The covenant is a document that sets forth a system for adjudicating disputes based on criteria that are almost entirely subjective and ad hoc. In this peculiar system, one can do nothing that offends another province in the Communion, and anything that does not. Offense is judged not by analyzing the act, but in analyzing the response to the act. This is governance by hurt feelings, a system in which power flows to those who complain the loudest and the most frequently. The covenant lacks any of the safeguards, contained in most civil codes, to protect the accused from frivolous accusations. Hence there is no cost and much potential benefit in lodging complaints simply to keep one’s theological adversaries on the defensive. There is great incentive for them to behave in similar fashion.
Jim's words in first paragraph seem so obvious that they should not need saying, but, just as obviously, they do. That the covenant will be a recipe for enabling the tattlers, complainers, and busybodies to stir up trouble was plain to me from the beginning, but not everyone views the document in a similar light. "Governance by hurt feelings" sums up the future of the Anglican Communion if the Anglican Covenant is adopted by a majority of the provinces. I predict that the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion will be quite busy handling complaints, large and small, and adjudicating whether the complaints are worthy of their attention. "The squeaking wheel gets the grease" is a truism that, all too often, applies.
The rest of Jim's essay is sobering, indeed, with its reminder of the implementation of the "pastoral scheme" for the Episcopal Church at the 2007 Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam.
YOU ARE RIGHT! I forgot all about it but there was already a failed, complaint department that was chaired by the former Archbishop of Australia (I think)--it was in service for a year or so operating out of the ACC (I think)--it was named by Archbishop Williams and it couldn´t, or wouldn´t, handle all the complaints regarding Gay Bishops/Blessings and border crossings etc. NOTE we´ve seen nothing regarding the experience of that failed group...this whole matter of ¨deciding¨ who is morally correct enough or not at the Anglican Communion is simply a cover for gross inability to DEAL OPENLY and HONESTLY with real life issues--those who are most holy amongst us will keep stomping out, slamming door and picking pockets in the dark days of their ongoing demonizing of LGBTI and Heterosexual Women at all levels of Anglican life.
ReplyDeleteIsn´t time for the grown ups (the real spiritual leaders amongst us) to cut the bu**sh*t, call a international conclave (not only bishops) and DISCUSS REALITY and REAL EXPERIENCE (instead of the ABC and others excluding Anglicans or accommodating prejudice and deceit)?
We´ve heard far too much from Primates and their accomplices who think they know right from wrong--they don´t, unfortunately, they ARE the problem...period.
Leo, when was the other complaint department set up? Today the complaint department is mostly called customer service. I'm just saying. ;-)
ReplyDeleteIf Leonardo Ricardo ran the world, everything would b****y well be all right. There would be shouty moments, but it would be all right.
ReplyDeleteCathy, you can say bloody. Bishop Alan says it.
ReplyDeleteYes, Cathy, but I would make the trains run on time.
ReplyDeleteIt's Mark "Magneto" Brunson!!! Yayyy!!! (gives loud Kermit-like cheer)) I'm guessing you make the trains run on time by picking them up using the power of your mind and getting them to fly through the air? ... If so, you have my vote.
ReplyDeleteNaughton's essay is excellent. In recent years the Communion has already developed "a system in which power flows to those who complain the loudest and the most frequently". Easy to imagine the consequences of institutionalizing this system. Though if the "Covenant" is adopted, I believe that the best way to deal with it will be to sign on to it and, in concert with provinces whose interests and sympathies coincide with our own, castrate it.
ReplyDeleteThere is a close balance within the Communion between the Broad Church "Open Tenters" and the angry Fundigelicals, as can be seen by the way that the balance fell to the latter when TEC & the Church of Canada made the error of temporarily recusing themselves from Communion matters in the middle of this last decade. That error should not be repeated. If possible, defeat it; if not, sign on, hamstring it and - important point - from time to time show the Global Southers that they have fashioned a double-edged weapon which also cuts their way.
A weak spot - tho' objectively a great virtue - in the liberal armour is an embarrassed unwillingness to engage in school-yard retributive politics. But it's a game that can be played, in good faith and with good reason, in the Communion Culture War. Plenty of beams in the eyes of the GAFCON/Global Southers - massacres of Muslims in Nigeria; gay death bill coming up again in Uganda; lay presidency at Holy Communion in Sydney - small enough matter in the order of things, this last one, compared to the preceding two, but an issue which cuts at the heart of what constitutes that sorely abused word "Anglicanism".
The unhappy getting all of the attention is the Episcopal church I started ministry in 35 years ago. I remember with shame all of the willfully unhappy people I spent useless hours on. I now suspect that is a holdover from the English class system. Clergy were servants of the upper classes and never mind that his Lordship was mean, drooling and unreasonable; make the bloody bugger happy.
ReplyDeleteLapin, others make the same argument to sign on to the covenant, which would cause great dismay in certain circles in the Anglican Communion. Sign on and kill the process with a multitude of complaints, which is likely to happen whether we sign on or not. TEC will not be automatically excluded if our GC votes the covenant down. There will be a process of complaints filed and decisions to be made as to whether the complaints are serious enough to merit attention by whomever (the Standing Committee?) before TEC is relegated to second tier or even declared beyond the pale. The process could take quite some time.
ReplyDeletecanon g, one would hope that TEC has moved on from the painful process you describe, but, in my experience, the clergy, the vestry, and other members of the congregation must still spend time with "the willfully unhappy people".