On Day three of the meeting, Primates of the Anglican Communion began to more closely consider ”˜primacy’. In small groups they discussed their understanding and experience of the theology and practice of primacy in their Provinces, at the Regional level and at the Communion level. The purpose of the morning was to share in plenary the differences and similarities of primacy in the Provinces of the Communion.
“Aspects of primacy shared among all Provinces included . . . having a prophetic voice, to interpret the signs of the times in their local context.”
Hopefully, somebody knows that they are not using the word “prophetic” in the biblical sense. Deut 18:20. And hopefully this error was made by the ACNS and not the primates themselves.
This may all sound a joke, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is deadly serious – there is a battle going on, and the enemy is using every weapon of psychological warfare at its disposal. These Primates have been isolated completely from the outside world, ostensibly to avoid outside interference, but in reality to ensure that they are totally under the control of the Rowan/Kenneth manipulated scheme and program. I am appalled – they are being told that they are in control, but this is a completely and carefully controlled environment in which the organisers control all they see and hear, and with the Facilitators, all they discuss.
I am afraid some are treating Dublin as inept or amusing – I see it as a full psychological and spiritual attack on the Primates. A large proportion of the Primates there are new, and they are being manipulated and used for some pretty sinister purposes by a rump regime fighting for its survival and the rolling out of its program. It is like a cultural revolution re-education class.
To understand just what is going on here one needs to read this and this
We need to be praying for the Primates and for protection upon them. Only God can intervene now and we need to pray for His will to be done, and to remember what Archbishop Anis said – we should trust the Primates. There are some deeply faithful people there including +Burundi who will be under particular attack.
George Conger has some more about the controlled environment which has been set up to isolate the Primates for five days here
[blockquote]Those Primates in Dublin will find the 2011 meeting to be unlike the 2007 session in Dar es Salaam or the 2009 meeting in Alexandria. The Dublin Primates will be sequestered from the press and local observers. No outings to Dublin’s Anglican attractions or Irish cultural events are scheduled, while the traditional public worship services with local Anglicans are off this year’s agenda.
It is expected that time will be taken to orient newcomers to the Primates’ Meeting, as almost two-thirds of those present in Alexandria in 2009 will not be in Dublin — only 12 of the overseas Primates present in Dublin attended the Alexandria meeting.[/blockquote]
And then, there are the ‘Facilitators’
The Primates have had no say in these arrangements, for in truth it is not their meeting, but someone else’s they have been invited to.
‘Come into my parlour’, said the spider to the fly.
It looks like a combination of “Animal Farm” for church, and what one of my friends says: “I will not be on a Vestry because I am a problem-solver. Vestries don’t want to solve problems, they just want to talk about them”.
It’s not only “step into my parlour”, it’s step into my orchestrated, manipulated, climate-controlled, isolated, scripted parlour”.
I don’t know how Rowan and Ken look in the mirror.
Plus, while the role is not much more than a figurehead, were I her I’d use every last bit of influence I had. As “Defender of the Faith”, I wonder if HM the Queen is noting all of this. The “Faith” might be going down the tubes. And what’s the old saying? Attributed to Edmund Burke:
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
And, from his writings, I like this one even better:
“(Public) duty demands and requires that what is right should not only be made known, but made prevalent; that what is evil should not only be detected, but defeated”.
I wish.
If you are Biblical, you can never believe that evil will ever ultimately triumph. That’s not to say that terrible things can’t happen and happen for a terribly long time. I am always moved by the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane–and despite his horrific struggle, he still had the grace to say “But thy will be done.”
The problems with the Anlican communion go back at least to the 1970’s, but when has a national church leader ever been disciplined for stepping outside the faith? Maybe it has occurred, and I am just ignorant of it. Ultimately, the pending Separation has to be about something much more fundamental than same-sex issues. We are obviously trying to create institutions that have never been exercised before, but should have been.
In my teens in the 1970’s, I knew so many Episcopalians upset about what the national church was doing (which were just part of what is happening now). But only a very tiny minority left. Most just said, “Oh, don’t pay attention to the national church.” What is happening now is just the fruit of that attitude, which I shared.
The hard part for we Orthodox is how can we avoid these failings of the TEC, without becoming like the Pharisees that Jesus hammered so relentlessly. I would hope that the Bible helps us chart a course between the Pagans and the Pharisees, that still allows the Gospel to spread. Others before us have.
I suspect that Her Majesty is fed up with the situation in her Church, but unfortunately, her hands are tied by British law, and she can’t do more than show her irritation. That’s because the Church of which she is the titular head is a state Church. Parliament runs things, and their record thus far is less than stellar, to say the least.
Perhaps the ABC is faithfully serving Parliament. I am just not sure who the PB is serving, but am beginning to suspect it is none of my business.
How different can primacies be and still be primacies? Isn’t it possible to discuss differences and similarities of primacy and still not know what primacy is? Before you discuss differences and similarities don’t you have to know what primacy is essentially?
But PM, I submit our worst error would be to treat Dublin seriously. What can they do? Isolation promises them what? Please tell me therefore, why should we care what happens in Dublin? The primates aren’t stupid or likely to be brainwashed if they are not so already; they know Schori, RW et all and they know how to play dodgeball. What then? Larry
#9 Hello Larry
Perhaps my response to Jill Woodliff on a similar thread on SF reproduced below may explain why this is very serious indeed, we should care, and we need to be praying for protection and release for the Primates in the situation in which they are in:
QUOTE
Jill #37
[blockquote]I find it odd that the names and biographies of the facilitators have not been provided since the Archbishop entrusted them with such a precious responsibility.[/blockquote]
and also your #39
[blockquote]The facilitators raise other issues as well.
