FROM THE COMMENTS...

...to my post "A Time of Reckoning For Rowan?".

Wilfried said...

"What is needed is more transparency over how appointments are made. Obsessive secrecy is damaging the church."

What we said yesterday, but I'll add that transparency and openness is about as English as kidney pie is American. It's like my mother says, who now lives in CA, "They may be pushy and rude, but at least you know where you stand." We consecrate gay bishops because we, the TEC as a whole, mean it, not because some cabal orchestrated it, nor as some political ploy.

"He should realise there are greater considerations, like truth, justice, openness, fidelity to the rules and all those things the church proclaims. Many are dismayed by his constant capitulation to the fringe noisemakers."

Rowan hitched his cart to the wrong horse. He's made an idol of unity at all cost, and sold out everything and everyone else to achieve it, which means pandering those who scream the loudest, and kicking his friends who have always been willing to play ball. The Americans and TEC have never threatened to quit the game and take our ball, and dollars, and go home. However, the ones who had tantrums and threatened to leave if they didn't get what they want are leaving anyway. So, in spite of all his Neville Chaimberlain-esque pandering, he's losing the conservatives. Meanwhile, he's kicked TEC so much that we've simply stopped caring. I read the ++KJS's letter as coming very close to saying, "Do what you will, we're done here, and we're moving on, with you or without you." Mind you, she was the one who personally helped push through B033, just days after her election as PB, at great cost to herself, as an attempt to the dialog open and stay in the game. Despite her efforts she's been repeated vilified, demonized, and insulted, mitergate being only the latest instance, so she ain't gonna stick her neck out for him again. Thus he's also losing the Americans who were trying to play his game. The same is happening in his own CoE, where he's sold out Jeffrey John and women clergy for the same idol. Yes, he sold out his convictions and all sense of fair play in the name of a chimerical unity, and as a result faces losing the whole ball of wax.

"I would not give these stories and commentary nearly so much attention were Rowan not attempting to set up a top-heavy structure resembling the Roman Catholic Church for the Anglican Communion..."

My gut tells me the Rowan is not really power hungry, or trying to play Pope. Rather, he's painted himself into a corner. His ham-fisted attempts at pandering, appeasement, and finger-wagging at the wrong people have earned him less unity, rather than more. In growing desperation he's left with his last resort, increasing authoritarianism in an attempt to impose unity from above. I think is he's a very smart and ultimately sincere man, but with a skillset entirely unsuited to the situation in which he finds himself, and he's floundering and lashing out in all the wrong ways. I'm trying to have sympathy for the man, even as I'm angry at all that he's done.

These thoughts have been rattling around my head for a while, so FWIW I wrote them down here.


Wilfried's opinions are not necessarily my opinions, but they are not necessarily not my opinions. Well done, Wilfried.