Leaving aside the areas where the bishops are silent (e.g., recourse to law in property disputes and the importance of affirming “the Windsor Report as the standard of teaching commanding respect across the Communion (most recently expressed in Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference)”), the response, though showing some signs of progress, in our view falls short of what the Primates were seeking and for which many have hoped and prayed in recent months. It would appear that this most recent meeting of the House of Bishops had its most serious engagement yet with the reality of TEC’s actions on the wider Communion and the gulf both within itself and between TEC and the mind of the Communion expressed through its Instruments. The bishops clearly made a valiant effort to find a form of words that would be acceptable to the overwhelming majority of its own members and also to the wider Communion. We commend the efforts of those at New Orleans to stop the drift of TEC away from the larger communion.
However, the flaws in its final response signal that when faced with a clear choice, the local audience was ultimately still more determinative than the global one and the demands of being an American denomination triumphed over the disciplines of belonging to the Church Catholic. Either a majority of bishops did not wish to do as they were clearly requested to by the Communion in order to repair the tear in the fabric of the Communion (the Windsor Bishops presented motions that would have enabled this) or, if they did, they did not wish to do so in a manner that would lead to dissent from those many bishops, clergy and laity in TEC who are conscientiously convinced that the demands of the gospel prevent acceptance of any moratorium on same-sex blessings or the ordination and consecration of those in such unions.
I’m impressed with the list of signers.
This is a well thought out response and truthfully shows point-by-point where the HoB failed.
Given the signature of Gomez and two prominent English bishops, it looks like the CommCons intend to put up a fight too.
Once again: the ability to stop the ecclesiastical war, even at the late hour, lies with Canterbury. He can lovingly discipline TEC, or watch the Communion explode. There is no in between now.
I too am impressed with the list of signers. What boggles my mind no end is their failure to see that the Primates’ recommendations at Dar es salaam for oversight for the Orthodox in the U.S and Canada is firmly in place and has been for some months. There ARE 5 Primates forming a Pastoral Council and there IS a Primatal Vicar. The Orthodox (excepting some of the “Windsor Bishops”), ARE uniting. God be praised for the Common Cause folks!
Frances Scott
Once to every man and nation,
comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side;
some great cause, some great decision,
offering each the bloom or blight,
and the choice goes by forever,
‘twixt that darkness and that light.
sorry, quoted the wrong version:
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light.
Frances,
I remember reading about a PLAN the PB had come up with and some names (including Bp Howe), BUT nothing has come of it, and Bp Howe expressed confusion about his name being on the list, and no real formulation being in place prior to NO for oversight. In short, it was DOA or rather DBA (dead before arrival).
If you are refering to another plan, I recall one some time ago where the PB would appoint a person ‘of her choosing’, which was not acceptable to anyone.
Oh, you are refering to ‘Common Cause’. But that’s not what DES asked for.
ACI disses JSC. Crisis continues…
God bless the signers of that statement. God bless James Stanton. Thank you Bishop Stanton.
I love the polite English speech, that is dripping with meaning:
I think that the vulgar American translation would be:
“Yeah, and if you believe what the JSC apparently does, we have a bridge to sell you.”
This is an excellent rejoinder, and the names attached to this document present a very solid check to the JSC Report, and all done in such a polite manner. This is a solid piece of reasoning and I think the real money quote is this:
Rowan Williams is here being warned by the Com-Cons, including leading CoE bishops and also TEC bishops, that if he does not act now by calling a primates’ meeting, the Anglican Communion will dissolve. If RW does not heed this warning, he should immediately resign his post, because we need an ABC now capable of extraordinary leadership.
I’m not impressed with the name of the signers, actually they produced a pile of dung in my opinion.
