TEC GENERAL CONVENTION 2012 LEGISLATION

Legislation passed at General Convention which causes me to rejoice.

• Authorized blessings for same-sex unions in dioceses with the agreement of bishop of the diocese.

• Explicitly included transgender people in the work and witness of the Episcopal Church and as candidates to the ordained ministry.

• The Rev. Canon Gay Jennings elected President of the House of Deputies.

•  Byron Rushing elected Vice President of the House of Deputies.
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About the legislation on restructuring, we'll see who is appointed to the task force and how that goes.  What I do not want to see is more power yielded to the bishops.  The hierarchical structure of TEC is entirely a good thing, but our shared governance by laity, clergy, and bishops is, I believe, our great gift to Anglicanism.

The budget?  That's not my area of expertise or even understanding, so I'll leave the commentary to others more knowledgeable.
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Legislation passed at General Convention which saddens me.

The resolution on the Anglican Covenant at its core says, "as a pastoral response to The Episcopal Church, the General Convention decline to take a position on the Anglican Covenant.”

Both Elizabeth Kaeton, who was present at GC, and SCG, who, like me, observed from afar, write with excellence about the failure of the Episcopal Church to take a position on adoption of the Covenant.

Elizabeth:

I understand the politics. Honestly, I do. But, I think the statement is inherently dishonest.

We could have easily said "no" to the Anglican Covenant in the House of Deputies.

I think we could have even released ourselves from being held hostage from a very few purple shirts in the House of Bishops and let our 'yes' be 'yes' and our 'no' be 'no'.

The folks on the legislative committee, however, chose to be careful. I keep hearing a line from the Sondheim play, Into the Woods, "....and I was so careful, I forgot how to care...."

I don't know when "pastoral response" became synonymous with "weak" and borderline duplicity.  We kicked the can down the road on this one, sacrificing a great chunk of our integrity on the altar of expediency. 

I can't imagine that our friends around the Communion can't see right through this one.

Given the other acts of courage in which this convention has engaged, this one is an embarrassment.

Le sigh.

SCG:

It's as if we are on a game show of "Who Wants the Anglican Covenant?" and the Episcopal Church is sitting on the hot seat, saying, "Gee, Meredith.... ummm... we think it's "No," but, well, gosh, "Yes" means we get to go meet with important people.  Ah, gee, ummmm...maybe, well, maybe we could ask the audience, but ummmmm...."

Meanwhile, those of us sitting at home are screaming at our computer screens: "No!!!  The answer is No!!!!"

Perhaps they needed the "Phone-A-Friend" option.  Call Scotland.  Call the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia.  Heck, call the 26 diocese in the Church of England who had the guts to say "No"!

Please read both posts in their entirety.

From everything I've heard from those who were there and from what I've read here at home, the representatives of No Anglican Covenant Coalition, moderator, Malcolm French, and US convener, Lionel Diemel, both did a terrific job of advocacy at GC for a polite but firm "no" to adoption of the Anglican Covenant, and I thank them from my heart for their hard work.  The results were not what we hoped, but that is no fault of theirs. Well done!

Those of us in NACC who walked with our English friends (virtually speaking) through their courageous vote to defeat the Covenant in the dioceses in the Church of England and with the Scots through their clear vote against adoption at General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church, so wanted TEC to support their brave stands against the odious Covenant with a polite but firm vote against adoption.  That TEC was unable to demonstrate support of our friends causes me shame and disappointment.  The legislation  that was passed smacks of hypocrisy, since there is no money in the budget for the "task force of Executive Council to continue to monitor the ongoing developments with respect to the Anglican Covenant" (whatever that means). Does it mean we'll sit and watch while other churches have the courage to make a decision one way or another?

Meanwhile, General Synod of the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia passed legislation stating that the church is "unable to adopt" the Covenant. Congratulations!

SOUTH CAROLINA DEPUTATION LEAVES GC

Due to the actions of General Convention, the South Carolina Deputation has concluded that we cannot continue with business as usual. We all agree that we cannot and will not remain on the floor of the House and act as if all is normal. John Burwell and Lonnie Hamilton have agreed to remain at Convention to monitor further developments and by their presence demonstrate that our action is not to be construed as a departure from the Episcopal Church. Please pray for those of us who will be traveling early and for those who remain.