What sort of witness is it to the faith received when we have to hire professional facilitators to meet?
Does the use of paid facilitators in this context constitute simony? I don’t know. I never have fully understood the parameters of simony, but it is an issue we should consider. Money is intricately involved in the following: the unprecedented Claim the Blessing financial campaign for GC2003, the secular Arcus Foundation grant for the development of liturgy, and the secular Satcher Institute grant given to underwrite Continuing Indaba.[/blockquote]
I believe you don’t know how true this is.
Just after the Lambeth Conference in 2008, Lambeth Palace and the ACO were in disarray. There had been massive overspending which the Church of England had to bail out, and Kearon could not be seen, claiming it was nothing to do with him. In spite of him being an Irish priest, the Church of Ireland were not buying it and let him swing, with no contribution to the financial chaos.
Then there were massive cutbacks, staff at St Andrew’s House were let go, the Head of Communications was let go [can’t remember his name, James someoneorother].
Then something curious happened, masssive funding from the pro-gay inclusion TEC priest was funnelled through the Satcher Institute to finance ‘Continuing Indaba’ where one orthodox bishop would be teamed up with a Facilitator and an extreme TEC or ACoC bishop and a supposedly moderate, but in fact loony left Britiah bishop for ‘conversation’. This was quite overtly about psychological games with group dynamics to if not persuade the orthodox bishop to change his mind, to at least reach the half way house of agreeing that we could all live together with difference.
The original version of this was a meeting financed by Trinity Wall Street, involving African bishops a few years ago. The idea has been refined and developed.
Now we have this Primates Meeting on exactly the same format, using the resources pioneered by those like the Sacher Institute and Arcus, for changing the minds of large groups, particularly churches to a liberal view on sexuality and behaviour. The Anglican Communion has been just one of the targets of these groups who use business psychology for political aims.
It all makes sense – the subversion of the Primates and the ACC; the Continuing Indaba, the blocking by the ABC of all democratic and representative governance in the Anglican Communion. The breaking of the rules to shoehorn loony and barely Christian activists, +Ian Douglas and Janet Trisk onto the Standing Committee, and now the turning of the Primates Meeting into a case Delphi Technique manipulation using group dynamics on a massive scale.
The evidence is everywhere you look. From cutbacks in 2009, the ACO has been spending money. A new Communications Director has been hired, a new Director of Anglican Communion Relations has been hired, a new representative at the United Nations; every six months or so a highly paid job with ACO has been advertised. The ACO’s financial problems are over and it is now well-funded.
Now a not inexpensive operation with Facilitators has been engineered to undermine the democratic Primates Meeting, and a program of some sophistication put together. The aim is to come to some sort of reflection which allows the manipulators to appoint moderate liberals to the Standing Committee, and just enough endorsement of the need to live together to allow Williams’ Covenant and Continuing Indaba process to move forward to the next Standing Committee meeting and ACC meeting in New Zealand.
They are going for broke on this one – it is a massive, indeed a breathtaking bid for power, and to shift the beliefs of the entire Communion.
It is also Un-Christian, dishonest and outrageous.
Williams will be back in England next week to continue undermining the Church of England, by trying to change the rules on divorce and bishops to enable him to appoint the truly awful Nick Holtam a bishop and stuff some more liberal catholics into our House of Bishops. However he has a problem – the Ordinariate is not playing well here in the Church, and the flack is being directed at him. People in the CofE are unhappy with him and his regime, much as people in the Communion are.
UNQUOTE
Please pray.
Basically, one secular pro-gay inclusion organisation are funding the development of same-sex liturgies in TEC; while another is funding and providing the methodology of the Listening Process Continuing Indaba program, and now the controlled and manipulated Primates Meeting.
What is more the Presiding Bishop of TEC is right behind the first, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is now completely on board with the second and third. They seek to use the Primates,and then discard them, having obtained sufficient endorsement to go further with their schemes.
And now, it appears, there is a further twist, with the claim that one of the new offices funded from somewhere at the ACO is a Director of the Anglican Relief and Development Alliance. There are reports that this Alliance is to be used to channel funding and resources from provinces like TEC through the Communion to places like the African provinces, which have rejected funding from TEC and ACoC.
It raises the serious question of whether Rowan Williams and the ACO are adding bribery at Communion level, to the bribery we have seen from TEC by promoting this scheme. David Virtue explores some of these issues, and while I haven’t reached an absolute conclusion on it, I think they are matters which need looking into, and if it turns out there is substance to them, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACO Secretariat need to be called to account for them.
“If you are Biblical, you can never believe that evil will ever ultimately triumph”.
Frankly sir, I don’t. But nor do I like it when so many roll over and do evil’s bidding.
“The ACO’s financial problems are over and it is now well-funded”.
Yes, and by whom? Rhetorical question, I know. Not to mention, who’s paying the “facilitators”? Somehow i doubt the facilitators are non-stipe Jewish people with no stake in any of this.
Thank you, PM, for that honest post. I’ve said forever that when people need to behave in an “unChristian, dishonest, and outrageous” manner to get their way, then maybe the agenda is wrong and not of God.
Not that you have ever said so, but this is obviously not just a “nutty Yank” problem–it may have started with(and been funded by) TEC, but plenty of C of E-ers were willing to sign on to this. Of sorts, maybe you need a “revolution”, too–
All thoughts and prayers–
BW
PM: How can anyone call the ABC to account?
I will assume your conclusions are sound. Still, I don’t feel the same level of oconcern because tactics of this sort will only increase the isolation of the TEC-omanes even further. They are shooting themselves in the sandal. Larry