It suddenly occurs to me that the “corporate culture” (that which is needed to succeed in an organization )of TEC is based on ability to control language. People who rise are those who master who can orate their view point in a whimsical manner and who minimize all weak elements and the game of polity can be one of gotcha. The leaders on all sides (revisionist, reasserters, reformers, reappraisers re-anythy) are products of this process, though their core beliefs are different the systemic processes were no in place to weed out theology (obviously) but ability to play the game of polity in a certain way (I can not say mannerly, for often it’s not, all polity should be persuasive but what I’m seeing is a accenting one element and definitely good damage control an air of slight civility but other elements too)
Luther would never make a good Episcopalian! Calvin might barely, but only hope to be average.
The negative side of the ‘corporate culture’ recent Episcopalians will bring with them is a tenancy to be tempted to manipulate and “yeses” are “noes” & “noes” are “not official” and everything is no longer as simple as Scripture commands as politics of blurring goes on.
This ACI statement is my latest disappointment.
KAR – if faced with the TEC bishops, Luther would have exploded with a number of choice German expletives.
To the ACI document creators, a slight edit, if I may:
[blockquote] Having pointed to certain aspects of the report of the Joint Standing Committee that might provide a way to move ahead, we must close by saying that the more likely reading of the response of the House of Bishops of TEC suggests that, even if there are some steps in the right direction, a great [strikethrough]distance [/strikethrough] [/blockquote] CHASM [blockquote] remains between them and the wider Communion. [/blockquote]
I am interested to read that this group of pundits also
“completed this analysis and assessment before the appearance of that made by the Joint Standing Committeeâ€
Yet one commentator has condemned the JSC report as “HASTYâ€!!
What nonsense!!
I’m mostly with jamesw on this.
To me, the following is the money quote:
[blockquote] “Unless those entrusted with oversight in the Communion are somehow enabled to discern the mind of Christ together, preferably through a gathering of the Primates with the Joint Standing Committee, there is now an even greater danger than before that this particular crossroads may lead to a large number of quite different paths being taken by provinces, dioceses and parishes. ” [/blockquote]
I fear that this paints too rosy of a picture. I view the JSC report as a [i]winning the battle (Lambeth invites) but quite possibly losing the war (permanent split between Canterbury led & Global South led sub-Communions)[/i] moment.
Here the ACI clearly is calling for a pre-Lambeth Primates’ Meeting. Given the signatories, dare the AoC remain silent regarding this request?
A general statement resulting from the original document and the posted replies: The only good that came out of NOLA was some great philanthopy and perhaps a better understanding of what Katrina caused. The GS and others have seen that the ACO and JSC operatives failed miserably in their duty to report impartially to the Anglican Communion. Unless +++Rowan steps in with courage and strong leadership instead of sitting back and wishing for something good to happen. Lambeth, if it even happens, will be the death stab in the AC’s heart. In NOLA, the JSC and ACO handed the sword to the executioner.
The TEC will never repent! They have chosen what they consider is important as ++KJS put it so forcefully in San Francisco. The GS will never stay in communion with them. The messiest part falls on us pew sitters who have no say. We can stop coming, true. We can stop giving, true, but that would hurt a lot of excellent parish programs that help others. We can’t stay and we don’t want to leave.
All because the TEC powers at be decided an agenda is more important than following God’s Holy Word and the majority’s will in the once beautiful Anglican Communion.
Elves, please forgive me if this is off the subject!
The statement is generally excellent and much appreciated. Those of us on the more Reformed end may be more disappointed than Anglo-Catholics and others of us who are more “high church.”
As for the “money quote,” I see a different one than others that have been submitted so far and have mentioned it on my blog.
The inconsistency here is not in the words but in the behavior of these various signers–some how they don’t work as a whole for me.
[i] Edited by elf- ad hominem and off topic. [/i] -Elf Lady
I, for one, would rather be part of an orthodox Global South Church, than part of a ABC connected church that accepts as a viable option the religion of KSJ.
I made the following comment on Covenant and reduplicate it here:
I think the ACI statement is important and impressive, both as a succinct piece of careful argument, and as a coalition of bishops now joining the ACI as signatories of this particular statement. I cannot think when any other ACI statement has reflected such a coalition as its “authors.” This is a shrewd decision on ACI’s part: to apply extra pressure in order to underline the import of our moment and of careful decision-making by the primates and AbC as to what should be next.
