Graduate school is very quickly heating up again. I have two classes next term. Furthermore, I have two ongoing research projects, which really don't seem to be coming to a gracious close very soon. As you can tell from the various series on this blog, I very rarely finish anything. Indeed, I have profound trouble with completion generally. On top of that, I have two conference papers due Easter Wednesday. I'm TAing a course and volunteered to guest lecture on Easter Friday. Holy Week is my favorite week of the year, but it looks like it will be a rather unbalanced mix of work and prayer.
Tomorrow, however, I will be seeing Die Grosse Stille . If you're lucky, you may get a review.
If you get a chance, read AKMA's latest piece. It's very much in the vein of a lot of writing these days about "polity," but he makes it a bit more palatable than other dishes. I've asked him a hard question through his e-mail comment system. He also will have a piece in the Christian Century that will go online fairly soon, which he fears will lose him friends. Knowing many clergy in his Diocese, it is my profound hope that his friends there will keep an open mind. Because I suspect that there's an astonishing secret behind AKMA's life. That seven years after Rowan Williams was born, AKMA was formed by God to act as an American analog to Williams, so that one could divine Williams' thoughts by asking Adam. Some would say they are simpatico .
Well, that's a strange thought for the night. I guess the nightly phantasms came early.
2 comments:
As I wrote to bls responding to your thoughts: I think our polity and ecclesiology is more complicated than Fr. Adam hints at here. Voting has been a part of conciliar processes from quite early on--bishops voting of course (and getting quite political, I might add). That we've moved to open this to priests and laity is a move that can be helpful and harmful but I think recognizes that such discernment requires the fidelium, not only bishops (as assent to conciliar decrees is clear as folks in the streets said yeah or nay) that some of our greatest theologians and teachers have been priests and laity, not bishops and that our polity is not simply one of A Church but many Churches in Communion. I'm of no mind to throw out bishops, as its a part of our pleni esse, but let's be honest that bishops after all have been a mixed bag at times and can do great harm in teaching as well as good. Let's forget Pike for a moment (I happen to think his theology was troubling on basic dogma as Huntington would put it and probably worthy of censure or presentiments), right now a Primate is teaching jail for lgbt persons (minding that Nigerian prisons are nasty places as Mr. Mac-Iyalla has informed us)with the power of the state. And far too few of our teachers in Fr. Adam's high and even authoritarian proposal have spoken up by name against this gross violation. This sits at the center of the formation into fact of Archbishop William's ecclesiological understanding. It cannot be ignored as theory only when the consequences seem to be such that in duress the Church will happily silence the harmed and remain silent about their being harmed.
A little checks and balances isn't a bad thing given Sin which in our earthly pilgrimage has been known to mar the Church and its teachers have been some of the greatest proponents of such in the name of Jesus. It wasn't bishops who stood up to Hitler, but Franz Jaegerstaetter, a farmer. I asked Fr. Bill to address this here.
Having read Zizioulas and Volf, not Ratzinger as of yet on this topic, what Fr. Bill hints at in Fr. Adam's reading is a tendency to subsume all but bishops into nothingness or simply extensions of the bishop (which while a convenient read from Ignatius is NOT the whole of the tradition on this matter by any stretch), its an understanding of communion that perhaps in Chalcedonian terms is too quick to break down difference, just between humans at this point rather than the divine and human natures in the Person of Christ (given the Trinity as Athanasius mad clear in using ousia in his words was about our relating as the Father and the Son relate in oneness which is a oneness in difference) and use Trinitarian theology to set up hierachies based in top-down terms rather than gift which determines place in the convocation. I highly recommend him as a counterbalance and am thankful for Fr. Bill's reminding me of his work on my shelf. Time for a reread.
Our polity has recognized multiple teaching sources, the English reformers tended to emphasize the pastoral office rather than the teaching office of bishops (reconciliation, working for oneness among the many), and that priests, deacons, and laity matter in these processes, which is itself a part of the tradition at least in parts of the Church catholic.
Archbishop William's has every right to put forward his ecclesiology, but it is not the only catholic or Anglican possibility, and having been Roman Catholic, let me say that if that is where we end up, better to be in Rome where they've worked it out for centuries than the new Roman Geneva.
Well, considering the very long list of issues I have with the episcopate presently, I would hope tradition is a bit flexible about the role of the other orders.
Frankly, I have profound skepticism about the orthodoxy of many African prelates. Anyone who makes the category error of naming all gay men prostitutes is unlikely to be keeping straight other category errors. Remember quincque vult ends with eschatological judgment. Anyone who breathes murder against his brothers and sisters in Christ does not keep the catholic faith whole and undefiled.
And indeed if the church catholic is founded on "a few must die for the sake of civil peace and my job" (Caiaphas's meaning), the Bride of Christ will be in solemn league and covenant with the powers who killed the Lord.
Post a Comment