We are grateful that Bishop Lawrence’s Kafkaesque ordeal is now over. We are troubled that General Convention’s sweeping revisions to church canon made this sideshow possible. We pray that this test of the church’s comprehensiveness will inspire further discussion at General Convention next summer about the wisdom of reckless canonical revision.
First off, there should be a correction. Bishop Lawrence did not ordain his son. He did receive him into TEC like any Anglican priest from anywhere in the rest of the Anglican Communion.
As to the three truths at the end of the article:
#1- no, maybe not currently but will be in the future.
#2- What is the point? To sue Bishop Lawrence in civil court in SC????
#3- Agreed….. which is exactly the reasoning Bishop Lawrence gave for not pursing departing congregations with lawsuits.
Shoot did it again. It is me, SC Blu Cat Lady.
Excellent editorial.
Kafkaesque? Great word. It never ocurred to me that TEC has actually morphed into a giant cockroach. That explains alot.
#4 or the The Plague even though by a different author. Guess I have broken communion.
We have corrected the editorial to delete the mistaken detail about Chad Lawrence’s ordination. Apologies to all!
I think that Chad Lawrence was ordained a deacon in ACNA (Pittsburgh?) and then ordained as a priest in South Carolina.
Photos here: St Helena’s Beaufort
Looks like two bishops present besides +Lawrence.
#5–Not sure. Maybe Dorsey is Waiting for Godot?
I think Schori and her cronies will look at this as a setback, and you can be sure that they’ll be back with new allegations if they get so much as a whiff of anything spurious going on.
#7.No, Chad Lawrence+ was not ordained a priest in South Carolina and most definitely not by his father. He is now canonically resident in the Diocese of South Carolina.
Blue Cat Man,
the pictures at the link above show his father and Bishop Allison participating. Was the third bishop (in the cope and mitre, perhaps +Alden Hathaway?) ordaining him for ACNA?
Doug LeBlanc,
Well done, friend. May I respectfully suggest that you add your name at the end of the editorial? Otherwise, some people may think that chief editor Christopher Wells was the author of it.
And yes, I commend you for daring to say the Emperor has no clothes by using the loaded term “[i]Kafkaesque[/i]” as an apt description of this whole “disciplinary” farce. That’s a highlight of the editorial, as David Keller has already noted (#4). Dr. Ephraim Radner had already used that witheringly critical term in an open ACI post.
However, personally, I’m inclined to go with another apt literary allusion. To me, this whole absurd case is not merely Kafkaesque, but downright Owellian.
The whole fiasco reminds me of George Orwell’s [b]1984[/b] and [b]Animal Farm[/b]. As in the ugly world of 1984, “Big Brother” is ominously lurking everywhere, with anonymous informers and accusers abounding in TEC, ready to report any politically incorrect behavior, as the unnamed accusers in SC did here. But this whole mess reminds me even more of the chaos and tyranny of Animal Farm. The ruthless PB has repeatedly shown that while all bishops in TEC may be theoretically equal, “[i]some are more equal than others[/i].” That’s why she’s getting a free pass on the Bede Parry scandal.
Keep up the good work, Doug.
David Handy+