of directors who have no ECUSA-related conflict of interest.
Traditional trust law can be even stricter: it may disqualify KJS from participating in ECUSA-related deliberations of Lambeth’s board.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
ETHICS-IN-GOVERNMENT ACT
Now for government ethics law. Under the law applicable to U.S. government officers and employees, KJS would commit a felony (and face a prison term of up to 5 years) by taking official action relating to ECUSA Corp’s contract. Official action includes making a recommendation and rendering advice.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=browse_usc&docid=Cite:+18USC208
The same analysis could apply to someone in an ECUSA-funded organization.
Christians should insist that their leaders follow ethical standards at least as high as those applicable to business corporations and government agencies. The clerical sex scandals of the past decade should remind us that Christian leaders need boundaries as much as anyone else.
KJS should have recused herself from considering ECUSA’s compliance with the primates’ demands. So should any officer, director, or employee of an organization funded by ECUSA.
Irenaeus [#88], by your corporate-board reasoning, no one who has publicly taken a position in respect of The Current Disputes could cast a vote; all such people would be required to recuse themselves. Do you seriously think that would be workable?
Demands for recusal seem to be faddish these days, not just here but in other walks of life: If you can’t get the decisionmaker(s) you want, proclaim that the one(s) you don’t like have got conflicts of interest, whether real or imagined, and demand that they recuse themselves. It gets to be a bit tiresome after a while.
A process this clearly flawed only makes worse the loss of trust in the Communion. The consequences of Rowan’s choice are going to be tragic.
If I were in Lambeth palace, I would be thinking hard about the fact that now you are losing lots of moderate conservatives like Neal Michell and Ed Salmon and others. This bodes very ill going foreward.
D.C. [#61]: The conflict-of-interest rules for congressional voting are somewhat looser than those for the rest of the federal government. Unlike executive branch officials, members of Congress can’t delegate their duties to a subordinate. This is why Congress votes on its own pay raises: there’s no one else to do it. If Sen. Graham were a farmer, there’s even a special rule allowing him to vote for farm programs and collect benefits under them.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
As a member of the JSC, KJS isn’t reviewing a report prepared by her staff (to use one of your examples); she’s sitting in judgment on herself.
D.C. I was not as upset about the aggressive part as the disrespectful a desrisive sounding “+Akinola and Co.” In the first place it should be, he is ++Akinola, being an Archbishop and Metropolitan of his province, and the “and Co.” is also a bit over the top.
I know in the heat of discussion, I and other reasserters also can be derisive when we say ++Kate for Bishop Schori. For me, I have tried not to do that, because I don’t want to stoop to such ways of treating her, despite having feelings for her much like you and other reappraisers have feelings for a variety of orthodox high clerics. I am trying to be better when posting and hope you will, too.
When we are furious over some part of a discussion, I suggest all of us do what my wife made our young sons do when they got in a shouting match or a fight. She gave them an uncooked egg and made them go to different areas of our place and toss the egg as hard as they could at the trunk of a tree. Usually, they came back with the unthrown egg while laughing like everything.
A process this clearly flawed only makes worse the loss of trust in the Communion.
It is this deep and worsening lack of trust that ought to have required this report to be as aboveboard as possible. Instead, it further damages trust. D.C., how is it right for KJS to sit on a panel deciding whether or not her church has adequately responded to something? Maybe I can get my boss to let me write my next job performance review.
D.C. [#89]: Not at all. Take another look at my comment #88. The reasoning doesn’t depend on past positions.
The real fad of the past decade has been to disregard salutary conflicts-of-interest rules. Think Tom DeLay. Think Enron.
#57 Susan – for once I agree with you! It IS time to move on…
Oldman [#92], personally I use one plus sign for any bishop (e.g., +Akinola, +KJS, +Rowan), inasmuch as archbishop is not a separate order, at least not in the Anglican world. All tastes are tastes ….
I don’t see the use of “++Kate” as being disrespectful, which is the important thing. It seems like a convenient shorthand, on a par with +KJS. From what I’ve seen of +KJS on video and in her writings, I doubt she’d object to either one.
As for “& Co.” being over the top, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Sherri [#93], the permanent members of the UN Security Council have been known to veto proposed resolutions that criticize them or would adversely affect their perceived interests. They certainly don’t recuse themselves because of a conflict of interest. I see the JSC situation as roughly analogous to that. +KJS was perfectly within her and TEC’s rights to vote on the JSC report; I would have been greatly disappointed if she had recused herself.
RE: “yes, it is interesting, isn’t it, that the Primate of the Middle East has no problem whatsoever in responding in a timely fashion to press requests but does not respond to the JSC draft in the timeframe appointed?”
Careful . . . a little venom leaking out there.
; > )
The report needs to be read on two levels. On the surface, it is fairly well written and reasoned. To an uninformed person it could well be persuasive.
The problem is that much of the theoretical discussion is counteracted by TEC’s actions and policies, which are mentioned only in the context of SSB’s. And note that the report says that SSB’s are and are not authorized in dioceses. Any value of the report disappears due to its failure to consider the full range of what is actually happening on the ground.
Finally, there is the ubiquitous mention of Lambeth 1.10’s call for the listening process. I noted 1.10 refers to “God’s transforming power.” So why has there been such a powerful campaign (in the US and Canada) to exclude all those (including clergy) whose faith has allowed them to change orientation and/or behavior through that very transforming power of God? And why has there been such resistance to reviewing recent studies about the origin and nature of homosexuality? Clearly, the fear is that widespread knowledge of those items will undercut support for the Integrity agenda, as people will no longer view gays and lesbians as helpless victims of some genetic accident. So I support the call for a conversation. But let’s have a real conversation this time, with everything on the table, not the phony, one-way monologue that has been going on since Lambeth ’98 and before.
