The Bishop of Manchester, the Right Rev Nigel McCulloch, who chaired the group that drew up the proposals for women bishops, warned of the “dangers” of further delay. He said: “The moment for making choices has come.”
He said the Church should be clear about the consequences of going ahead, which he admitted “would represent a very significant new direction and the withdrawal of assurances offered 15 years ago.”
He also admitted the Church’s tendency to muddle through. “We remain perplexed over how to distinguish between good muddle and bad muddle. When does principled pragmatism and a generosity of spirit topple over into theological incoherence and the loss of any clear guiding principles?”
Prayers for the General Synod can be found here and here.
The Bishop spoke well to introduce and conclude the debate largely because he spoke honestly. But the quotation above, even as it honestly describes the current state of the COE, is surely beyond parody.
As appalling as this may sound to some people I think I would just as soon as see them approve women bishops. The situation in the AC has gotten so bad that this might just move some to the exits. It is really time to cut the heretics off and for the faithful to move on. The TAC is doing that. I suspect we will see various others move in that same direction or towards Orthodoxy once the ladies get their tall hats.
This “dialogue” has been going on long enough. The two sides have their positions clearly marked down. More ceaseless debate I think is just a further contribution to global warming. For those on both sides of this debate it’s time to $&@! or get off the pot.
ICXC
John
I especially like “the withdrawal of assurances given 15 years ago.” Perhaps they’d like to see the results of having PB Schori head the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC canonical aberration team as head house cleaner, with minor assists from the Beers, and such sparkling outcomes as Virginia?! Or Bonnie Anderson clones and Kaeton-esque border violaters coming in to assure that their version of equality is enforced by the General Convention equivalent in CoE?
Will they get to have non-baptized bishops of the female gender, like the Utah bishop?
Those CoE folks had best look very closely at how the “reception” of women’s ordination has worked out on the ground here in the ExCUSA-but-you-are-not-adequately-complying with the zeitgeist
Province.
Re #3: I think there are a quite significant number of reappraisers who would agree that “It is really time to cut the heretics off and for the faithful to move on.” They would suggest that those who cannot accept the clear teaching of Scripture that male and female are equally made in the image of God perhaps need to find a church that agrees with them. Those of us in the middle who regard both support for and opposition to women’s ordination as equally consistent with commitment to biblical faith within a unified Anglicanism are getting caught in a squeeze play.
Perhaps the biggest development in the ongoing disintegration of the Anglican Communion over the last couple of weeks has not been GAFCON and the reappraiser reaction to it, but rather the increasing tendency in some reasserter circles to publicly link the issues of gay ordination and female ordination in such as way as to exclude from the circle of true believers anyone who cannot summon equal outrage about both issues. If that tendency continues, it is going to make it increasingly difficult for the many reasserters who are not convinced opponents of women’s ordination to make common cause with those who so openly doubt their orthodoxy.
To repeat my mantra from the time of the Windsor Report—those who favor turning the Anglican Communion in a much more conservative direction won an absolute victory back then, if they could only be patient enough to let the inevitable end game play out. Without such patience, they still had the ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory by alienating the silent majority of Anglicans who are not going to be willing to throw out fundamental Anglican distinctives (including synodical governance incorporating due process) in favor of a strictly-defined narrow confessionalism. That prediction, sadly, seems to be playing out.
Dale, I’m sure you know that opponents of women’s ordination in general do not disagree that male and female are both made in the image of God and are of equal value to Him.
I have just returned from observing the Synod and add a few facts.
1) It was fascinating to hear the Eastern Orthodox guest (John Zizioulas) make the point that both Rome and Constantinople could still find no ‘theological’ justification for the Anglican decision to ordain and consecrate women. It seemed to them entirely sociological and therefore flawed. You could tangibly feel Synod wince. It was diffused when Rowan replied ‘where you want a very good reason to progress- we want a very good reason NOT to progress.’ Much relief and applause followed…..but I couldn’t help wonder why the very fact that the major Christian Churches claim you have no theology was not automatically seen as the profoundly good reason not to proceed!! As ever the onspoken but vital question fell through the gaps of the debate..
