Jim Naughton posted this comment on Thinking Anglicans while commenting on a different item, but it seems apropos :
WHEREAS we don't know which candidate will be elected in California, and
WHEREAS we don't know whether the elected candidate will be confirmed by General Convention, and
WHEREAS we have no idea which of the myriad proposed, rumored, imagined responses to the Windsor Report will be embraced by General Convention, and
WHEREAS we don't know by what yardstick (or whose yardstick) that response will be judged, and
WHEREAS the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada might not be the only provinces judged to be on the wrong side of the Windsor Report
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED...
that we not get too worked up about anonymously sourced items such as this one.
The difference is that this is not anonymously sourced. Ms. Gledhill claims there is a transcript of this speech. And unfortunately, David Virtue's sources seem not to have provided him with a copy. But he does have excellent coverage of the battle against Bishop Bennison (please remember four Dioceses in your prayers tomorrow: Tennessee, Albany, West Texas, and Pennsylvania). But Mr. Naughton's counsel remains solid.
But let this be clear: ++Rowan Cantaur fears both a schism in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. His choice of the Bishop of Exeter as an envoy and the contents of his speech are very pointed. And there is a meeting scheduled in late April in which ++Rowan will consult with such prelates and lights among the laos as +Wright, +Nazir-Ali, the ACC delegation of the C. of E., and Anglican Mainstream. He wants to know what the Evangelical wing wants and he wants to have plans in place before June.
And some time in May, a letter will come from Lambeth to a certain address within the City of New York addressed to the Most Reverend Frank Tracy Griswold. And this letter will be kind, fudgy, and friendly in the salutatory, but it will be a yardstick written (as Jim Naughton might put it).
And there will be a line to this effect: "If the General Convention does not repent of its hasty and autonomous repudiation of the mind of the Communion concerning human sexuality, the ecumenical activities of the Communion may be irreparably wounded for the foreseeable future. Moreover, such a failure might destroy the unity of the Church of England, which I have vowed to uphold, and the unity of the Communion which looks to my See. I cannot allow that to happen. Thus, I will be forced to severe those bonds of communion which have joined our Churches for two centuries. It goes without saying that I will not invite you or any of the other bishops of TEC to the Lambeth Conference."
The Bishop of Exeter's speech is a worrisome sign of the mind of the Archbishop, but it is understandable. He has tried as far as possible to emphasize our need not to repent of what we believe or what we believe God calls us to do but of how our pride in that belief has caused us to act "irregularly." He wants us to remain in conversation. He still wants there to be a conversation. He suspects we have much to teach to and learn from the rest of the Communion and that the crises that will test the modern world in the next decades could take advantage of the collective wisdom of the Communion's churches. The truth is, our actions affect his conscience less than the cronyism of Central Africa and whatever really is going in Nigeria, but that our actions will make it very hard for him to hold them accountable. His recent spate of interviews and his past history as a theologian make this all too clear. He seeks a catholic ecclesiology in a less-than-catholic polity. Such an ecclesiology will guide him.
I am not yet convinced this is wisdom. But I appreciate that he is beginning to bare his crook a little.
But if I'm right about his mood, matters will become very interesting:
Any break will be provisional for the time being. He's at least going to give us until he retires. He will encourage our unity by not recognizing the Network. If he really did name them after Bonhoeffer's church, I suspect he did so to warn them of future suffering rather than an easy fix. He intends a separation, not a divorce. AKMA's plans to declare allegiance to ++Rowan will be thwarted. ++Rowan is not going to create any special jurisdictions. He will not wound his ecclesiology. But that will not be a problem. On some American corners, you will see the Church of Nigeria or the Province of Southeast Asia etc. No, he will leave the mess to us as poetic justice for our autonomy.
Now please go to the beginning of the post and read Jim Naughton's comment again. I just have laid out the worst case scenario from the little evidence we have. Ultimately, the times belong to God.
Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that we may all be one as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are One.
5 comments:
A very interesting analysis, Caelius. I really so enjoy reading what you write; I've meant to tell you that before. Yours is one of my very favorite blogs.
And how right you are that "the times belong to God." We must do what we think right - all the while remembering that, as Rowan Williams has recently written, "Everything begins with this vision and hope: to put the neighbor in touch with God in Christ."
That goes for the Anglican Communion, also, and it means always keeping in mind the answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?" We have here a seemingly intolerable, and unresolveable, conflict. That means that it will resolve - everything does, eventually - in a way that none of us can picture, at least not yet.
And today is Annunciation. (And that was sort of a surprise twist, also, and the most interesting of unexpected solutions, don't you think?)
[Flushes crimson]
Yes, it's true. God is full of unexpected solutions. Which is very comforting when you have no idea what to do.
There are rumors of open floor nominations in TN and I'm praying something miraculous happens there.
I must say, that +Cantuar has not been so good about challenging the pride of belief of others and the minute he gave in with John+ it was clear where he stood. His catholic ecclesiology is also incapable of dealing with mess, and that's what we're in. As we've always been if we take just a short glance at catholic history.
I've offered a solution that would keep us talking without sacrificing anyone, but I don't see many takers in TEC. What ++Williams has offered are solutions that sacrifice lgbt folks every time even to the point of being silent about Nigeria. How can conversations happen under such ospices? At this point speaking of more conversation sans basic freedoms to speak is tantamount to lying to oneself and to the world. Such silence will in the long run harm the Church every bit as much as schism. His is not an easy path but there are more than one way to unity, and I would like to see him offer solutions that impose sacrifices on all of us rather than a small group of the Church. In the end, my allegiance is to Christ, as bishops have too often betrayed those who are my sort and condition in the Body.
I just noticed that Amnesty International has spoken out against Nigeria. It would seem secular institutions have more conscience than the our Communion. And they're consistent, they speak out against U.S. policies as well.
*Christopher, what I like about your solution is that it is very principled way of heaping coals upon various heads. I think if ++Rowan's stand is clear, there will be a better chance of it finding takers in ECUSA. But I worry that the intersection of the set of those who believe in the sanctity of fratrimony and sororimony and those who care about our relationship with the Communion is becoming vanishingly small.
The other option, of course, is writing a letter to Lambeth Palace and calling him out.
But I wanted to point out that I think the worst price for General Convention's boldness is that our relationships with the rest of the Communion will be based on relationships in Christ rather than relationships through institutions. That is, they will still exist to some extent. This will be just as true for our mystical sacramental unity as for our mutual efforts to heal the harms of the world. Unfortunately, institutions really do help expediting the latter.
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