DC, as you said and I will go along, “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
After all, as the say in my part of the world, differences of opinion are what sell bad land and sorry mules.
[i] [STRIKE]Prime Minister Chamberlain[/STRIKE] ABC descends from his plane, and walks to his waiting car.. Before entering, he holds aloft the JSC statement, saying[/i] “Representatives of the JSC and I have met with the Episcopal House of Bishops and Frau Bishop Jefferts-Schori. Their response to the Dar-es-Salaam Communique, affirmed by the JSC, means that we will have ‘Peace in our Time’. Praise the Lord.”
101. Charles Nightingale:
Now THAT works!
Since the JSC has now confirmed that TEC is in “compliance” with the request of the Dar Communique it means several things:
1) According to JSC TEC will not consecrate any more non-celibate homosexual/lesbian bishops. No more VGR’s. TEC has agreed to this. I’m confused as to why Integrity was so happy about this?
2) According to JSC TEC will not allow/approve any more public/private blessings/rites of same-sex unions/marriages. Not even those “pastoral provisions”, just as the Primates specifically requested. TEC has now agreed to this. Yet Integrity was delighted with the HOB, strange huh?
Even if you discount ++KJS’s vote, there’s still at least a 60% majority of those voting who are in favor of it.
In any case, does it matter? The Primates who are deeply involved in this matter weren’t going to be influenced by the JSC report no matter what it said. The Primates who are going to rely on this to form their opinion were never likely to vote TEC off the island in the first place. ++Akinola and the other GS Primates are hardly going to feel constrained from speaking out publicly for fear of contradicting the JSC. So what difference does it really make?
Did I read somewhere that +++Rowan was polling the Primates by phone to gather their reactions, or did I imagine that?
Re Charles Nightingale’s Chamberlain analogy in #101, replete with a reference to “Frau Bishop Jefferts-Schori”:
That’s just plain offensive, sir, to liken the PB to a Nazi… [rest of comment deleted. This part only left here for context and to allow us to issue a warning]
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[i][Nadine, it was you who did the comparing. The earlier comment did NOT mention Hitler. And in doing so you took the thread WAY off topic, Kendall has asked me to edit all comments with Nazi references. If commenters continue to offend, we will not hesitate to start suspending folks.] [/i]
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D. C., who are you calling an idiot!?
🙂
Seriously, I regret that I left that last post. All truth is not worth communicating. In a sense, I am as guilty as Nadine.
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[i]appreciation for Don’s regret. Please keep his words in mind. You all don’t have to publish everything you think about what other commenters have written. Some thoughts are better left private.[/i]
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Dr. Seitz and ACI – where are you?
We need your perspective, now more than ever!
+JLI
Charles Nightingale’s comment #101 […]likens the JSC whitewash to the self-deceptive Munich Accord. That is within the realm of fair comment.
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edited.
Ralph – 95, like you I agree with Susan – 57 – time to move along, but I would add – time to also move out……
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[i]Nadine, you are the one beating the Nazi issue to death on this thread. Please stop. Consider yourself warned. Next offense will lead to suspension[/i]
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[i]DC you too are warned. You keep repeating the same off-topic point ad nauseum. Stop.[/i]
Sooner or later these posts with so many comments begin to descend into personal name-calling and arguing over who meant what by whatever allusion. May I calls us back to the subject?
One thing I don’t think I saw mentioned (though I may have missed it) is that the JSC members who have written and signed on to the report to the Primates and the ABC were present at the HOB meeting. They had a chance to participate in some forthright conversation. They got the opportunity to observe the bishops working together (and they did, folks). They had the personal experience to bring to their report. They did not read a bunch of documents and then write their report. Surely that experience influenced the analysis and judgments that occur in the report. I think that their experience counts for something and I would not be surprised if it provided a larger framework and perspective in which they reached the conclusions they did.
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[i]Hallelujah. Thank you Bob for calling folks back to the topic at hand.[/i]
Come on, people, let’s not get sidetracked. [portion deleted]
That is a very apt historical illustration of what is going on in the Anglican Communion today. TEC, by word and deed, clearly has no intention of halting its sexuality agenda. The AC bureaucracy does not have the internal fortitude to stop it. The Primates demanded that TEC stop its agenda, and TEC gives what everyone knows to be a phoney and deceptive statement appearing to comply, even when evidence abounds that they are not complying. The JSC then trumpets this phoney statement as “Peace in our time.”
In any case, it doesn’t really matter if the liberals can rationalize this report to themselves. As Neal pointed out earlier, the process does not only have to BE fair, it has to APPEAR TO BE fair. In this case, neither qualification has been met. No matter which way you slice it, the JSC excluded the two GS primates from its report. One of those GS primates had asked for two days to review the report and was refused. The other GS primate had refused to even take part arguing that the JSC was going to do exactly what it did.
While all this is going on, we heard that some western liberal primates were threatening to boycott any primates’ meeting that would be called to discuss this.
So, let’s see…..Silence the GS primates (threat to boycot primates meeting) + Silence the GS primates (excluding the GS primates from the JSC report) = Western and American arrogance writ large. Rationalize it as you like, Sander et.al., but that is what the rest of the world will see.
IMHO, this little antic will most likely be a huge strategic blunder on the part of TEC and its liberal allies.
My goodness–such rhetoric, and one could argue it’s relevancy. Someone who knows, please help me out, here: doesn’t the real issue have to do with how “reasserters” and “reappraisers” deal with the HOB response–or perceived lack thereof–to the DAR request? What is the point of trying to convince someone that their particular way of understanding what the HOB wrote is the incorrect way? Isn’t this similar to how the factions deal with the Bible? Do you know anyone who has swung to the “other” side?
