Given the Primates’ Meeting this week, the following piece from +Josiah Idowu-Fearon, published 31 December, 2010, in the Church Times, is well worth reading:

‘The lessons from these [ecumenical] Councils are clear:

3. Importantly, these bishops had arrived at their clear theological positions in their sees, they made sure they attended the meetings, and they were able to defend what their dio­ceses stood for.’

Read it all.
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Thanks for posting this.

The difficulty here, if I properly understood Bishops Anis and Nazir-Ali when I was in Charleston this past weekend, is that this will not actually be a Council of the Church.  Bishop Anis in particular, as I recall, referred to the gathering as a waste of time as the Primates had no input into the meeting’s planning and no reason to expect that anything will come of what happens there.  In addition to which both bishops noted that the previous Primates’ Meeting made a number of concrete decisions, none of which were effectively implemented.  While I would personally prefer that all of the bishops attended the meeting, I do not have a hard time being sympathetic with the bishops’ positions as I heard them.  The level of trust necessary to a Council simply doesn’t exist.  It’s not hard to lay blame all around - though it must be admitted that Canterbury and the Global North carry a particularly heavy burden in this regard.  It’s very hard to figure out what the right thing is to do in response.  It appears that TEC and the ACoC must be laid aside for the nonce and the Covenant - revised if and as necessary - adopted by the lion’s share of the Communion if Anglicanism is to get through this mess.  None of the current Instruments of Communion seem capable functioning any more.  The necessary trust is gone.

I, too, sympathize.  What I do not understand is the logic which says that because things are broken down, there is no point in trying or changing the system itself.  None of the bishops that are boycotting have proposed a single concrete way to change the system.  They complain that things are not implemented, but why don’t they do something concrete like push for a Primatial constitution or some other way to give their resolutions, etc., binding and legal force?  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that law is the fabric of nature just as law is the fabric of any and every political society.  If you want to change things, you change the laws.  But if you give up on the laws, you have also given up on changing things.

Mr. Guyer - Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I very much doubt that it’s fair to refer to non-westerners like Nazir-Ali or, particularly, Anis - not to mention Anis’ staying-at-home primatial colleagues - as children of the “divorce generation”.  As to suggested solutions, I suppose that they could claim GAFCON and its progeny as their proffered fix for what ails the Communion.  As a Catholic, I certainly have my doubts re GAFCON.  But then my doubts re TEC’s current leadership are much, much greater.  All I can say with respect to the latter is that I hope that, like a kidney stone, this too shall pass.  They have utterly shattered any possibility of trust and it flees where e’er they tread.  Any plausible response to the current crisis would seem to have to begin with their being set aside.  They do not obey their own rules; they invent policies at a whim; both theologically and ecclesiologically, they demonstrate no recognizable perspicuity or catholicity.  Their inclusion in the conversation repeatedly ends the conversation. If I were looking for a solution, I would begin with their removal from any and all councils of the Communion.  It seems to these eyes not too much to say that this is what the boycotters are holding forth as the necessary - and one might say salutary - first step.

I think the thrust of Ben’s post of the piece from +Josiah Idowu-Fearon is that the Catholic “thing” is to stand and resist/fight, not flee. Arguments of effectiveness, inclusivity, problems with implimetations, etc, are all beside the point. As bishops they are called to defend the faith in the *whole* church, as a whole council. To step away from the councils of their fellow bishops is just as wrongly individualistic as their liberal Western counter-part’s actions of individualism.

I did not refer to them as children of the divorce generation.  My point, admittedly not stated very clearly, needs to be reformulated.  I’ll work on that, although for now it has been deleted.

Mr. Guyer - my intent was certainly not to misquote you.  I’m not sure how cultural features surrounding divorce as we experience it here in the West are in any way applicable to the circumstances of most of our brethren in the Global South.  Perhaps your intended reformulation will help matters.  As to the point of the post, Mr. Clauss, your assessment pretty nearly matches my own.  I’m not sure that there is a Catholic “thing” to be done here - or at least that it is obvious what that thing properly is.  My strong inclination, as I say, is to concur with Bishop Idowu-Fearon and recommend attendance; but then I have not, like Archbishop Anis, been a participant in any of these meetings and lack his and his colleagues’ inside information and understanding. 

One Catholic thing I am familiar with is that one ought to trust, insofar as one reasonably can, those whom God has placed in positions of ecclesial and sacerdotal authority.  Whereas those of TEC, as I aver above, have, pretty much to a man, squandered such patrimony as they once received and I see little reason why they should not be ignored (mind, I do not say safely so - and yes, while I am willing to acknowledge the validity of his ordination, I have little or no interest in anything my diocesan has to say).  Alas, Archbishop Williams, while evidently well-meaning, gives every appearance of tragic imprudence in continuing to invite the Americans and Canadians despite the repeated failure of these invitations to produce the conversation he so evidently wants.  It may be that this is the time to take a page from Dr. Schori and refrain “for a season” from including at the table those who have occasioned the lion’s portion of the Communion’s difficulties. 