2) There does seem to be a genuine desire to reach out to opponents. The battle won for the progressives- they seem genuinly uncomfortable and embarrassed at the fact that promises made in 1994 are clearly going to be broken. They DO want to help…..but crucially only on their own terms!!! The Bishops are seeking to hold a flimsy promise at one end of the allowed debate – and new dioceses at the other – in the hope that a compromising Synod will settle in the middle and offer a legal code of practice. THEY KNOW THIS WILL NOT DO but are unwilling to be truly generous and relinquish any real authority to traditionalists. The fact that the Dioceses is already a compromise from a province is not a fact that is to be mentioned….the tactics become quite clear.
3) The Bishop of Willesdon is being a really good egg. He was very clear that any measure is simply not good enough. But others cover their ears.
So we await Monday…..but my money is on either a stalemate or a code of practice enshrined in law. (Which would forever banish me to the margins of the church and stifle my gifts, freedom and preferment) The game would be up for Anglo-Catholocism
rugbyplayingpriest, I am praying for you and your Church today and tomorrow.
What a strange outcome it would be if the Jerusalem conference people, mostly evangelicals, were to end up making room for traditionalists while the mother church throws them under the bus.
I am surprised that you still let Dale Rye get under your skin so thoroughly. I submit that this effect far exceeds the power of the cause.
What DOES surprise me in a really unpleasant way is the number of Anglicans who are ready to submit to Rome, and indeed even to accept the Marian mythologies. I am a member of the ACA and TAC and am increasingly apprehensive of its passion for Roman Catholicism – an obsession far greater than their concern for the war that is being fought and which we have all commented on for so long. I wrote to Archbishop Hepworth – do any of you actually know who he is? – and argued that remaining mute in the face of the challenge sooner or later made one complicit. The Dale Rye’s, like the Susan Russell’s, are wholly predictable and can be ignored, but I cannot fathom a substantial Anglican organization which is silent on practically everything except intercommunion with Rome. Why would one cross the Tiber but not climb out on the far bank, choosing to stay in the water, shouting to the near bank, “Come on in, the water’s fine”? I was speaking to an ACA priest who remarked t hat, now that the ABC had committed suicide, the new focus of power will be “the Bishop of Rome.” I was astounded, remarking that the new focus of power was in Africa, but this reality seemed not to have any effect. The Bishop in Rome? Am I the only one who hears such things and shudders? Larry
RE: “If that tendency continues, it is going to make it increasingly difficult for the many reasserters who are not convinced opponents of women’s ordination to make common cause with those who so openly doubt their orthodoxy.”
I haven’t seen that difficulty, Dale Rye — I see scads of reasserters who support WO making cause with those [like me] who don’t support it. You can hardly throw a stone in the lower diocese without striking clergy who support WO — and in and amongst the conservative circuits in other places in TEC as well.
If you’re talking about folks like *you* — well, you’re not going to make “common cause” anyway.
I’m not certain why it is you’re so sensitive about folks thinking you’re “not orthodox” — every Anglo-Catholic out there thinksyou are “not orthodox” as they do me as well. And you know what? I think they are “not orthodox” too. Both sides get along far far far far better than we do with the revisionists . . . because I’m confident that my Anglo-Catholic friends believe the gospel.
Of course . . . I get along pretty well with Roman Catholics too . . . because I know they are willing to submit themselves to scripture, unlike the progressive activists in TEC who clearly are not.
As a Roman Catholic put it recently, the current struggles are really the difference between those who believe that truth exists and that it may be found in God’s word written and are willing to look for it, and those who don’t believe those things, and write boldly about their lack of belief in such things.