BTW, I echo Bp. Iker’s call for a word from the ACI, Dr. Seitz or Dr. Radner. I realize the JSC report was part of the liberal pincer strategy (along with the boycott threat), but what is their perspective on this? What dismayed me is that this JSC report showed just how little the liberals care for the future of the Anglican Communion as anything other then a small runt group of elite western liberal white men.
Bob from Boone, your observation is correct. Members of the JSC who produced this report not only observed the HOB but actually advised the HOB and wrote the HOB response. It would have been extemely difficult for the JSC to reject a response that they had carefully crafted themselves.
#114 Dee in Iowa, Agreed – been there, done that, got out, got sued, got freedom to follow the word of God.
I have followed this thread almost all day and posted a few times. It is now almost 11:30 PM my time as I write this off-line. Several conclusions:
1. TEC is gone! It is following a new agenda that I do not think is from the Lord through his Word in Scripture.
2. Let me remind everybody that it is not what we think, ++Jefforts Schori thinks, ++Peter Akinola thinks, but what GOD thinks.
3. All of us must be careful not to attribute to God our desires, but submit to His Will.
4. We are not talking about who controls “Congress’ but doing His, not ours or any agenda’s will.
5. Finally and good night. Kneel beside your beds and pray that He will show you, TEC, the Anglican Communion, the ABC, and all the Bishops and Archbishops what His Will is and forget all the agendas and submit to the only agenda: that of our Living Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen
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for Heaven’s sake! 124 posts! and what did you expect? This report is EXACTLY what you knew would be forthcoming. This doesn’t deserve anyone’s serious attention, and we post after post in infighting. Good show.
The report is power politics at its usual disreputable form. One can find more truth in The Enquirer, you all know that. The proper reaction is either yawn or a bout of nausea, depending on your personality and your digestive system. These people don’t represent the real world and they don’t represent Christianity, God knows. Larry
Nadine [#115]: Neville (“peace in our time”) Chamberlain personifies self-deceiving appeasers just as the Munich Accord exemplifies the folly of appeasement. This makes Chamberlain and Munich signficant rhetorical reference-points for charges of appeasement. It explains why critics of appeasement often liken present-day appeasers to Chamberlain without likening the other side to Hitler.
Consider this attack on Abp. Akinola, published last year in the Independent Gay Forum:
“The Western branches of the Communion can hardly allow themselves to be overrun by medieval obscurantism in the name of unity….The impulse toward compromise on the part of tolerant progressives is exploited by intolerant conservatives who have no interest in compromise. There is no reason why continuing a conversation should require unilateral concessions. The appeasement in Columbus was reminiscent of the signing of the Munich Agreement by Neville Chamberlain in 1938. The difference in this case is that the appeased aggressor won’t bother to sign a phony peace agreement.”
http://www.indegayforum.org/news/show/30997.html
The author accuses GC 2006 of appeasing Akinola in a Munich-style debacle, without equating Akinola to Hitler.
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[i] We’ll allow this because the “appeasement” metaphor is powerful and important and we hope commenters will accept that using such metaphors does not equate with demonizing and name calling as Nadine insisted it did. Charles Nightengale’s comment was provocative, surely, but there was no reason this thread should have become a shouting match about who called whom a Nazi, given that neither the word Nazi nor Hitler appeared in the original comment. Get a grip folks, and please focus all future comments on the content and issues raised by the JSC report. [b]Leave us elves to deal with any offenders who attack other commenters or make extreme statements, ok?[/b][/i]
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Two very quick observations.
First I think this report means very little. Substantially it changes nothing on the ground here in the United States and it will not be seen as legitimate by many of the primates.
Secondly, I recall a post over on Fr. Al Kimel’s (now sadly defunct) Pontifications by Fr. Stephen Freeman to the effect that in any com box discussion, things tend to start going down hill once you hit the number 50. The farther one gets beyond that magic number the less light shines forth. I don’t find much in the above thread that contradicts that observation.
The questions about who signed and who didn’t sign are all very interesting, as well as the discussions about conflict of interest, … [edited]
Regardless, the crucial issue here is that the JSC Report is a rather bald-faced lie. The requirements of Dar Es Salaam were quite clear, specifically:
That the HOB make itself clear that GC2006 meant that no bishop living in a same-sex relationship would be approved (not “exercise restraint”).
That the HOB make itself clear no same-sex blessings would take place, whether public or [i]private[/i].
That the Primatial Vicar scheme would be implemented–not another DEPO.
That lawsuits would cease.
Unless and until all these requirements were meant, [i]border crossings would continue[/i], with the approval of the Primates who agreed to DES.
The reappraisers understood this. I would ask the reappraisers to jog their memories to recall some of the rather vigorous opposition they offered to the DES Communique when it first come out.
None (I repeat, [i]None[/i]) of the above requirements were met at NO. And everyone knows this. Why then, the reappraisers are so happy about the JSC Report is baffling to me. Either, the reappraisers are thrilled that the HOB was given a pass on a blatant deception. Or, the HOB was not being deceptive, in which case the reappraisers are thrilled because the JSC is lying when it says that the HOB said something they did not say.
Or the reappraisers are thrilled because they are being portrayed as illiterates. All your vigorous opposition to DES back in February was based on a misreading? DES really didn’t ask for the things that you all were so upset about? And your rejoicing at KJS’s claims that she didn’t actually sign anything were misplaced?
Of course, the other possibility is that the JSC is just as blatantly dishonest as the HOB statement coming out of NO. And the reappraisers are thrilled either because they approve of the deception, or they are thrilled because all that matters is a Lambeth invite, and if deception is the necessary price for a ticket to Lambeth, it is an expensive price, but one worth paying.
And the sad thing is that the latter is the most plausible likelihood.
Archbishop Anis doesn’t take issue with the bits in the report which say that Primates who send bishops into another province without permission are completely out of order.