Favorite sentence, after a charitable paragraph, describing the “valiant effort” put forth by our bishops in NOLA: “However, the flaws in its final response signal that when faced with a clear choice, the local audience was ultimately still more determinative than the global one and the demands of being an American denomination triumphed over the disciplines of belonging to the Church Catholic.”
I note that they end with a call for “a gathering of the Primates with the JSC” *before* Lambeth, thus reiterating the similar call from the Covenant website earlier this week. And for the same reason: that there is a great danger right now of various provinces and dioceses and parishes taking different paths, hence of our visible, constituent “communion” slipping away.
We are so accustomed to rotten news that some of us have difficulty seeing something that is an amazing gift. Here we have the Communion Conservatives confirming that the HOB and JSC statements are hooey, that ECUSA did not do what was asked, that the Primates must meet, that the ABC must exercise leadership now or watch total disintegration of the Communion. Here we see the MOST IMPORTANT MODERATE orthox primate, Drexel Gomez, making plain where he stands. Here we have the ABC now totally boxed in, with no one sufficient to prevent the split supporting what his ACO minions tried to engineer (either with his connivance or not).
This statement is tremendously helpful to the orthodox, and so strong, considering its source, that it cannot be ignored. In all likelihood, Canon Kearon et al were expecting to create a tidal wave of managed news–through press releases, the JSC statement, and prepared statements of how “encouraging” everything was, that the ACI would simply join the throng. They haven’t, and that must be a terrible disappointment. ACI has now join the mainstream media in seeing this as the NO that it is to the rest of the Communion. Discipline now must follow, or the Communion is over. The ACI has said as much.
Let me see if I have this straight. ACI is calling for yet another meeting, this time between the Primates and the JSC, to determine if the JSC’s analysis of the HOB’s statement is correct. Wouldn’t that then involve another meeting for the HOB to report whether JSC’s analysis accurately sets forth the intent and meaning of the HOB’s September report? If you keep this up long enough eventually we’ll all come to a consensus by virtue of exhaustion. What is it about the ACI that they cannot see what Bishops Orombi, Mouneer Anis and the New York Times and others in the secular press see so clearly?
[i] Edited by elf. Unnecessary rant. [/i]
Ed the Roman to the church after the 3rd Council of Smirmium (357) (which, BTW, defined the Catholic Faith as Arian): “You’re screwed.”
Remember, Ed, that what is impossible for Man is possible for God. A global witness of the Anglican expression of the Catholic Faith will raise from the ashes and the signers of this document will lead the way to its recovery.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Ed [#22]: Many strong, seaworthy vessels are arriving to shelter and mobilize orthodox Anglicans leaving ECUSA. They offer safety and room for us all. In any event, remember Romans 8:38-39.
Ed #22 is at least partly right: If +++Rowan doesn’t call a Primates’ Meeting on the TEC issue before Lambeth, his picture will show up next to the dictionary entry (with or without ours). Commenting on the [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/6639/]Jonathan Petre article[/url] at SF, I wrote:
Calling together the Primates is the only way a decision can be made to severely discipline TEC, and severely disciplining TEC is the only possible way of holding the Communion together at all.
The “boycotting liberals†will be ++Harper and ++Morgan, maybe ++Jones (Scotland); it’s not easy to see what other provinces would join them. I’m sure they are personal friends of the ABC and tighter than ticks with the Anglican Communion Office, but aside from that it’s not easy to see how the meeting would suffer from their absence. Aside from which, they are not about to pull out of the Communion, no matter what happens.