Thanks to Susan on Facebook.

TODAY'S LESSON

And God promised men that good and obedient wives would be found in all corners of the world.

Then he made the earth round....and laughed and laughed and laughed...

 Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

NACC STATEMENT ON VOTES ON ANGLICAN COVENANT

                                              No Anglican Covenant Coalition

Anglicans for Comprehensive Unity

noanglicancovenant.org

NEWS RELEASE

JULY 11, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

COALITION STATEMENT ON THIS WEEK’S VOTES ON THE ANGLICAN COVENANT

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – Two days ago, the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia rejected the Anglican Covenant.  Yesterday, the Episcopal Church voted to “decline to take a position on the Anglican Covenant,” and to continue to monitor the progress of the Covenant until the next General Convention in 2015.  No Anglican Covenant Moderator, the Rev. Malcolm French, has issued the following statement:

The wind has clearly gone out of the sails of the Anglican Covenant.  There was not even a single dissenting vote when the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia declared itself unable to adopt the Covenant.  While our Coalition would have preferred a clearer “no” from the Episcopal Church, the resolution passed in Indianapolis is scarcely more than an abstention – and the commitment to “monitor the ongoing developments” rings hollow when we consider that the same General Convention phased out funding for the Episcopal Church staff position for Anglican Communion affairs.  Perhaps they will monitor the situation by following #noanglicancovenant on Twitter.

The next major step in the Covenant process will be at the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, this fall.  We understand that there will be an attempt to introduce a ratification threshold and a sunset date to the Covenant process.  Depending on the details, our Coalition is likely to be broadly supportive of both initiatives.

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The No Anglican Covenant Coalition is an international group of Anglicans concerned about how the proposed Anglican Covenant would radically change the nature of the Anglican Communion.

noanglicancovenant.org

The Rev. Malcolm French (Canada)                        +1-306-550-2277

The Rev. Jean Mayland (England)                            +44 07966 921247

The Ven. Lawrence Kimberley (New Zealand)        +64 3 981 7384

The Rev. Canon Hugh Magee (Scotland)                +44 1334 470446

Dr. Lionel Deimel (USA)                                            +1-412-512-9087

THINGS THAT DEPRESS ME

As many as 500,000 Louisiana residents — mainly working adults — won’t get government health insurance as a result of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s decision to reject a Medicaid expansion in the law overhauling the federal health care system.

Jindal has said on national television that the new health care law recently found constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court is too costly and allows government to intrude too much into private lives.
Executives of the LSU-run and community hospitals voiced concern that Louisiana could suffer a “double whammy” because the new law decreases money to pay for the care of the uninsured, while increasing funding for Medicaid coverage for many of those same people. Jindal opposes state expansion of Medicaid.

Insurance executives also say they’re worried about Jindal’s opposition to setting up a state-run clearinghouse that allows consumers to shop and compare policies, according to Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.
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DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein, who is Jindal’s chief public health lieutenant, declined comment again Monday.

He has refused a dozen requests for an interview about the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, since June 28.

If Louisiana expanded Medicaid, the federal government would pay 100 percent of costs for the first three years, then 95 percent for the following three years and 90 percent after that, under the provisions of the ACA. (My emphasis throughout)

So tell me how Jindal's decision not to participate in expanding Medicaid makes any %#@&*$ sense at all.  Why is the secretary of the DHH in hiding and refusing to comment?  Greenstein will have to say something sometime.  What will he say? 

The man who has the title of governor is running around the country, making a fool of himself trying to get Mitt Romney elected, and, in the meantime, leaving the Gret Stet of Loosiana in the hands of surrogates to run...the Gret Stet, which is at the bottom of the surveys in all the positives and at the top in all the negatives, and who, when he does take action, runs the state further to the ground.  By the time Jindal finishes his term, the state will be underground.

AH...EVENTS

 

Your vision after cataract surgery generally doesn't deteriorate over time. However, sometimes the lens capsule that holds the implant becomes cloudy. In such cases, the cloudy capsule can easily be treated with a laser to make it clear again.