This is the issue on which conservatives are losing the unity argument. They have presented a cure which looks worse than the disease.
I want to hear from Sander and others on their defense of this process. In particular, no one has addressed the issue of the evaluating committee members making language changes to the very report which was to be independent of them and which they were asked to evaluate.
So a student comes in to take a make up exam and the teacher at his or her desk suggests possible wording changes in a discussion with the student, and then the teacher grades the exam?
Changing the subject to another meeting as Jim Naughton is trying to do will not work. This is about this meeting and this report. trying to focus only on the Presiding Bishops conflict of interest will not work (and I am not yet convinced by the attempted rebuttals).
let’s hear answers about what actually happened and the facts as they are documented.
All the kings horses and all the kings men could not put Humpty Dumpty back to gather again. I think the ship has sailed – the African Primates probably knew that the lefties would object to further incursions – hence the rash of Bishop making over the last two months. The Common Cause meeting has been held -Dioceses are prepaing the legal documents to decamp (I expect that vestrys are setting dates to meet to “decide” If saner heads prevail to keep the Communion together their will be be two American Provinces – if not their will be two AC’s. For those like me you do not believe that you can have catholicity between two gospels – exciting days lie ahead.
#26 Dale Rye, I would be interested in who you include in the 21 Primates you think might vote to oppose the JSC report. My starting point is with the following 13:
+Malongo, +Fidele, +Ernest, +Anis, +Nzimbi, +Akinola, +Kolini, +Venables, +Marona, +Mtetemela, +Orombi, +Akrofi, +Gomez
Kendall -Again, this is not an exam or a trial. It is a response to a communique in which the respondents are TRYING to “clarify” what they mean and intend. Recommendations on word changes are not in order to “pass a test,” but to help ensure that the message is clear to those to whom the message is being sent. The HoBs want to be clear, using language and words that will dispell ambiguity – It is quite helpful and appropriate for those who know the Primates the best, their representatives on the JSC, to direct them as to what words will best accomplish that without altering the meaning of what they are TRYING to communicate.
The antagonism and hostility found in the blogsphere should not be projected onto every function of the AC. It is a distortion of what is and what should be going on.
Kendall [#131], you’re asking for a defense of the JSC report-drafting process, but your request makes sense only if we view that process as a legalistic one, in which “judges” (the JSC members) must maintain an arms-length independence from the “accused” (TEC and its bishops) while rendering judgment in strict accordance with the “law” (purportedly, the DeS communique).
But there’s another way to view the report-drafting process: as a collaboration in which all concerned are working together to try to solve a problem, in a way that accommodates various interests as best as possible.
(Returning to my Senate analogy above: Sen. Graham might offer an amendment to the wording of a bill that, if accepted, would enable him to vote for it. That happens all the time.)
From this second perspective, it would make perfect sense for JSC members and the bishops to try to come to agreement about the wording of the HoB report. If this is what they did, we should commend them for it, not try to level dubious attacks on their impartiality.
Given the scripturalist outrage over dioceses’ bringing suit against secessionist parishes, you’d think the “scrips” [*] would be delighted to see a collaborative process at work instead of a legalistic one. You’ll forgive me for suspecting that these scrips only want collaboration when it’s convenient for them; when the results aren’t to their liking, suddenly they start excoriating the participants for alleged conflicts of interest.
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[*] The term “scripturalist” seems nicely to describe someone whose religious views are predicated on the preemptive authority of Scripture. Recently someone on a liberal blog, I forget where, pointed out that the so-called “traditionalists” don’t merit that title: they aren’t following any Anglican tradition, which is one of fallibilism, an open-minded willingness to reexamine settled views, no matter how useful they’ve been in the past, as new evidence is revealed to us.
Then why did the JSC members still find it necessary to characterize what the HoB meant and intended in words other than those the HoB statement used even after acceptance of JSC-recommended word changes. If a qualfication for being on the JSC evaluation team was to be in New Orleans with the U.S. bishops, why didn’t they ask Bishop Bruno and other U.S. bishops if what the JSC members are now writing and implying is what the bishops meant, and if so get them to go on record?
D.C. so just to be clear; you support a process whereby an evaluating committee meets with the chair of another group who is supposed to be producing an independent report? And that they can still evaluate it? This is not about your legal analogies, it is about due process and justice. I thought people such as yourself cared about such things–yes?
In helping ECUSA leaders develop and edit the House of Bishops resolution, JSC members:
(1) cast doubt on their own impartiality; and
(2) skewed the substance of what the House of Bishops did.
[I wrote this comment before reading DC’s #135. But you’ll see from the second half of this comment why DC errs in arguing that Kendall’s question makes sense only if we see the JSC as carrying out a narrow, “legalistic†function. JSC members’ coziness with ECUSA leaders changed ECUSA’s incentives to comply and skewed ECUSA’s conduct.]
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
1. IN ACTING AS CONSULTANTS, JSC MEMBERS CAST DOUBT ON THEIR IMPARTIALITY
Well-recognized norms of conduct for U.S. judges shed light on the impropriety of JSC members’ involvement in editing the HoB resolution. First, “a judge shall conduct all of the judge’s extra-judicial activities so that they do not…cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge.” Code of Judicial Conduct § 4A(1). Second, “a judge shall not…consult with an executive or legislative body or official except on matters concerning the law.” § 4C(1). Here JSC members advised ECUSA on how much it needed to do. http://www.abanet.org/cpr/mcjc/canon_4.html
In evaluating whether ECUSA has complied with the primates’ demands, the JSC performed a function akin to adjudication, albeit in a more informal context. The JSC was responsible for (1) applying a given set of standards (the primates’ demands) to the facts presented (ECUSA’s words and conduct) and (2) making a reasoned judgment about whether ECUSA had met the standards.