But Dale Rye, why be distressed about this common cause amongst Christians? Aren’t you thrilled that Christians are getting down to the nub of things and discovering their commonality in the gospel, even while disagreeing about many other important things involving Christianity?
Amen, Sarah: “Aren’t you thrilled that Christians are getting down to the nub of things and discovering their commonality in the gospel, even while disagreeing about many other important things involving Christianity?”
Larry Morse, my home parish is quietly leaving the ACA over just the issues you raise. We don’t hate our bishop; he’s a very nice man. The organization has turned its face away from Anglican issues and towards Rome, and that’s where its focus will stay, as far as I can see. The ACA/TAC is no longer interested in intra-Anglican matters. This is why you don’t see priests and bishops addressing them.
Hepworth is an Australian bishop who began his life as a Roman Catholic and has for many years turned his eyes towards returning with the whole TAC. Reports are that a large number of TAC bishops, including many from the ACA, formally signed a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church signifying complete assent to all its teachings at the time they sent their request for intercommunion to the Vatican. I think if you search the news on the TAC website you can find a report on this with a photo.
Re: #5,
“Perhaps the biggest development in the ongoing disintegration of the Anglican Communion over the last couple of weeks has not been GAFCON and the reappraiser reaction to it, but rather the increasing tendency in some reasserter circles to publicly link the issues of gay ordination and female ordination in such as way as to exclude from the circle of true believers anyone who cannot summon equal outrage about both issues.”
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord (and pass the ammunition)!
“If that tendency continues, it is going to make it increasingly difficult for the many reasserters who are not convinced opponents of women’s ordination to make common cause with those who so openly doubt their orthodoxy.”
It is a good and salutary thing to separate traditionalists from mere Laodicean conservatives — and so, once again “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”
And re: #9,
Where have you been living recently? Every single one of the ACA/TAC signed on last October at their Portsmouth Synod (and those who were absent, subsequently) to (a) the Catechism of the Catholic Church (indicating their acceptance of all of the dogmatic teachings contained in it, and not excepting those on the “papal dogmas” and “Marian dogmas” either), and (b) a formal letter, subsequently delivered to the CDF in Rome by a delegation of TAC bishops, including +Hepworth, seeking “union and communion” with the Apostolic See on that basis. The petition was formally accepted and matters are proceeding smoothly in Rome towards their happy conclusion.
And here’s a comic note. Word went around in early May that the AbC, when he met with the pope on May 5th, had asked HH to “defer action” on the TAC’s petition until “after the Lambeth Conference.” Lambeth Palace issued a denial late in May that the AbC has made any such request, or that he even spoke with the pope concerning the matter. Well, since his meeting with the pope was but a 20-minute “courtesy call” the “Lambeth Denial” was completely true — on its own terms. What it didn’t mention was that the AbC had, on that same visit and at his own request, met with the members of the CDF who are handling “Anglican affairs” to try to warn them off their proposed “outreach” to “distressed Anglicans.” I am afraid that he came away from that meeting empty-handed and unsatisfied.
Thanks, Dr. Tighe. I wasn’t sure it was ALL the bishops and didn’t want to say so if only some had signed.
They would suggest that those who cannot accept the clear teaching of Scripture that male and female are equally made in the image of God perhaps need to find a church that agrees with them.
We had that, Dale, until you guys changed it. And it would be nice if you could quote the scriptures that represent what you call this “clear teaching”. Don’t cite it. Quote it. I would like to see if you know the actual words.
Katharine and Dr. Tighe: Can you please send me a copy or your entries, #12 and #13, to me at my email address, L666555@gwi.net. I cannot find a way to take entries from this blog and transmit them. I asked the elves to help me and they said they didn’t know anyway to make entries transferable. There are people I really need to send this entries to, and this includes my deacon and Archbishop Hepworth.