Yesterday, after we dropped off my car to have a scraped fender repainted, Grandpère and I continued to the ophthalmologist's office in New Orleans, where I had tests and pictures taken to monitor macular degeneration, which - Thanks be God! - has not progressed since last year.  Then the doctor performed the laser procedure mentioned above to clear up cloudiness in my right eye.  Once the blurriness from the eye drops was gone, I could see an immediate improvement in the clarity of my vision.  What had been my bad eye was now the good eye, and I could see, after the fact, how cloudy my vision had been, and how cloudy the left eye still is.   In a month, I will have the left eye done.  All went well and without pain, but after the hours in the doctor's office and the various procedures, I felt worked over, and we still had to face the traffic before we made our way out of the city and back to Thibodaux.

We returned home after picking up my grandson from day camp; I picked up my laptop and went to my son's house to stay with my grandson until his father returned home from work.   When I reached home later in the evening, our landline phone service was out, so we went through all the procedures of unplugging each phone to check if one of our phones was the problem, but all seemed well there.  This morning, the phones were working again but with static on the line, so I called the repair service and gave my information to the automatic voice connected to no person, and someone is to check the line by Thursday.

The cleaning lady arrived early and began her work, followed by the termite inspector come to check for the little critters.  No termites were found.  As I was eating my toasted Italian bread for breakfast, I crunched down on something hard, which, when I took it out of my mouth, looked like a small stone, and I thought, "What the hell is a stone doing in my bread?"  Upon a closer look, and a strange feeling in my mouth, the "stone" turned out to be a piece of an upper molar.   My dentist will have a look this afternoon, and I'm sure I will need a crown.  Non-stop events take their toll in old age, but I realize life could be much, much worse...whine, whine, whine.  Sorry, sorry, sorry, but I had to do it.

The stained glass eye pictured above hangs in the doctor's office.

PRAYER FOR GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH & FOR GENERAL SYNODS OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN AOTEAROA, NEW ZEALAND & POLYNESIA AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with those who take counsel in General Convention and two General Synods for the renewal and mission of your Churches. Teach us in all things to seek first your honor and glory. Guide us to perceive what is right, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer)

Note: I added the Church of England General Synod to our prayers.

MY WEEKLY REMINDER

OUR MAN DIARMAID ON WOMEN BISHOPS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Well, Diarmaid MacCullough is our man in a way, as he's a member of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.  In his latest article in the Guardian, MacCullough notes that despite claims to the contrary, in the early church the label "apostles" is not limited to the 12 named in the Gospels.  Paul, writer of the epistles to early churches, emphatically claimed the title of apostle, and, in his letters, he speaks of women in leadership roles and named Junia as an apostle in the letter to the Romans. 

The great distorting factor in Christian history which transcends denominational and many other ecclesiastical divisions is that most history has been written by men. And the truth is that men are for the most part not very interested in women, except in certain very specific ways – most of which have been officially out of bounds, because of the general tendency of past Christian historians to be not just men, but celibate clergymen.

(Pause)  All right, I had to stop for a chuckle.

There is another wild card to take into account in history: the way that something which once seemed so important to everyone can suddenly seem of no significance at all – and then all the worries are rapidly forgotten, as if they had never been. Let me point you to one of the most long-lasting examples: the Christian ban on menstruating women from participation in the sacraments or even from approaching the altar..

Oh ick!...and another chuckle.  Men!

MacCullough doesn't mention Mary Magdalene.  Earlier in the article the writer reminds us that apostle means messenger, and the Magdalene was the messenger at the tomb whom either Jesus (John's Gospel), or the young man in the white robe (Mark's Gospel), or the angel (Matthew's Gospel), or two men in dazzling apparel (Luke's Gospel) sent to the disciples with the good news that Jesus was alive.

Do read the entire article, as it is excellent.   In the end, MacCullough advises the male bishops to just get on with the business of ordaining women bishops.

AT THE MOVIES - AT MY HOUSE

A month or so ago, I broke down and signed up for Netflix.  Tom and I have not been seeing movies in theaters as often as we once did.  The senior discount is a thing of the past.  The smell of popcorn is irresistible; and we end up paying an exorbitant amount for a couple of bags and sometimes a small box of candy and end up spending $40 or more to see a movie.