ECUSA subverted this process by recruiting JSC members to serve as compliance consultants. ECUSA thus ascertained from them how much it needed to say in order get a favorable JSC report? Asking “Exactly how much do we need to do?†is the same as asking “Exactly how little can we get away with?†In acting as compliance consultants, JSC members also acted as DEFIANCE CONSULTANTS and became parties to ECUSA’s recalcitrance.
ECUSA solicited JSC members’ suggestions and incorporated their comments. In so doing, it CO-OPTED them. JSC members, having advised ECUSA on exactly how much (i.e., how little) language would do, could hardly turn around and find ECUSA in defiance. The fix was in.
These dynamics cast doubt on JSC members’ capacity to impartially evaluate ECUSA’s conduct. Insofar as they were to criticize ECUSA as falling short of the primates’ demands, they would also be criticizing themselves.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
2. IN ACTING AS CONSULTANTS, JSC MEMBERS SKEWED ECUSA’S CONDUCT
JSC members’ consulting work posed problems that went well beyond process. It affected ECUSA’s INCENTIVES and the SUBSTANCE of what ECUSA did.
Let’s consider the hypothetical example of Impartial Judge and Cozy Judge. The primates have asked one of these two judges to decide whether you have complied with the primates’ demands. Both judges are very bright and astute. Both hold similar personal opinions. Both will carefully review your words and conduct, listen attentively to everything you have to say, ask penetrating questions, and attend the New Orleans HoB meeting.
The two judges differ in only one respect. Impartial Judge will maintain a neutral demeanor; you won’t be able to tell what she is thinking. But Cozy Judge will tell you exactly what he is thinking, advise you how much you need to do to comply, and even review and comment on proposed resolutions.
Think of how these two judges’ demeanor affects your INCENTIVES. If you want a favorable report, you’ll do MORE for Impartial Judge than for Cozy Judge. After all, you’re not sure how much compliance you’ll need to get a favorable report from Impartial Judge, and you don’t want to risk an adverse report. But with Cozy Judge you’ll know exactly how much (and how little) compliance you’ll need. You’ll have no incentive to do more.
JSC members’ coziness with ECUSA leaders fortified ECUSA in its defiance.
Re #133: I basically took the oft-repeated figure of 22 provinces in impaired or broken communion with TEC (hearsay reports of comments by local leaders in most cases, formal action by the provincial authorities in almost no cases) and reduced it by an arbitrary one, then qualified the whole thing by saying “give or take a few either way.” As you point out, there are 13 (again, give or take a few) who are strongly opposed to TEC actions. There are other provinces (Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Africa immediately come to mind) where the majority is more or less inclined to support TEC provincial autonomy.
The remainder are in the middle. Most of these provinces are far more concerned about the looming breakup of the Communion and its local effects than they are either for or against the homosexuality issue. I think that their Primates are going to vote in whatever way they think necessary to insure that their province will end up in the largest fragment possible if Anglicanism dissolves. There are more hardcore reasserter provinces than reappraiser provinces, so I suspect the fence-sitters will split so as to make the plurality a majority.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is obviously taking the role of a neutral, honest broker in all this. That is why he is being attacked by both sides. If he were to take sides, he would almost certainly draw most of the moderate Primates and provinces with him. However, the long-run cost of that would be to drive a number of provinces that took the opposite view out of the Communion. So long as he is hopeful of a deal that either keeps the whole operation together or limits the damage to the United States, he is going to keep playing his cards close to his chest. His first priority, after all, is to avoid the destruction of the Church of England, which will almost certainly happen if the Communion divides and propagates the schism down to the local level.
Kendall [#137], please re-read my #135, which spells out exactly what I support.
You contradict yourself when you say “[t]his is not about your legal analogies, it is about due process and justice.” The goal of the legal system is to produce justice; due process is a means to that end. But fine, I’ll switch to a different analogy: In business, there’s such a thing as a “process nerd,” someone who seemingly views process as an end in itself, instead of as a tool for getting things done. From what I’ve seen, such people seldom rise above mid-level management.
I reiterate my point: You seem to insist on viewing the process here as adversarial, Good vs. Evil. That’s a pity. Hard-liner liberals (some of whom are guilty of the same thing) will cite this as supposedly validating their antagonisms toward scripturalists; they’re likely to say, see, we told you, it’s impossible to work with these [pick your unflattering noun], nothing ever satisfies them.
D.C. I nowhere say it is adversarial, that is you projecting something that is not there. You are missing how independence is being sacrificed.
If this were turned around and different names were omitted and another province were involved, I find it difficult to believe reappraisers would not be up in arms.
I reiterate my point: the process whereby an indepdent report is produced for someone else should not include such direct involvement in the wording of the report if the evaluation and response is to be trusted and the report considered indepedent.
You have failed to answer this satisfactorily.
Kendall [#141], this is yet another area where we’ll have to agree to disagree whether I’ve given a “satisfactory” answer.
Re ##137 & 138: I don’t think the role of the JSC observer group was to act as a judge, but was more similar to the role of a mediator. Their explicit mission was to communicate the views of the Communion to the bishops and report the views of the bishops to the Communion and see if there was any way to work out the differences. There was no point in having them in New Orleans unless they were going to interact with the HoB. Otherwise they could just have stayed home and read the final documents that emerged from the meeting.
Of course they participated in the meeting. We know, for example, that Bp. Anis took a very strong position and expressed it in ways that were clearly intended to persuade the HoB to act in accordance with that position. Nobody has suggested that he should therefore have been forced to recuse himself from the JSC because he was not impartial. If the idea was for the HoB to bring itself into compliance with the Windsor and Dar es Salaam directives, it was clearly necessary to tell the House what would be acceptable and what would not.
Nobody on the reasserter side would be complaining if Bp. Anis had helped draft the HoB statement and had written the JSC report with minimal participation by members who disagreed with him. The objections to the process are entirely dependent on objection to its outcome.
