Just to give you a flavour, we had a story from Alice [Chung Po Chuen] from Madagascar, whose husband has to walk eight hours to church, where there isn’t a public pathway or proper road to do that. He’s away from home for anything up to six weeks at a time; so Alice has to hold together a household and keep the family together. She resigned her job as a leading product-development manÂager in Mauritius after her husband’s consecration, and reloÂcated to Madagascar. There is a very painful story, but one that Alice is living and working with great joy and fortitude.
Then there is the story of Mugisa [Isingoma] from the Congo. Congo suffered many, many years of conflict, and still does, and she and her family felt called to come and exercise a ministry in the role of reconciliation, bringing together two ethnic groups.
Her husband was arrested and his life was in danger, and had it not been for the intervention of the then Archbishop of Canterbury and others he would not be alive. When you hear Mugisa tell her story, again you’re touched by the passion and commitment with which she feels called to minister alongside her husband.
It is very humbling, and it has been a good learning experience sharing with our brothers and sisters from across the Communion.
I truly think that North America’s arrogant revisionists just need to keep silent about their demands after reading stories like this. There is more dedication in simple country priests in many of these majority provinces than in the loudest failing North American diocese.
How reassuring, in light of these stories, that My Lord New Hampshire says that he “{doesn’t} want to be a martyr.” He thinks that “being a martyr” means having to endure voices in dissent of his consecration to the episcopate. Reading about the experiences of godly people like this throughout the Communion, it’s clear he doesn’t have the slightest idea of what “martyrdom” really means, and that his comparison of his experiences to those of his Brother bishops their wives, and other Christians is, frankly, grotesque.
It would be interesting if all candidates for bishop had to serve a few years in a church in the Congo or Madagascar, might weed out the current crop of political elitists we are stuck with.