See the text of Section 4 at The Lead.
See above the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advent gift in the form of a video in which he flogs the dead horse named Anglican Covenant.
See my comment:
"Each Church adopting this Covenant affirms that it enters into the Covenant as a commitment to relationship in submission to God."
Signing the Covenant is a submission to God? God wants this Covenant? Or am I misreading?
Words that jump out at me: "monitor", "consequences", "suspension", "incompatible with the Covenant" - words that bring to mind disciplinary procedures which will apply to the signees, despite the ABC's averral that the Covenant will not be a "penal code", nor will it have to do with punishment.
This final part of the Covenant makes me queasy. I don't like it. Of course, I never liked the idea of the Covenant at all, because I believed that the members of the AC pushing for the Covenant had discipline in mind from the beginning. I see the ABC as flogging a dead horse.
Is it possible to offer as an alternative to this odious Covenant, the Baptismal Covenant from the Episcopal BCP for the members of the AC to sign?
June Butler
See the other comments at The Lead.
Well said, Mimi. I've posted my extended comment at the usual place... My final reaction is that since the only punishment for not "being good" is getting dropped, the whole thing has a kind of self-fulfilling pointless prophecy quality. Perhaps the best thing is to sign on and let it die its own death while we all get along with life!
ReplyDeleteTobias m'dear, your commentary is better written and more reasoned than my shoot-from-the-hip approach, but, as you now know, I don't agree that we should sign the thing.
ReplyDeleteGee, I thought my "brainless frog" was pretty "from the hip"! I get you though, on not signing. I'm waiting to see how the rest of the world reacts, too. This may sink under its own weight. I just don't want to make too much of not signing because that sends a message I am not comfortable with. Just letting it die, would be o.k., though, and if I were a bookie, I'd say the chances of universal adoption are very low, and wide adoption not much better.
ReplyDeleteI simply can´t get over the shoddiness of it all...the ABC and Drexel Gomez conjur up this dismissal notice to punish LGBT Anglicans who love one another, some more intimately than others (nothing new under the sun, but honesty is something they are clearly AGAINST).
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile the happy/clappy, cowardly poachers and panderers are all thrilling themselves into the celestial kingdomlike glee by PERSECUTING LGBT ANGLICANS (celibate or not ready or not) in Uganda (they think they invented GENOCIDE and are pleased about it), Nigeria (inventors of Hooligan Children of LGBT Anglicans), Jamaica (Drexel´s old LGBT stomping, to death, ground) and other bloodletting butchering Provinces of the Anglican Communion...these men, and they are mostly men, actually think that they are WISE men and don´t even blink...and now the ABC commends the whole mess to us because he can´t deal with his personal rejection (and that of tens of thousand human beings at the Body of Christ)...sorry Rowan, you don´t get extra points for ¨looking the other way¨ (it´s not like turning the other cheek)!
Tobias, of course, you're right that we don't need to do anything now. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone can say today, with authority, that we won't sign. Does it make you uncomfortable for TEC folks like me to say, "I hope we don't sign"?
ReplyDeleteI'm nasty enough to say sign the thing and let the others wonder if they want to sign on with us. It is an affront to traditional Anglicanism. Perhaps we should offer a competing covenant based on our baptismal covenant?
ReplyDeleteMimi, Piskie has my answer. Part of my strategy is to co-opt the whole thing. And no, it doesn't bother me that you or anyone else is saying No Way. I'm fairly ambivalent about it myself, and only see signing as a strategic move to lay claim to what is ours by right. I could make a reference to marking our territory, but will refrain... or did I just do it? ;-)
ReplyDeletePiskie and Tobias, your scheme is more wicked than mine! And here I was thinking that your ideas outdid mine in nobility and long-suffering. Why I might even be able to go along with marking our territory, although it's a little more difficult for us girls.
ReplyDeleteLeo, I hear your cry. I've wondered if I WANT to be in communion with certain churches. But then, I think of the Gospel imperatives to "love your enemies", to "forgive seventy times seven" that I sometimes wish were not there, but - alas! - they are. So I would stay in communion even with THOSE churches, if they wanted to be in communion with me, which they seem not to want at the moment.
ReplyDeleteRowan will not focus on the difficult tasks that demand his attention. Fiddling while Rome burns comes to mind, except it's not Rome that is burning, but our brothers and sisters who are being tortured and killed.
I'd be in favor of presenting an alternative and take over the whole discussion as well as the process.
ReplyDeleteThe Baptismal Covenant is a great place to start.
Counterlight, beyond the New Covenant of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and the Baptismal Covenant, why do we need another Covenant? That's what I said from the beginning, when the talk of another Covenant came to light.
ReplyDeleteHow could we do it? What kind of organizing would it take?
I am a grandmother in agreement with Grandmere Mimi. I think this covenant is an attempt to box the Episcopal Church into a corner. I think it is outrageous to design a covenant that is directed at the Episcopal Church for inclusive actions while ignoring the atrocious actions in Uganda that are directed toward Gays and Lesbians. Grandmothers unite??
ReplyDeleteI'm not interested in another covenant, just in hijacking the whole process in order to bury it.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point of this covenant is to punish the North American churches.
We should remind Rowan that we were here before the Anglican Communion and that we will be here after the Anglican Communion.
Beryl and Counterlight, I don't see any use for or any good coming out of this Covenant at all. WSJM at Fr Jake's suggested circulating the Baptismal Covenant and the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral from the prayer book. Why not? Just to hijack the entire process, as you say CL.
ReplyDeleteThe ABC is such a spectacular failure at bring the members of the "Anglican Communion" together. He seems lost in some fantasy land in which he believes the entity can be revived by the Covenant. Of course, the divisions are not all Rowan's doing, but he surely has made the situation worse.
A Horse designed by a Committée.
ReplyDeleteI can't see the C of E climbing aboard. When push comes to shove the Government will shoot it down.
ReplyDelete