But if TEC is finessed, all of the other Primates will understand that the unity of the Communion is purely nominal, and that duplicity and legalism are tolerated—not to say rewarded—while extreme doctrinal novelty has no consequences. ++Aspinall would have no Communion foothold, for example, against Sydney if it simply went ahead with lay presidency. (++Aspinall, though a liberal, is also apparently well and truly ticked off at TEC’s arrogance and lack of candor. His statements, though supportive of TEC, are notable for their lack of enthusiasm.) Not to mention that the Global South would go ballistic, the dioceses mentioned by Petre would unilaterally realign with another Primate, and the wooly but well-intentioned ecclesial muddle of the Communion would overnight become a chaos of factions, open hostility, lawsuits, rivalry, and sudden loud noises generally—and so, to a lesser extent, would +++Rowan’s own C of E.
This would all be very un-British, let alone un-Anglican. The Communion might as well get used to the idea that the TEC cornucopia is drying up anyway; whether they stay in the Communion or not, their cash flow is spiraling downward and the legal bills are rising. Canon Kearon had better become accustomed to buying his own lunch. Any upside to keeping TEC in is vastly overbalanced by the problems it would cause.
+++Rowan is an extremely intelligent man, and a relatively clear thinker; I have every confidence he realizes all this. But of course a little prayer wouldn’t hurt…
Yes, they must get together. I made this case elsewhere. But without the ABC, for he should be regarded as extraneous. We in America have our own fish to fry, and the ABC is not the cook thereof, not any more. LM
Philip Snyder #23,
IMHO, Anglicanism is in worse shape right now. For starters, I don’t see an Athanasius.
Irenaeus #24,
Don’t forget the Barque of Peter. 🙂
Craig #25,
Thank you. But again, given Pike and Spong and Righter, I think that “…the unity of the Communion [being] purely nominal, … [with] duplicity and legalism [being] tolerated—not to say rewarded—while extreme doctrinal novelty has no consequences” may already be established.
Ed, (#27) – check the signers of the above document. Any of them (or all of them together) could be today’s Athanasius. It could be +Akinola, +Nazimbi, or +Orombi. Perhaps it could be +Venables or any of a number of bishops and leaders. It doesn’t even need to be a bishop or priest. Remember, Athanasius was a deacon at Nicea.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
#28 With all due respect, sir, when several of the signers had the chance to act like Athanasius there not a report of theirs being an open voice of objection on September 25.
Have you read Athanasius? He speaks clearly, more like +Orombi. Dar es Salaam spoke fairly clearly (despite some double speak of being written by a committee) and gave a deadline which has passed. This document seems to disregard that and have a ‘lets meet again’ ‘this is serious’ stance to it. It plays more into the ABoC.
Episcopalian are the only group I know that if held at gun point and told if they deny Christ they’ll live would be set free because they so baffled the assailant or if life was take it would be out of frustration instead of a attempting to figure out what was said.
Athanasius was forthright in his stance. His influence was great that the Athanasius Creed is named after him although modern scholars believe it was not actually penned by him but by his influence a claim I say can not be made today.
[blockquote] the demands of being an American denomination triumphed over the disciplines of belonging to the Church Catholic. [/blockquote]
Let this be engraved as the epitaph on the tombstone of a once-great church.
KAR [#29]: You mention one possible reason why Episcopalians might survive being “held at gun point and told if they deny Christ they’ll live.” Another possible reason is implicit in the language I just quoted.
Ed #27 — I can’t disagree with you about Pike, Spong, Schori and the rest, or that it’s a blot on the Communion that TEC — and some in the CoE and elsewhere — have been tolerated as long as they have.
But I must point out on the other hand that TEC is not the Communion. Dr+ Radner has an important, under-reported, and almost certainly under-appreciated paper at http://anglicancommunioninstitute.com/content/view/112/2/ — “Violence and Communion: Why the World Looks to Anglicanism, Or Will Pass It By” — which deserves careful and prayerful thought. I find some parts of its analysis of American society questionable, but one of Dr+ R’s major points — that Anglican churches in the Third World badly need an intact and functioning Communion with strong connections to the European world as well as to the rest of the globe — is true beyond any shadow of a doubt.
