July is shaping up as the month when the Anglican Communion will crack under the strain of realignment.
Hot on the heels of the meeting of conservative Anglicans and some hanger-ons in Jerusalem in June, with a post-Jerusalem meeting in London along with various pronouncements, denouncements and a bit of flatulence from various Anglican leaders around the globe, the Church of England has been holding their General Synod.
On the agenda: women bishops. A contentious issue at the best of times - especially amongst Anglo-Catholics - and already threatening to split the Church of England, with or without the lead up of Gafcon.
On Sunday, Rowan Williams preached a sermon to synod members at York Minster which had Ruth Gledhill at the Times feeling he had just saved the Church of England but which Damian Thompson at the Telegraph summarised as "Jesus is all over the place"
Personally I thought the Anglican Communion was all over the place, the Church of England amongst the truly all over, and that Williams' sermon could be summarised as: "Get lost"
The next day, after a long debate, complete with the weeping and handwringing so typical of the English church, the Synod voted to confirm its intention to consecrate women as bishops, while also rejecting any special provisions asked for by conscientious objectors - most notably Anglo-Catholics - bar a code of practice, not yet formulated.
Some reports say that senior figures such as the Archbishops of Canterbury (Williams), York (Sentamu) and Durham (Wright) were dismayed with the outcome.
I can't see how that could be. They were all pro woman bishops.
Williams wanted women bishops with no structual humiliation:
The rejection came after a strong statement from Archbishop of
Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, who said that while serious efforts
should be made not to alienate dissenters, "I am deeply unhappy with
any scheme or any solution to this which ends up, as it were,
structurally humiliating women who might be nominated to the
episcopate."
Sentamu wanted a go slow and at some stage, Wright seems to have suggested a postponement, not abandonment.
But from this distance it seemed they thought they had everything under control and that they could reach some compromise to hold everything together. They probably stupidly thought, as one blog commenter noted, as they consistently do, that "the presumption
that the Word of God and Christian charity are the driving forces in a
modern church synod. They have discovered that in reality, the driver
is power politics. They were run over by a steam roller yesterday."
For evidence see Ruth Gledhill's live blog of the vote.
The irony of course is that this could get overturned:
Because the Church of England is formally Established under the Crown,
its decision, slightly bizarrely many will feel, has to be ratified by
parliament. But this may have a beneficial side effect for women, since
current standards of equality are higher in the secular institution
than the sacred one.A number of senior parliamentary figures had made it clear that they
would not accept institutionalised inequality in the matter of
episcopacy. Indeed, provisions of the kind that anti-women's ordination
campaigners were demanding might well have proved illegal.
But it won't.
And Lizzie who can wipe it all out by fiat, long ago gave up being a Defender of the Faith.
The ladies of course have wasted no time making demands of other conservatives if we are to believe the Daily Terror. I wonder where these unidentified "renewed calls" are coming from. And can we please just bypass the wearisome, tiresome Muriel Porter (what hubris for Porter to say it's great the Brits have caught up with Australia when the first women bishops were only consecrated here recently on the basis of a literalistic reading of canon law by the liberals in order to create a loophole. Irony.)
Blogger comments suggest that celebrations after the Synod vote included discussions on pushing for gay clergy. While that could be rumour it could be likely. Can't wait to see what comes after that. Muslim clergy? Atheists? The bishop's underage mistress?
But this time noone is waiting.
The Vatican wasted no time (for a change) in giving its assessment:
The Vatican Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity issued a Statement Tuesday regarding recent events within the Anglican Communion.
The Council is headed by Cardinal Walter Kasper. The statement reads:
“We have regretfully learned of the Church of England vote to pave the
way for the introduction of legislation which will lead to the
ordaining of women to the Episcopacy.The Catholic position on the issue was clearly expressed by Pope Paul
VI and Pope John Paul II. Such a decision signifies a breaking away
from the apostolic tradition maintained by all of the Churches since
the first millennium, and therefore is a further obstacle for the
reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.This decision will have consequences on the future of dialogue, which
had up until now born fruit, as Cardinal Kasper had clearly explained
when he spoke on June 5 2006 to all of the bishops of the Church of
England at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I guess the ARCIC (the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) is now dead. But it hasn't met for years and if our own Carnley was a representative for the Anglicans, one can wonder how serious the Anglicans were.
Moscow is also not impressed.
Moscow, July 8, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate has expressed concern about the Anglican Synod's decision to ordain women.
"This decision is of course painful in the inter-Christian dialogue, as
it is further alienating the Anglican community from the Apostolic
tradition," Priest Igor Vyzhanov, secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate
Department for External Church Relations, said in an interview with Interfax-Religion on Tuesday.Father Igor also said that the Anglican Synod's decision to ordain
women "is a very painful blow on the unity of the Anglican community,
as it is worsening a split among the Anglicans.""The decision was predictable because the tendency of total
liberalization unfortunately dominates in many Christian Churches,
including the Anglican community," he said.In the late 19th - early 20th century the Orthodox saw the Anglican
Church as "the nearest amongst the western Christian Churches," he
said. "A very serious dialogue was underway with it in a hope that good
relations between the Orthodox and Anglicans would have good
prospects," Father Igor said.
There will be more.
There will also be all sorts of implications on all sorts of different groups within the Church of England, with ramifications to be felt elsewhere around the Communion. But the most directly affected are England's Anglo-Catholics. The serious Anglo-Catholics, not the liberals and lavender mafia who like playing dress up.
In some ways they have put themselves in this position over the years, to the point where the only way their position in the Church of England could be tenable if women were consecrated as bishops, was by having a parallel church within the church. A rather ludicrous set up which makes a mockery of the entire church. 'Flying bishops' in a parallel universe. Permanently.
Damian Thompson has been writing about the Anglo-Catholics for a while now, and hinting at a glimmer of light. He finally gets to spill the beans:
The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, is to lead his
fellow Anglo-Catholics from the Church of England into the Roman
Catholic Church, the Catholic Herald will reveal this week.Bishop Burnham, one of two "flying bishops" in the province of
Canterbury, has made a statement asking Pope Benedict XVI and the
English Catholic bishops for "magnanimous gestures" that will allow
traditionalists to become Catholics en masse.He is confident that this will happen, following talks in Rome with
Cardinal Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, and Cardinal Kasper, the Vatican's head of ecumenism. He was
accompanied on his visit by the Rt Rev Keith Newton, Bishop of
Richborough, the other Canterbury "flying bishop", who is expected to
follow his example.
Nothing might come of this and all might not follow and one would hope, those who swim the Tiber do so out of conviction not merely out of desparation.
Still, I can't help smiling at the irony of it all. After all the hyperventilating about the Global South Anglicans and "power grabs", it is the mothership herself, ineptly led by Williams et al., infiltrated by aliens and activists, that is now going to set the dominos toppling.
Lostness is the beginning of wisdom, said Williams in his opening sermon.
No. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
Lostness is the beginning of the end.