Dale [#143]: Your suggestion that the JSC needed to “communicate the views of the Communion to the bishops” is silly. ECUSA has known “the views of the Communion” for months.
Participating in the meeting (e.g., by making a public statement of one’s own views on the issues) is different from making oneself a party to formulating ECUSA’s response.
Re #144: Again, I think the JSC group’s role was analogous to mediators, who draft settlement agreements every day.
“If the idea was for the HoB to bring itself into compliance with the Windsor and Dar es Salaam directives, it was clearly necessary to tell the House what would be acceptable and what would not.”
Dale, that is of course fine, but that is miles away from suggesting exact word changes in order to make it sufficient. And if that had happened, I would hope reasserters would have the integrity to say that isn’t at all a process which produces trust.
“There was no point in having them in New Orleans unless they were going to interact with the HoB” —#143
Whose decision was it that the JSC should go to New Orleans?
Re D.C.’s position: If a corresponding situation arose in business, and a court were evaluating, say, the extent a board was justified in relying on the report of a committee, the court would certainly take into account the kind of process considerations Kendall is raising concerning the committee’s activities. Process isn’t sufficient by itself (e.g., as a cover for malfeasance or deception), but if good process designed to avoid conflicts and improper influence is lacking, the results are quite properly going to be suspect. Also, in business, a board committee typically doesn’t act by members’ commenting individually on circulated documents without a meeting and the opportunity for an exchange and questions (the exception being action by unanimous consent, which typically isn’t used where there is controversy).
Re Dale’s #143 and 145, The JSC members wouldn’t have written the report they wrote, and we wouldn’t be having the same discussion, if the JSC had limited its role to that of a mediator. I do think that a big part of the problem was a lack of clarity in the conception of what the JSC was supposed to be doing, and +RW himself must bear some of the responsibility for this.
This in in addition to my point in #136 that even if one accepts that intervention in the process was occurring, the question remains why the JSC still found it necessary to justify the HoB’s position by attributing to it meaning not found in the HoB’s statement.
Reading through this discussion is painful. The process was not good, and not all the reasons were ACO reasons, TEC leadership made the meeting difficult for them and gave them a time crunch.
The fact that ACO is so tied to TEC monetarily means they should be extra careful to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Not only did they fail to do so, but they foolishly rushed the report out when there was absolutely no need to do so, and in so doing left off key names of significance to the global South.
Folks, you need to wake up. This action is part of a larger pattern in the communion of gestures that disrespect the Global South and cause them to lose trust. They are severely underrepresented in the leadership of the Communion.
The stench from this is quite bad.
Plus, Dale, if the JSC members were acting as mediators and the HoB was one party to the mediation, who was representing the other party?
Mike Watson [#148] makes excellent points about the circumstances under which a larger group (e.g., the primates or a board of directors) can justifiably rely on the work of a subgroup (e.g., the JSC or a board subcommittee).
Take the case of a corporate board of directors sued by shareholders for breaching its fiduciary duty of loyalty. The board can form a committee to evaluate a proposed settlement of the suit. But the directors accused of the alleged breach cannot serve on the committee or participate in its deliberations. If the accused directors were to participate on the committee, the board would need to be wary of the committee’s recommendations.
_ _ _ _ _ _
These well-settled rules reflect a larger COMMON-SENSE PRINCIPLE: if you are accused of misconduct, as a ECUSA has been, you should not sit as a judge on your own conduct (nor should you enlist the judges as conduct-consultants).
Common sense? Why use that? If you’ve got the $$$$$ to spread around, there’s no need to apply rules of fiduciary responsibility. And, of course, you can be your own judge.
Follow the money!
What we see here is a fundamental disagreement about what the function of the JSC group.
Most reasserters saw the JSC role as judges who would observe the meeting, make findings of fact on whether the outcome met the Primates’ requirements, and render judgment. By that standard, the group clearly failed: it participated in the meeting rather than simply observing, actively influenced the outcome rather than simply assessing it, and made a report praising a spirit of compromise rather than condemning a lack of repentance.
It is fairly clear that that is [b]not[/b] how the JSC group saw their role. They believed that the priority was holding the Communion together if at all possible. Consequently, they functioned as mediators trying to bring the TEC position around to one that they believed the large majority of the Communion could live with. As representatives of two of the Instruments of Communion sitting with a third (Abp. Rowan), they presumably think they know where the Communion’s “bottom line” lies. (They may be mistaken, but this is actually a pretty diverse group by no means dominated by reappraisers, so there is some possibility they are right.) As mediators, they then have to present the proposed settlement to the other party so that it can act. This they have now done.
I think that the group would assess its success or failure on how well they fulfilled this second role, not a role as neutral and impartial judges. The HoB action may or may not be acceptable to the four full Instruments of Unity and a majority of the 38 provinces that stand behind them. If it is not, the group will feel that it failed in its mission. If it is acceptable, the group will consider its efforts a success.
Assessing the JSC group’s performance against the first role is like basing an employment evaluation on one job description when the employee has actually been operating under another.
I keep reading in the comments that this was not a judicial sort of situation, that we’re all Christians together looking to find a path to reconciliation, this sort of warm fuzzy aura about the meeting and the documents issuing from it.
OK, I like teddy bears as much as the next guy, but if all that’s so, why do we have the pervasive Philadelphia-lawyer weasel wording in [b]all[/b] of TEC’s recent communications to the Communion on this subject? “Officially approved Rite”, “excercise restraint”, and so on and so on — the very disingenuousness that the Dar communique was intended to quash?
In other words, if this is not a courtroom sort of proceeding, why did TEC respond with something like a brief from a Mafia mouthpiece? (And, by the way, why did the financially-dependent DA help write the brief?)