Okay, so I miss the mystique of the quiet, dark theater, with the large screen and the entire focus on the movie, but along with the $40-plus price tag to have the theater experience comes smelly carpets that are not cleaned nearly often enough and, on occasion, stalls in the ladies without toilet paper.  Then, too, we live in the boonies, and a good many of the movies I want to see are never shown at the theater in the next town over and would involve a trip to New Orleans.

The Netflix plan I chose is the one DVD at a time, which suits me well, as I don't have time to watch a movie every day.  The movies arrive a day after mailing, and I viewed four movies last month and one so far this month for $7.99. You may tell me of better alternatives to Netflix, like movies on demand, but I'm not sure we could have the service on our TV sets, since they are old, and we would surely need a box and another remote.  I've just about mastered the two remotes to use the DVD player, and I don't want to learn another.  Grandpère has never learned how to use the player, so I have to set him up each time he watches a film.  Netflix offers the option of watching on the computer for the same subscription price, but I want a bit more comfort than my computer armchair offers...thus Netflix DVDs.

Oh, and I don't care for movie rental outlets, because I can seldom find what I want in the vast space.  Besides, I don't like vast spaces.  So why not have the movies mailed to my house, watch them, and pop them back into the ready-to-be mailed envelopes to await the next in about four days?

Thus far, I've watched the following:

I can't think why I chose an animated film, and one that was shown in 3-D in the theaters as No. 1 in my queue, but there it was.  For some time, I'd been keeping a list of movies I wanted to rent but never did, and "Rio" was on the list.  Anyway, in "Rio" the  animation is well done; the colors are gorgeous; and the songs are tuneful with witty lyrics.  The story is of a parrot, Blu, and a human, Linda, who love each other.  Through a mishap, Blu ends up in Rio De Janeiro and falls in love with another parrot, Jewel, and troubles, separation, and dangers ensue before...you guessed it...the happy ending in which Linda also finds true love.

The second movie to arrive in the mailbox was a winner, "Moneyball", a baseball story about real people.  Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, played by Brad Pitt, is convinced by a young Yale graduate, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to adopt a new statistical method for choosing players, and he sticks with the method in the face of repeated losses and opposition from within the organization until the team turns around and begins to win and proves the method works.  The theme of resistance to change, the old ways versus the new ways, runs through the movie.  Brad Pitt does a fine job of acting, as does Jonah Hill, and their scenes together are especially well-played.

The film includes a charming side story of the tender relationship between Beane and his young daughter, Casey, beautifully acted by Kerris Dorsey, who worries for her dad when the team is on the skids.

Next up in the queue was Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", with Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson, and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) in Paris as a treat from Inez's father, John (Kurt Fuller) who doesn't much like Gil or the idea of his daughter marrying him.  Mimi Kennedy plays Helen, Inez's mother.  As the movie started and the four characters began to interact, I thought to myself, "This is going to be a long movie.  All these people are insufferable."  Gil is a screen writer but he wants to be a "real writer" of novels.  In the evenings, he roams the streets of Paris alone,  longing for the 1920s when Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and all the beautiful people lived in Paris.  I can't blame John for not wanting his daughter to marry the dithering and mooning-about Gil.  Gil reminded me too much of Hamlet, another character who makes me quite impatient, so that I want to shout out, "Get on with it!"

Gil gets drunk and lost in one of his walks and hitches a ride in a 1920s car, and - bam!..he's back in time meeting all the beautiful people, and the movie picks up speed.  Of the celebrities from the twenties, Kathy Bates is outstanding as Gertrude Stein, as is Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali.  Gil has a dalliance with Adriana, Picasso's mistress, played by Marion Cotillard, who longs to live in the Belle Époque, and the next thing you know the two are back in the 1890s.  The dialogue in the scenes with the celebrities in both eras in the past is delightfully clever and witty and thoroughly entertaining, but when the movie moves back into real time, the pace slows.

The critics gave the movie very high ratings, with one even saying it was a work of genius, though the same critic called Gil's fiancée his wife, which kind of messes with the plot, so one wonders...

The two next films I'll save for another post, and I will await Netflix's offer of at least a couple of free months for promoting their service - movies for techie dummies.  Thus far, the subscription is well worth the price.