The church can be a “thankless employer”, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury has disclosed in her first account of what it’s like to be married to the head of the Anglican Communion.
Jane Williams said clergy and their families have to endure “poor boundaries” between their public and private lives, “laughable” job descriptions and “few opportunities to congratulate oneself on a job well done”.
She claimed the spouses of church leaders are expected to entertain guests as well as raising children and following their own careers, and admitted visitors to Lambeth Palace are sometimes “shocked” at how untidy it is.
No offense, Lady Williams, but wasn’t this promised?
Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?
-Luke 9:23-25 (New International Version)
Sounds like someone’s expectations were set a little too high!
And I found it to be easier to forget about “following your own career” and just concentrate on raising the children.
Being raised a PK, but certainly not in the international spotlight, I can somewhat ‘feel her pain’. I certainly know we four boys left the rectory in a mess more times than my parents could count. 😉
Peace,
This is what has become of ministry in the Church, it has moved from being a vocation, in the proper sense, to simply another way to earn a living. The World has in many ways become too informal, why do people feel so compelled to share the minute details of their lives in so public forums, telling us how messy their bathrooms are or what their spouses look like first thing in the morning. We don’t need to know all this. Yes, the lives of ministers’ families are often made unpleasant by some crude and meddling people, who given the opportunity would control every aspect of your life. I have been both a full-time presbyter and a non-stipended minister, which is what I’ve done for the last five years. I’ll be honest and tell you that I generally don’t enjoy having to go to the Gulag everyday, [i] c’est la vie[/i]. There is currently no “Hekhsher Tzedek” in the Church. Clergymen don’t belong to trade-unions and go on strike for better working conditions. Often, I’d come home from a vestry meeting and ask my wife whether I had the word WELCOME stamped on my forehead? Now, I suppose we will have clergy-spouse tell all books and spot appearances, perhaps even some new t.v. program entitled Trading Ministers or even better Trading Bishops. I’m with William P. Sulik on this.
#1 That seems an odd way to use that verse. Anyway, I am right there with you #3, I too am a Pastors Kid. I feel that bishops should treat potential ministerial candidates like marriage counselors treat potential mates: “If I can talk you out of this you’re not ready, and I am gonna try to talk you out of it”
Well, if Mrs. Williams’ husband had done a good job, rather than subverting the Bible and the Gospel of salvation from sin at every time and place that it really counted and now openly “including” orthodox TEC bishops out of Lambeth (the latest being +Ed Salmon on his way to Lambeth with non-refundable reservations), then he could congratulate +++himself on a job well done! Of course, he has done a great job stabbing Christian believers lay and clergy in the back, so, on second thought, good on you, mate!
Poor Lady Williams has lost track of the fact that the CoE (as are all churches, more particularly, mainline, society-chasing churches) are human creations. Unless one is a compleat masochiist, one must never love someone or something that doesn’t love you back. The further from Jesus a church strays the more important it is to observe this axiom of life.
My former rector and his successor seem to have played that realationship concept quite wrongly in my opinion within the Diocese of Virginia. I pray for them.
May I make clear that in my previous post both gentlemen opted to trust Bishop Lee and his Coadjutor. Bad move.
Let me be the first to recommend that she and her hubby move out of Lambeth Palace at the first possible moment.
Milton [#6], I think we need a new corollary to Godwin’s Law for comments like yours: When a commenter — in this case, you — uses the main posting as an excuse to bash a church leader on unrelated grounds, the discussion is effectively over, and the basher has lost whatever debate was in progress, along with considerable face.
#10, not at all. The axiom calling for the withdrawal of ones love from that which does not return ones love remains perfectly valid. The unfortunate choices of my former rector and his successor are merely illustrative of the validity of the axiom – witness the horrific actions and notable legal failures of the said diocesan and his successor.
Susan Howatch, please write another novel. We are dying to know what goes on inside . . .. This will be better than whatever happens next. Oh, heck. Who cares what happens next, anyway; but we would have liked to know how we got there, wouldn’t we? Now that would be fun reading.
#10 D. C., I suppose it depends on whose ox is being gored. I call your attention to comments on threads on this topic at SFIF. Some commenters excuse +Salmon’s un-inviation by saying that retired bishops are not invited. Others recall Lambeth 98 where TEC/ECUSA sent many sufficiently liberal retired bishops without a peep of protest or understatedly British barring of the door. Not to mention the leaks coming out of this Lambeth that hint that the “mind” of the indaba groups may produce such an overwhelming “Holy” Spirit gush of conviction as to sweep +VGR into the official procedings, cut to the quick with repentance for having excluded him, and so end his living martyrdom, enabling the living sacrifice to crawl off the altar unscathed.