I don’t particularly like the idea, but I cannot help wondering if the boycotters are not speaking more compellingly than they could have by attending the meeting.  I should like to see them there and, like Mr. Clauss, very much appreciate the posting of this heartfelt piece. But I find that I have to wonder if the Primates who are staying away aren’t every bit as charitable and thoughtful in their response as Bishop Idowu-Fearon is in his request.  And if their response doesn’t make every bit as much sense.  An uncomfortable thought, that - but one would hope that a faithful bishop would at times occasion uncomfortable thoughts.

I think the arguments rooted in the asymmetric power arrangement that persists in the AC have great merit (ie. those out of power must often choose to step aside so that the injustice of the situation might be laid bare - a dynamic that the Civil Rights community in the US has often seen). But the fact that *within the Church* these conditions exist suggests more than anything else the utter brokenness of the AC.

I have nothing to say, but I can’t leave “Total Posts: 666”!

Superstious? Not me…!

Thanks to Ben for posting this article. While I understand +Idowu-Fearon’s position and the general desire to see this instruments “work”,I agree with D. Muth that, having heard +Anis’s comments at the Mere Anglicanism conference gives a quite different picture of the absence of these primates. As +Anis expressed it, these primates are not “boycotting” anyone. There is no fear of sitting at a conciliar table with progressives.  What is demeaning to +Anis is precisely that the he and others feel that the conciliar procedure has been hijacked and the results of every meeting pre-determined. As I hear him speaking, these Global South bishops are simply calling for a return of real democratic processes at the conciliar level. In the State of the Union address, President Obama could note with complete integrity that despite party differences, no one in the houses of Congress would want to live in any other nation. That is, I think, one of the hallmarks of American Government which points to the stability of our nation. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Anglican Communion. What we are experiencing is a root crisis in the principles of communal government, of lack of faith in the entire church-political Anglican edifice, not one party pouting because another got invited.

As much as I would love to see the Primates go and fight for an agenda change and then walk out if it does not occur, I can sympathize with them in that they see this both as a faithfulness issue and a stewardship (of both time and treasure) issue.

Since nothing is coming out of this meeting and the meeting’s agenda is set by those who wish to see TEC’s “new thing” become accepted within the entire communion and since they have no impact on the pre-ordained outcome, I can understand that they see no point in going, but will witness to the lack of justice and lack of faithfulness (by the ACO, by +Rowan and by the primates of TEC and ACoC) from where they are.  There is no reason so spend thousands or 10s of thousands of dollars travelling to a conference where prior decisions are simply ignored and where their witness and testimony is likewise ignored and where the witness and testimony of people who have denied the interdependence of the Communion are given great weight because they have great wealth.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

First, let’s recall that ECUSA is under an ecumenical interdict which was imposed by none other than ++RW this past summer.  There is not one shred of evidence to indicate that the Primates who have gathered are holding to, in Fr. Phil Snyder’s words, an ‘agenda ... set by those who wish to see TEC’s “new thing” become accepted within the entire communion’.  There are plenty of conservatives present at this meeting.  They might like it, they might not, but they are there.

Second, to address Fr. Michael Cover’s point, if anything the democratic process has worked here: more than a simple majority of Primates have chosen to participate.  There are no laws that determine who the Archbishop of Canterbury may or may not invite.  Perhaps there should be some such laws, but for the present there are not.  To thus expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to bend his will to a minority of Primates is not a bit curious.  Primates do not have more clout because they have bigger provinces.  One Primate is one Primate and that is all.  Despite the complaints that some have, it seems to me that ++RW is actually on the side of the majority: those who wish the Primates’ meeting to go forward.

First, let’s recall that ECUSA is under an ecumenical interdict which was imposed by none other than ++RW this past summer.

???????????????????????What ecumenical interdict?????????????????????????????

Either this supposed “interdict” isn’t worth the paper it is printed on, or nobody apparently knows about it given that KJS and Ian Douglas are on the Standing Committee, and KJS is attending the Primates’ Meeting.

Ben, thanks for your response. I agree that the ABP has the right to invite whomever he wishes to the primates meeting. That is, however, immaterial to +Anis’s complaint (to watch the video, see T19). +Anis said that he and the other abstaining primates are not attending because of how the meeting would be carried out were they to attend (based on repeated past experiences). The question of whether a body meets and operates in a democratic fashion depends not only on having a quorum of representatives present but on a sense of transparency about the way that discussions take place, a clear voting procedure (preferably by hand or ballot, not voice), a pre-established set of rules for rational conversation, without pre-established results. It is +Anis’s sense of the breakdown of a fair democratic process at the highest levels which proves most alarming to me. But again, I’m just lifting up his opinion as worthy of discussion.

Benjamin,

To begin with, I am not “Fr. Snyder.”  I am a deacon, not a priest.  I appreciate the respect implied in the title “Father” but that title is not normally applied to deacons (at least in the Diocese of Dallas).

You said:  “There is not one shred of evidence to indicate that the Primates who have gathered are holding to, in Fr. Phil Snyder’s words, an ‘agenda ... set by those who wish to see TEC’s “new thing” become accepted within the entire communion’.”

I did not say that the Primates gathered supported TEC’s “new thing.”  I said that those who set the meeting’s agenda did so.  There is a significant difference.

Now, if +Cantuar had followed through on the decisions of past Primates Meetings, then I believe those who were abstaining from the meeting would be clearly in the wrong. But, then, if he had followed through, those now abstaining would now be attending.

YBIC,
Deaon Phil