From the Anglican Journal:
Archbishop Williams said that Anglican provinces are “a bit reluctant” to engage the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant in greater detail because it “does underline for us that the possibility of division is there, the possibility at least of certain kinds of division.” He said people have spoken of the future of the communion as a federation, “an association within which some groups are more strongly bound to one another and some groups less strongly bound.” He added, “I suspect that will be more inevitable if not all provinces do sign on to the covenant. And I hasten to add that’s not what I hope. It is what I think we have to reflect on as a real possibility.”
Arrgh! Clear as mud.
Archbishop Williams urged Anglicans to think about how the Instruments of Communion – the ACC, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, and the primates’ meeting – “can continue as organs of life-giving exchange” even if other alliances emerge.
And I say:
"Tell me how those entities have been life-giving recently. I can't see it. And this man is our leader?
"And he will attend our General Convention. As Paul, the BB, suggested, let's put him in the Exhibit Hall, as he did with Bishop Gene Robinson at Lambeth. He can be Exhibit No. 1, but he will not be allowed into any of the meetings."
The ABC goes on to say:
The challenge is, “how can those who share that cost, that sense of profound anxiety about how to make the Gospel credible, how are they to come together for at least some measure of respect to emerge, so that they can recognize the cost that the other bears and also recognize the deep seriousness about Jesus and the Gospel that they share?”
To which I respond:
"I'm afraid that I can't share the ABC's anxiety about how to make the Gospel credible. The Gospel is credible if it is preached just as it is and lived out. It is not lived out by passing a thrown-together Covenant, which is not a covenant at all, but only an instrument to discipline and punish.
....
"I'm experiencing a wee bit of anger. Every time a group of Anglican Communioners get together, they waste money and burn fuel which fouls the good earth, only to spew forth a load of crap, which further fouls the earth. For what? The so-called covenant which is not a covenant?
"Someone needs to put the covenant out of its misery with un coup de grâce instead of leaving it to die a slow, painful death."
"more inevitable"? How can that be?
ReplyDeleteamyj
Amy, I don't know. I keep hearing that he's so smart. How can he make a mistake like that? It's in the same category as "most unique".
ReplyDeleteGrandmere --I love it when you rant like this! I love it because you analyze and lay things out so plainly.
ReplyDeletethank you!
Mararet, thanks. Sometimes I get angry at the foolishness, and I have enough. A good rant helps relieve the pressure.
ReplyDeleteI love a woman who knows her own mind and can call a spade, a spade. You go, Mimi.
ReplyDeleteI also hate the waste of money and fuel burned but it's also hateful that it's very likely (if not a surety) that American (IRD) money is also flowing there-ward to "assure" the Akinolas that more $$ will be forthcoming if they continue to work to destroy TEC.
ReplyDeleteAnd also I DO love it when you rant. I'd rant if I were willing to give my time as you are.
The rant flowed with very little effort on my part.
ReplyDeleteI hate that TEC IRD money goes to support this sort of foolish exercise. And then we get bashed for thanks.
Well, each of us, individually, can tell our churches what our money will - and will not - be used for, specifically. Maybe it's time for a little demonstration? I've already told my church that my (admittedly paltry) tithe is not to go to anything to do with the Anglican Communion, is to be used entirely within our diocese, and is not to be sent, even in part, to 815, as long as TEC allows the ABC to continue this farce.
ReplyDeleteIt has become clear to me that Rowan isn't playing the middle, but both sides against the middle in a calculated attempt to make himself a mini-pope. "RC" covenant seems most appropriate.
Mark, it would be difficult for me to withhold money from 815, because the national church was quite generous with financial and other help after Katrina and Gustav.
ReplyDelete. . the national church was quite generous with financial and other help after Katrina and Gustav.That I understand, and I'm not giving instruction, simply example.
ReplyDeleteTo me the biggest thing I've learned in this covenant stuff is that we've all been played, Revisionist and Reasserters alike, by a very clever man. Rowan's always wanted to be part of Rome, I've heard, but why be part, when you can be your own? Better to reign in AC, than serve in RC.
He has been the chief architect of this "crisis" and the "breakdown of the communion" by careful inaction and manipulation, by provocatively-phrased statements, equivocation and unapproachability and inscrutability.
Mark, yes. The ABC has gone about it all wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think that's how he wants us to see it. However, I'm not sure he hasn't gotten almost all the results he intended.
ReplyDeletePerhaps someone could get a copy of that security bulletin from the last Lambeth Conference with +Gene Robinson's picture on it, and substitute ++Rowan Williams' picture.
ReplyDeleteI think the best thing ++Williams could do at the upcoming TEC convention is to go home.
I love it when you go on a rant.
I would add that in addition to letting the ABC sit in the "marketplace", we can let him talk to the "secular" media... and we should have a member of the Presiding Bishop's staff standing guard at the convention center to tell ++Rowan that he is NOT welcome into the hall during off-hours because, after all, this is a gathering place "of people".
ReplyDeleteSounding a bit too familiar, is it?
I got so fed up with the covenant garbage that I had to stop writing on it. And how can we have a "Listening Process" in places where gay Anglicans are threatened with death?
I want a moratorium on Anglican Communion meetings!
Mark, I gave up trying to figure out what's in Rowan's head.
ReplyDeleteCounterlight, WTF else can you do but rant about this kind of crap?
SCG, I gave it up, too, but I backslid.
"And he will attend our General Convention. As Paul, the BB, suggested, let's put him in the Exhibit Hall, as he did with Bishop Gene Robinson at Lambeth. He can be Exhibit No. 1, but he will not be allowed into any of the meetings."Maybe you should force him to listen to actual Episcopalians. Put him in one of those booths where he can hear us but we can't hear him. Call it a Listening Process.
ReplyDeleteLindy, that is brilliant!
ReplyDeleteGood rant, Mimi. And Lindy, I like your Listening Process suggestion.
ReplyDeleteI just tune out these days when one of these meetings happened. I shouldn't, and this summer I will read Tobias's book, but the details of the back and forth grieve and bore me, if those two can happen at once. I'm with the Global Center folks who just want to got about their work with whoever wants to work with them. I think I'm going to go back to work on my essay on the Global Center for the Episcopal Cafe. I started it six months ago but got bogged down elsewhere.
As you point out, the waste of money is getting to be a scandal.
I think we should all have a "time out," like children.
+Maya says "pfffffffttttttt."
Oops, that's "when one of these meetings happens."
ReplyDeleteMimi, you and I both grew up in alcoholic families. Isn't this whole thing with the Anglican Communion feeling vaguely familiar?
ReplyDeleteI mean, here we are trying to win the acceptance of this parental figure who frankly is distant and does not seem to like us. We have crazy siblings who rant and rave and do the most despicable things, but somehow we still want them to be our brothers and sisters. We all want us to be one happy family and to be loved by our big parent, even though we know in our heart of hearts that this is never going to happen.
At what point do we just prize our own sanity enough to decide that we need to be separated from them? I know when that happened for me. I am not sure when it will happen for us as a church.
+Maya has it right, Jane. Give her gentle scratches behind her ears for me.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I never thought to look at the whole sorry mess in such a way. That could be why I'm so angry. It could be that I'm getting flashbacks to wanting the approval of a father figure who should love, me, but who obviously doesn't.
I think that I'm going to have to stop paying attenion. I did for a spell, and I was better off.