All the persistent reiterations of good faith, reconciliation, and so on are just laughable to anyone who has been watching the antics of 815, the HoB, and their enablers and toadies in the ACO. As we say here in Vegas, five’ll getcha ten the Primates don’t buy it.
Re #153: It is a mistake to think the criticism of the process observed by the JSC members is dependent on any assumption they were acting as judges. They made a report to the ABC. The fact that their product is a report rather than an adjudication does not mean that the process by which they arrived at their conclusions should not be subject to scrutiny regarding, among other things:
• participation of persons having an interest warranting recusal,
• involvement of members in the production of what is being evaluated, and
• the process by which the report was produced, including whether or not members were afforded a meaningful opportunity to consider and debate its contents with each other rather than just respond to staff.
The argument that shortcomings along these lines can be excused or are not relevant because the members saw themselves as mediators has the flavor of after-the-fact rationalization. The members do not describe themselves as such in their report, nor do they refer in their report to any role of “actively influenc[ing] the outcome†or “presenting [a] proposed settlement to the other party.â€
The question of whether the HoB’s response is adequate is a question that can and should be assessed on its merits. But any weight given the JSC members’ conclusion on that question should take into account the flawed process.
Re #155: I completely agree that procedural issues may be relevant, but I think they go to the weight that should be given the report, not its admissibility. Many of the posters here are acting like anyone who has a stake in the outcome should be recused, with failure to recuse constituting grounds for regarding the whole enterprise as illegitimate. If that were the test, we would have to form a committee of non-Anglicans to run the Communion, since all of us–not just the North Americans–have a stake in it. My point is that criticizing the JSC group for not behaving like detached observers rather than as active participants is criticizing them for not being something they never intended to be.
Dale [#153]: I’d be very interested in your thoughts about two questions raised earlier:
— If the JSC members were acting as mediators and the HoB was one party to the mediation, who was representing the other party? (Mike Watson)
— Who decided that the JSC should attend the HoB meeting?
In reference to irenaeus’ second question:
Also: since the committee could not possibly have written the report, who wrote, where, and what was the process by which it was finalized and then its approval sought?
Dale: when was the JSC ever given the “role” you say they were given and by whom?
#156 Dale —
I find in the Dar Communiqué this paragraph:[blockquote]If the reassurances requested of the House of Bishops cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and this has consequences for the full participation of the Church in the life of the Communion. [/blockquote]
This states as clearly as possible in respectful diplomatic language that there exists a serious controversy between The Episcopal Church and the Communion, and that steps are necessary to resolve it.
Whether we like the semantics or not, essentially we have a “courtroom” situation; some entity somewhere will have to decide whether TEC has complied or not. In a dispute between an individual and society, we have a judge making that decision, with the help of attorneys and experts. The JSC presents itself in a role analogous to, say, a psychiatrist who has evaluated the defendant to report on whether he should be released into society.
What you seem to be saying is that if the psychiatrist coached the defendant in his responses on the psychological tests, that should not invalidate the report but rather be taken into account by the judge in assigning it weight in his decision. But this leaves the judge without an objective report; the psychiatrist’s report is no longer what it purports to be. (And of course if we then learn that the psychiatrist had been having a love affair with the defendant, that would also affect judgment of the report’s weight. But that’s a separate issue…)
So recusal or no, the Communion at this point lacks an objective analysis of our HoB’s response to Dar. I have some trouble believing that this situation is what anyone had in mind. Has the lovable wooliness of our theology leaked over to produce chaotic and easily-manipulable administrative processes? Or is “Anglican governance” yet another oxymoron, like “American shyness” or “British gourmet”?
Possible answers
—Obviously, this was not a formal mediation, but it wasn’t a trial either. I think that Bp. Anis was and is quite capable of expressing the Global South viewpoint during the group’s external discussions with the HoB and the internal discussions within itself. Abp. Orombi would have been as well, if he had not chosen to absent himself from the JSC meeting. It is not all that unusual to have a partisan member of a mediation or arbitration team; worker’s compensation claims are often decided by a panel consisting of an employer representative, an employee representative, and a neutral party who actually decides the case after consulting with his colleagues.
—As I understand it, the HoB originally invited the Archbishop of Canterbury to its March meeting, but he was on sabbatical. The House issued another invitation for September, which he accepted. I believe that it was the Archbishop himself who suggested that the presence of the JSC might be helpful, as that would put the Americans in contact with representatives of all three Instruments of Communion–the Primates’ Meeting, Anglican Consultative Council, and influential members of the Lambeth Conference–along with the Focus of Communion (to use the terminology that seems to have replaced the four Instruments of Union). They were invited, and most of them came.
“My point is that criticizing the JSC group for not behaving like detached observers rather than as active participants is criticizing them for not being something they never intended to be.”
But this is NOT the critique–it is HOW they participated as active participants and the process by which they did so, and by which a report was written and then released which is at issue.
Ouch! I posted #162 in response to #157 and missed the ones in between.
#159–As you know, no committee ever writes anything… somebody has to draft its statements, but the results are the responsibility of the committee that votes for it, not the drafter. This report purports to substantially reflect the internal discussions and conclusions reached by the majority of the group while they were together in New Orleans. Clearly, ten of the thirteen members of the group agree with that assertion. Bp. Anis disagrees with the report and the process that brought it about, but he has not denied that it reflects majority views (two other members are still silent as far as I know). The nine who signed it became its authors, just as President Bush and not his speechwriters is responsible for his policy addresses.
#160–I don’t know that anybody gave them any particular role. As the invitation said “there is an urgent need for us to meet face to face with the Archbishop of Canterbury and members of the Primates’ Standing Committee.” Clearly, they were asked to report on their discussions, probably by the Archbishop, in time for their observations to aid the provinces in making the responses to Canterbury asked of them by October 31. Aside from that, they were free to define their own role. And did. I’m not saying they were formal mediators, only that they seem to have seen their job as conflict resolution more than as fact finding.
