George Conger of the Living Church has published a short article about Canterbury’s clarification regarding +VGR’s Lambeth invitation status. This elf found one section ironic:
In an interview with a reporter for The Living Church, a spokesman for Archbishop Williams called for a halt to further speculation and confirmed there had been no changes or new actions taken over Bishop Robinson’s invitation to Lambeth since the invitations were extended last month.
Senior advisors to Archbishop Williams noted it was possible that some bishops may have their invitations withdrawn to the gathering of the Anglican Communion’s bishops next summer in Canterbury.
So on one hand, Lambeth spokesmen want no more speculation. But in the next breath they keep it alive by speculating about the possibility of withdrawn invitations. The media and the blogosphere can certainly generate a lot of news about “no news!” LOL!
I suspect that even though Lambath are stating that there has been no change to VGR’s status with regard to an invitation, they may be reacting to the wave of comment which came about as a result of Gledhill’s piece, positing the change to VGR’s status..
The Gledhill piece, though not *new* news, did seem to put the chance of an invitation to VGR into the realms of possibility. Whether the leak to Ms Gledhill was intended as a trial balloon or not, it certainly became one.
The final statement of the current press release, about possibly rescinding previously issued invitations, while again not NEW news, (it had been mentioned in the original release from Lambeth), by simply be being put in juxtaposition with the reiteration of no invitation to VGR, is the more interesting.
Nothing is set, but with the tenor of this last press release from Lambeth, it certainly changes the focus from the possibility of VGR being in attendance, to the possibility of others (of whatever faction is not yet clear) now NOT being invited.
Interesting times indeed.