Where have I been, Dr. Tighe? Apparently in Never-Never land with Peter Pan. In an earlier entry you mentioned the concordat – if that is what I can call it – signed by TAC in London last September, and I asked my deacon what was going on. He dismissed my fears, saying that none of it contained any of the taradiddle (my word) that Romans espouse. I can think of no other printable word for Marian dogma except taradiddle. Dr. Tighe, I have no idea who you are, but I gather you are someone of theological substance. What you have said has upset me greatly. I really cannot stay in any organization that is headed to Rome. I cannot.
I heard +++Hepworth speak at the international synod here in Portland, Maine four or five years ago. I was a senior warden at the time and went to the synod with my pastor. +++Hepworth spoke most feelingly about intercommunion with Rome and my pastor said I was worrying without real cause, that the archbishop’s goal would not in any way interfere with Anglicans. However, it was only after that, that I begin to ask why the ACA and TAC acted as if they were isolated from the rest of the Anglican turmoils. Above it, indeed. So I posted an entry in the matter a week or so ago, and I received an email from +++Hepworth asking for my phone number, saying that he would call me. Someone, somehow must have sent my post to him.
Even now, I am astounded. It hardly seems credible.
I do hope that you two will email me directly. Larry Morse
[i]Larry, however you asked your question, it was quite a different animal, I think, related to doing a search on different terms and automatically printing those comments. You can easily copy & paste comments to a text document. Click on the comment link for the comment you are interested in and highlight the text with your mouse, then use Ctrl-C to copy and Ctrl-V to paste into a text file or your e-mail. Easy.[/i]
In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Whatever do they teach them in these schools?” One wonders about the future of literacy. My comment #3 described three groups, two of which would read their opponents out of orthodox Christianity based (in part) on their attitude towards women’s ordination, and a group in the middle who, as Sarah aptly says, “are getting down to the nub of things and discovering their commonality in the gospel, even while disagreeing about many other important things involving Christianity?”
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the English word “us,” it is the second-person plural possessive personal pronoun. That means that when I refer to “Those of [b]us[/b] in the middle who regard both support for and opposition to women’s ordination as equally consistent with commitment to biblical faith,” I place myself among that number, and therefore in opposition to the other two perspectives. It is not surprising that those who lump me in with Susan Russell find me “completely predictable,” because they have stopped hearing anything that I (or anyone else who isn’t 100% in their camp) is actually saying.
It is that tendency to blow off potential allies that is going to land quite a lot of you in teeny, tiny Protestant sects (that are, of course, free to call themselves Anglican or even Catholic) composed of a diminishing number of true believers in an increasingly narrow Gospel that has little to do with the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.
Why should anybody take a movement seriously when so many of its prominent spokesmen refuse to deal with anybody outside their movement as an individual man or woman for whom Christ died, rather than as some sort of generic straw man holding wholly conjectural opinions defined by the true believers and not by the outsider persons themselves. Apart from masochists, rational people do not join forces with someone who has just slapped them.
LOL.
RE: “It is that tendency to blow off potential allies that is going to land quite a lot of you in teeny, tiny Protestant sects (that are, of course, free to call themselves Anglican or even Catholic) composed of a diminishing number of true believers in an increasingly narrow Gospel that has little to do with the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.”
Dale Rye . . . [i]that’s what you and I are in right now[/i] . . . threatening former Episcopalians with the thought that they might end up in “teeny, tiny Protestant sects” is richly ironic seeing as how they’ve left one.
#16 elves: You underestimate how incompetent I am. Still I will take your advice and hope it works for me. My computer knows me only too well and frequently does whatever it chooses, particularly if it irritates me. Larry
I shall take what Katharine and Dr. Tighe wrote and email copies to my deacon and to +++Hepworth. For me, their answers will determine critical mass. I have this dreadful feeling that I am being led by the nose.
Scratch what I said, Dale Rye. I should never have said it. I think I have respectible reasons for my conclusion, but the thrust was pointless and counterproductive.