I’m cheering for the Communion not so much for American orthodox — they can always (sorrowfully but without serious inconvenience) move on to Rome, Geneva, Wittenberg, or Byzantium, and within a generation the pain is forgotten — but rather for the courageous witness on display in the churches of Africa, Asia, and South America, where problems of poverty and official corruption require constant addressing, and where Anglicanism can make a real difference.
It is, quite simply, too late for TEC, and even if the Common Cause Partners unite successfully into a new Province, my church — the one I was raised in and loved — is dead. It may someday be revived, but I doubt it: Catholic Order and Elizabethan language do not exactly seem to be on the verge of a comeback. But I pray for the survival of the Communion because, as Dr+ R eloquently argues, the world needs it.
Craig Goodrich wrote with eloquence:
[blockquote] Calling together the Primates is the only way a decision can be made to severely discipline TEC, and severely disciplining TEC is the only possible way of holding the Communion together at all. [/blockquote]
Can we shout this out toward Canterbury until +++Rowan wakes from his ecclesial slumber and acts? Send him a t-shirt? An engraved invitation? A series of billboards along the M1?
The ACI statement is weak and tepid in many places whereas the previous statements Bp Stanton, Bp Salmon and Andrew Goddard (all signatories) were far better assessments than this much weaker opus (perhaps to get the company man Howe on board). Some have suggested that this is more effective honey to catch the ABC with. The ABC has openly stated and acted in every way to mitigate consequences of the TEC. He is like a sober spouse enabling the drunkard husband, the TEC. Weakening the appraisals of Stanton, Salmon and Goddard only gives the ABC more wiggle room to dither.
People praise it’s call for a primates meeting, as if that is revolutionary. As Bill McGovern #21 points out and I have too at SF, that they mess up even this. The ACI actually writes,
[blockquote]Unless those entrusted with oversight in the Communion are somehow enabled to discern the mind of Christ together, preferably through a gathering of the Primates with the Joint Standing Committee, there is now an even greater danger than before that this particular crossroads may lead to a large number of quite different paths being taken by provinces, dioceses and parishes.[/blockquote]
Another weakness of a weak document. Why the call for the inclusion of the JSC? The ACI statement gives way too much credibility to the JSC when the JSC has proven itself illegitimate with its heavy handed assessment that excluded minority voices like ABp Anis.
Exactly: “However, the flaws in its final response signal that when faced with a clear choice, the local audience was ultimately still more determinative than the global one and the demands of being an American denomination triumphed over the disciplines of belonging to the Church Catholic.”
pecusa continues on its path toward protestant sectarianism of the gnostic variety. Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics (I think that’s the title and author) is apropos here.
Rowan Williams has no desire to discpline, and has made that clear again and again.
Re #34: As [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/6661/#125078]I observe above in in the thread on the CAPA Communique[/url], most reappraiser blogs are insisting that “The ABC has openly stated and acted in every way to thwart the progressiveness of the TEC.” Both sides recognize that he has not supported them, but has remained in the middle. #32 above describes well the reasons why Abp. Rowan thinks that preserving as much of the Communion as possible is a good thing.
Oops. If you copy the link to a comment, the anchor at the end of the url is set off by a “/#” rather than the http standard “#” That links to the entire article, not just the comment. [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/6661#125078]Here is the correct link.[/url]
Which doesn’t work either. Just look at Comment #10.
Dale, I must disagree. The ABC may be earning equal contempt from both sides, but doing nothing is not being in the middle.
[blockquote]The ABC may be earning equal contempt from both sides, but doing nothing is not being in the middle.[/blockquote]
You know what happens to you if you try to stand in the middle of widening gap as between a boat and a dock?
I’m thinking of Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye responds, “He’s right.†A young idealist reacts, to which Tevye responds, “He’s right.†Another man looks at him and says, “Tevye, you said that he is right and then you said that he is right. They both can’t be right.†Tevye thinks about that a moment and then says, “You’re right!â€