Actually it is hard to see how there could be an ”˜orderly separation’ between traditionalists and liberals because in many cases the fault-lines do not lie between provinces but within them. In America attempts are to be made in September to depose traditionalist bishops while court battles rage over church property. There is nothing orderly about this.
It is also hard to see how Anglicans can be said to have ”˜reaffirmed their mutual bonds’ when bishops at Gafcon committed themselves to setting up a ”˜province of North America’ as an alternative to the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
Rowan Williams is pinning his hope on the Covenant and on a ”˜Pastoral Forum’ made up of members representative of the breadth of the Communion and able to travel and offer, in the words of the Windsor Continuation Group, ”˜pastoral advice and guidelines in conflicted, confused and fragile situations’. There is no guarantee that either the Covenant or the Pastoral Forum will prove acceptable to the Communion. There are questions about whether Parliament would give its approval to the Church of England entering the Covenant if this were seen as narrowing the broad national and popular base of the church.
As the Archbishop of Canterbury told the final Lambeth press conference, winning support for the Covenant among the 44 national and regional churches of the Communion could take up to 2013. That date coincides with the call by some bishops at Lambeth for another gathering in five years’ time. If Williams intends to see the matter through to some kind of resolution, he may be residing in Lambeth Palace for some years to come. Fortunately he is only 58.
In the meantime it remains essential to keep the moratoria on the ordination of gay and lesbian priests and the blessing of same-sex unions in place. It is difficult to see this happening if traditionalist bishops from elsewhere in the Communion continue to take parishes and dioceses in the US under their wing or ordain bishops for North America.
Paul Richardson writes:
“In the meantime it remains essential to keep the moratoria on the ordination of gay and lesbian priests and the blessing of same-sex unions in place.”
I’d be very surprised if those moratoria are put in place by TEC and enforced.
“It is difficult to see this happening if traditionalist bishops from elsewhere in the Communion continue to take parishes and dioceses in the US under their wing or ordain bishops for North America.”
It’s difficult to see it happening even if traditionalist bishops do not continue to take North American parishes under their wings.
BUT those traditionalist bishops should indeed stop. In fact, it would now be tactically and strategically boneheaded not to.
As for Richardson’s idea about an Anglican center of study, I don’t think that will work. The traditional centers have been Oxford and Cambridge, with all their variety, and small theological colleges of various stripes. There just isn’t one Anglican college or one form of Anglicanism that could be advanced in a particular academic setting.
In a word, no.
Will the Lambeth Conference bring peace to the Anglican world? No.
[blockquote] In the meantime it remains essential to keep the moratoria on the ordination of gay and lesbian priests and the blessing of same-sex unions in place. It is difficult to see this happening if traditionalist bishops from elsewhere in the Communion continue to take parishes and dioceses in the US under their wing or ordain bishops for North America.[/blockquote]
Notice how he gets it entirely backwards. The communion was not rent by cross border interventions which all the primates unanimously stated at DeS were a response to the problem. Besides Katherine Jefferts Schori keeps telling us that it is only a handful of churches. So the moratoria on SSUB’s and homosexual bishops should depend on the few churches. Right?
Of course, the TEO violated the moratoria on the day after Lambeth and continue to do so.
This is barely worth comment. Handwringing about moratoria holding that have never held in the first place is laughable. Paul Richardson should know all about this very well. Years ago when he was in Papua New Guinea, the Episcopal Synod of America had a plan almost to fruition which would have involved his former province in interventions in the US. A stronger intervention from New York (and probably the Runcie Lambeth crew) scuttled the plans, and Richardson had a great deal to do with the scuttling. Shortly after, he was on the path to bigger and better things in England. I know about this because I worked for the ESA in those days.
Jeffrey Steenson (who went to New Guinea to negotiate the deal), Clarence Pope, Bill Wantland, and quite a few others can confirm this sordid story of opportunity lost. To blame the rescue efforts of faithful foreign bishops for the sinful behavior of Browning, Griswold, & Schori, Inc. is laughable. Revisionist history of the most absurd sort.
Paul Richardson should keep his handwringing to himself, and should certainly get his facts straight on what caused this problem in the first place. No credibility here on this issue. Pitiful.
Re: #4,
Thank you for this. It is yet another indication that the whole uproar about SS, +VGR etc. and ad nauseam, is just a rerun of the WO uproar 25+ years earlier, and that the intra Anglican outcome of the latter presages that of the second. It is pathetic to see the advocates of “orthodoxy” rushing belatedly into battle, when their inaction a generation previously ensured that their later fight would be in vain.
Yes, Dr. Tighe; I agree with you.
By the way, Brien, one great lacuna in my knowledge is how the Anglican Province of Papua New Guinea, which was the most stalwart Anglo-Catholic Province in the Anglican Communion in the 70s and early 80s, and (from what I heard then) considering intervening in provinces that “ordained” women in a manner analogous to the “Global South” interventions since 2003 (as well as considering going “over to Rome” en masse), how that province has (as I conjecture) been so effectively neutered that one never hears of dioceses such as Fort Worth, San Joaquin or Quincy seeking succour from it, as opposed to from the Southern Cone — which last seems a rather ungainly match for at least two of these dioceses, even if only a temporary one.
Can you shed any light on this?
[i] This is not a thread on WO. Any comments on WO will be deleted.[/i]
It was not my intention to make it a thread on WO. Rather, my hope is to learn what factors or circumstances have transformed Papua New Guinea from a the sole province that took a stance 25+ years ago that anticipated that of Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria etc. today, to one that appears wholly hors de combat in the current situation. I am sure that such an explanation would interest more people than just me.
Oh, the wonders of the internet! I have had several responses to my query on this thread, and they all point to Paul Richardson himself as the “double agent” who first encouraged, and then subverted and betrayed, the “Papua New Guinea” initiative in the 80s.