I remain at a loss why rational beings would join the Roman church. Is it simply that the papacy guarantees the safety of not having to think any more? Surely the Marian dogma must offend those who pay attention to what scripture actually says? I hope someone will tell me what benefits are derived from joining a church which patently worships a woman and which therefore, is engaged in idol worship. What else can it be? I would think if one were going to swim some river, it would be across the Bosporus. Larry
Larry
Larry,
Orthodoxy would not be a good place for you to go. We too hold to the ancient faith and venerate the Holy Theotokos Ever Virgin Mary. While we do not subscribe to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception we venerate Mary as first among the saints. I also suspect that you are an iconoclast.
No, I am afraid you would not find any comfort on the this side of the Bosporus. You are a Protestant. I would suggest the Southern Baptists or maybe some Calvinist group. Perhaps the LCMS?
ICXC
John
Larry, I wonder if you have seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. If so I am curious how you reacted to the scenes involving Jesus’ relationship with his mother. I was, like you, an ardent opponent of Rome’s Marian dogmas, but my attitude began to shift, and those scenes in the movie really seald that shift for me.
Here is what I mean. We are tuaght that Christ is fully man and fully God, but I hadn’t realized until I watched that film just how much I had dismissed Jesus’ human relationship to Mary. She was a bit player in my reading of Scripture, and I looked at her infrequent appearances in Scripture and the times when Jesus seemed to dismiss her as evidence that we should not attribute much importance in her relationship to Him. But that movie revealed to me how utterly inhuman such an attitude was. What man, what good and healthy man would not continue to love his mother. I realized that I was making Christ’s divinity an enemy of the fullness of His humanity, something I know I must not do. I was essentially thinking like a monophysite with regard to His human relationships, or worse, like a Docetist. I saw that Mary must be see as VERY improtant to Christ the man, AND, because His humanity and divinity are united in the same Person without schizophrenia, one who is iimportant to Christ the Son of man is also important to Christ the Son of God. This is especially true when one contemplates the intersection of Time and Eternity in the Incarnate Lord. When the world was made through Christ, He must have had in His eternal mind His relationship with His mother, and not just as a future reality, for Time does control His divinity, but in a real way like it was present.
That new perspective made it much easier to see Mary as Queen of heaven. For what in all creation could be more important to the Son of God than the mother of His Incarnation? And what is thus important to Christ should be equally important to us.
Now I realize that in this, as in so many theological and spiritual questions, it is possible to overemphasize one truth at the expense of another so as to make them seem enemies. One, after all, needn’t be a Pelagian to resist Calvinism on Free Will. My new appreaciation for Mary does not make me less appalled by the way she often seems to ecclepse Jesus in people’s devotion to her. But I don’t see that as coming from official doctrine so much as from popular practices that are negligently tolerated by the church.
Perhaps this will be helpful to you.
Dale, don’t you note the irony of quoting Lewis in this debate when his position was firmly against yours on this issue?
As for being predictable, anyone who somewhat consitently takes a theological position that is understandable, even if contestable, will be somewhat predictable.
As for your protest at being lumped with the progay crowd you have no leg to stand on. It is all a matter of perspective. From your perspective the distinction is critical but from mine it is less relevant, as both of you are in the same group. For atheists, all believers in God, no matter their theology, are practically the same.
In Logic it works out this way:
All B are A
Some A are not B
No C are A
You and Susan Russel are part of the same group. Let us call this this group A. Group A believes in the ordination of women. Susan is in another group B. This group believes in gay ordination et al. Now I suppose it is theoretically possible that some supporters of the gay agenda could oppose WO, but I am not aware of any. So practically it could be said that all B are A. This would be diagramed as two concentric circles, B being a smaller one within A. You represent that portion of A that is not B. I represnt that group, C, that is not A at all. Thus to me you all can be regarded as A. The fact that I can see a theological connection to you two which you disbute does not make my grouping of you together any less logical.