#161–Because of the way the Anglican Communion is structured, the ultimate “judges” of TEC will be the 37 other provinces (assuming that the 6 dependent jurisdictions follow England’s lead). The Archbishop, Primates, ACC, and Lambeth can issue decrees until the cows come home, but in the last analysis it will be up to each of the other provinces to decide whether they are in communion with TEC. Even if the Archbishop declines to invite the HoB to Lambeth and the other two bodies expel their TEC members, individual churches will still be making the ultimate decision, just as the Church of England has intercommunion agreements with a rather different set of churches than TEC or the Diocese of Sydney. In making those decisions, the provinces will want information not only from the Americans (whether 815-led or dissident), but from people they trust who have had face-to-face contact with the American situation. If they trust the 10 people who issued this report more than they distrust the process by which it was written, it may influence their decisions. Otherwise it will not.
#163–With all due respect, the “what” seems more important than the “how,” as you have rightly pointed out concerning the 815 fixation on polity over substance. The report was written, and as long as the 9 people who signed it stand behind it, it really doesn’t matter how it came about.
Dale: Thank you very much for your answers. Although I reach different conclusions here, I think you’ve developed the process arguments for what the JSC majority did as well as anyone could have.
Didn’t the Primates want the bishops of TEC to respond? Wasn’t that what NO was supposed to do, and what the HOB claimed it did? How then can KJS and the JSC change the response of the HOB by tweaking it in any way to make it “clearer”? Should it not have gone back to the bishops? Is KJS and the JSC authorized to speak on behalf of the bishops of TEC? Why consult the bishops at all? It seems KJS is TEC’s pope, or popessa, who doesn’t need to gather the bishops and preside over their own deliberations of what they meant. She can decide that all on her lonesome.
Note that the March invitation by the House of Bishops included the Primates’ Standing Committee. How that got expanded to the Joint Standing Committee I don’t know, but it had an obvious effect on the balance. The House of Bishops’ invitation was for a face-to-face meeting. I assume that the assignment to write a report to the ABC to be passed on to the Primates came from the Archbishop.
This has been an interesting discussion. In one sense, the realization that the committee wasn’t appropriately constituted and that its processes were flawed shouldn’t really be that important to the assessment of whether the HoB’s statement complies with what had been requested. If one looks at the Dar requests and the HoB’s statement in response, it’s obvious it doesn’t. (See Andrew Goddard’s analysis for example.) The evaluation of the JSC’s process therefore doesn’t seem to arise so much as a factor that should influence the outcome, but as a forensic exercise to cast light on what went wrong.
Dale Rye [#164], congratulations on a measured answer to Kendall’s increasingly querulous demands to know about other people’s processes. He’s starting to sound like some of our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle in Congress, insisting on doing colonoscopies on every decision the Bush Administration makes. (Sure, it’s his blog, but his comments are as open to critique as yours or mine.)
I had thought about responding along the following lines: “Kendall, if I were the JSC, I’d say it’s nobody’s business, except maybe the Primates’, how we came up with the report — for all anyone else needs to know, the report materialized in a transporter beam from a galaxy far far away; we read it, liked it, approved it, and sent it on to +Rowan. Any other questions?” But you did a much more genteel job; I’m glad I read your posting first.
DC [#168]: Kendall’s questions are perfectly reasonable. You may well find them uncomfortable, as you have not offered cogent answers to them.
Your sniping about “Kendall’s increasingly querulous demands to know about other people’s processes” is rich, particularly in the context of an ECUSA so proud of its own polity.
Questions about abuse of power and perversion of process are always legitimate. Better to leave lines like “None of your business!” to autocrats like Czar Nicholas I.
I must confess that my reaction to this thread is becoming predictable: that of a bemused sadness.
The reality is that nothing has changed. The ABC will do whatever he was going to do before the report was issued. The GS will do whatever they were going to do. And individuals, parishes and dioceses will do whatever they were going to do. Property cases will continue to be settled in the law courts, and the judges will make whatever decisions they were going to make. The losers will continue to claim that the judges disregarded all the relevant evidence.
Reasserters will continue to be reasserters, and reappraisers will continue to be reappraisers.
The reality is that this decision is not a salvation issue to us as individuals. It simply doesn’t matter what the JSC decided. Each of us still has to decide whether we can live with TEC or not. Perrsonally, I’ve tried my church while it belonged to TEC. I’ve tried it when it moved to another province. Yes, the theology might be a little better, but the 1979 Prayer book is still just as flawed.
Now I’m trying a continuing Anglican Church. Personally, I don’t like their position on WO, but the music and the 1928 prayer book bring joy to my heart. I still go to TEC churches when I’m out of town. As an individual, I have the luxury of being able to make these choices.
My sympathies lie entirely with Kendall and the other priests, deacons and bishops. Brave souls who have committed themselves to Christian leadership. I sense the incredible frustration that they must feel as they see the church that they have served be torn apart. And though my sympathies, theologically, are with the reasserters, I see that this goes for both sides.
I pray that we all will be able to reconcile ourselves to the decisions that we ultimately must make alone.
With God’s help.
I’ve been following the discussions here for the past few days and would like to echo #165 — I wish that all the TEC Bishops had the character of Dale Rye.
Thank-you, sir.
“Come now, let us reason together”
DC [168]: And to think that the whole thing was a “democratic” process … 🙂
Continuing Mark’s comment on [167] – Didn’t the Primates meeting in Nottingham in 2005 explicitly request that TEC and Canada be recused from the ACC until the next Lambeth conference? The standing committee of the ACC agreed to this proposal. When were the two provinces formally readmitted to the ACC? Some relevant info