Rowan Williams cannot have it both ways, chiding those who have had enough of being lied to for staying away and planning rescue missions for lost and eternally dying souls without the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ, while simultaneously out the other side of his mouth (not even you can honestly claim +++RW doesn’t know and approve) sotto voce telling some still within TEC that they are not welcome.
Don’t think you can hide behind Godwin’s Law in extended application. Read the comment archives at Fr. Jake’s or any thread of comments at the short list – InchAtATime, Thinking Anglicans, Mark Harris’, you can fill in the rest for bashing on unrelated grounds and the relentless spouting of the usual reappraiser talking points and shoddy hermenutics, when an attempt is even made at hermenutics. Of course, you would dearly love to stipulate that anyone who disagrees with you enough to sting is automatically discredited. My comment does address the topic of the post – if +++RW had established proper boundaries and discipline for those who acted in ways that documents they signed said “would tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level” then the Williamses wouldn’t have the results spilling over into their private life. But just wait – this is just the first trickle of water from the cracks in the foundation of the dam – wait until it finishes bursting as TEC and ACoC bishops return home and then even more at TEC’s GC09. Christ have mercy!
Milton – it is possible that if Rowan had established boundaries, you might not be very happy yourself. You’d still be upset and making ridiculous commentaries about reappraisers. Why is it impossible for God to save the souls of both reasserters and reappraisers? Is God limited?
Wow, talk about off topic.
What the heck does all this have to do with the archbishop’s wife’s frustration with being swept up in his duties, roles, and the expectations that official residences must be more museums than homes? I have a nagging suspicion that she is not the first wife of an AoC to have these feelings. I’m sure she’s not the first clergy spouse to harbor such feelings on occasion. How it maps to the modern debate about the status of the Communion baffles me.
Peace, deep abiding Spirit-filled peace,
Milton [#13], tu quoque has long been recognized as invalid logic.
(Tu quoque being Latin, of course, for you’re another, or more colloquially, Oh yeah? Well, you’re even worse!.)
To respond to your specific challenges: On the whole, the commenters at Thinking Anglicans and Mark Harris’s Preludium blog are very much models of civility. The comment rhetoric at Father Jake’s used to get a bit overheated sometimes, but Terry+ was good at policing; my gestalt impression was that the reappraiser ranters there were considerably less crazed than the reasserter ranters here (and some of the ranters at SFIF are in another category, or dimension, altogether).
Unfortunately I’ve been unable to make the time to read Susan Russell’s+ Inch at a Time blog, nor Friends of Jake, so I can’t opine on them.
#14 John, oh John! If Jesus Christ looked down the ages and saw my miserable, filthy, cold-hearted, arrogant, hell-deserving soul and laid down His life for the joy that was set before Him, still despising the shame, to save me (and He did look, see, die, rise bodily and save!), then He can and does save sinners of all varieties who finally despair of their own goodness or strength (there are none who are good, no, not one) and cry out to Jesus to take over, to foreclose on their collapsing, condemned lives, and to begin remaking them new from the heart outward in His image and spirit, not the spirit of the age.
If Rowan had established boundaries and discipline even to the extent of the Windsor Report, let alone Dromantine or Dar es Salaam, there would be the real possibility of restoring TEC to an actual believing Christian church, though after much long struggle. The struggle would have been worth it. But now TEC’s overwhelmingly apostate leadership will continue and expand enforcement of the new religion, which bears no remaining elements of salvational Christianity and is another gospel, which is really no Gospel, holding to a form of godliness while denying its power.
“Ridiculous” is your opinion and attempt to dismiss while evading any answer to the content of remarks made or to deal with, let alone even acknowledge, the observable facts on the ground which reappraisers have been busily creating for 30+ years. When reasserters create their own facts on the ground (GAFCON), you seem to find yourself kicking against the goads.
No, John, God is not limited. He is moving, and no doubt He will use the Lambeth procedings, whatever course they take, using what is meant for evil to do His good, to establish and spread His faithful church on earth to the proclamation of the Gospel of salvation. But we may see that He finds TEC, ACoC, COE, et al, too limited, “too small a box”, and burst them to shreds as He burst the tomb which could not imprison Him, and use those who forsake their own will for His will to do His will, to their surpassing joy.
D. C. surely with your lawerly skills you can do better than ignore and fail to answer substantive responses to the issues you raise in your comment. Instead, you choose to use the same playground taunt with which you charge me, classic reappraiser projection. What about Rowan Williams’ total failure to follow through with the Windsor Report? “Let’s not, and say we did” does not mean that in reality TEC complied with the Windsor Report. Whining about misunderstood polity and new revelations of the Holy Spirit doesn’t cut it.