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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Things left undone

Legislative Day #8 Tuesday 06. 20. 06

As thrilled as I was two nights ago with the election of the first woman as Primate in the Anglican Communion, I find myself deeply, deeply sad tonight.

Most of our day was taken up with the Windsor Report – to the detriment of the rest of the business of the church.

Oh, we did defeat – soundly – Resolution A161 (the moratoria), but it’s not over, friends. The fat lady has not yet sung, and she has been warming up all day in a back room at Lambeth Palace.

We understand that we have yet ANOTHER special order of business scheduled for the morning – a joint session with the House of Bishops.

Apparently, one of the members of the House of Deputies has been on the phone with Lambeth Palace all day, and we’ve been told that our resolutions are . . . what’s the word that’s being used ? . . . . I’m half brain dead from a combination of lack of sleep and the deadening dullness of the legislative process, but I think the words used were “insufficient” and “problematic.”

Well. There it is, then.

Canterbury has spoken. And we, in the colonies, are apparently listening.

I thought we did a brilliant job today. We expressed our regret in A160 and apologized for upsetting the communion. We soundly rejected A161, largely on the canonical questions I raised about discrimination.

In truth, however, the conservative/evangelical/neo-puritan Radical Right Wing of the church helped us to soundly defeat it. They hated that resolution almost as much as we did, but for very, very different reasons. Even so, I did the math. Even without the conservatives, we still would have carried the vote. Oh, it would have been a small margin, but we would have won it.

However, we wrote a blank check in Resolution A166 – the Anglican Covenant Development Process. We have no active participatory role in the development of this Covenant.

Take a minute to get your head wrapped around that one. I don’t think even the Radical Right has taken in the full implication of that one yet.

Okay, ready? I’m going to repeat it. Here it is again: We have no active participatory role in the development of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

We are “supporting the process,” and asking the Executive Committee and our members of the Anglican Consultative Council – who, you will remember, were DISINVITED while we continue to fully fund our membership – to “follow” the process of covenant development and report it to the 76th General Convention.

Nothing else. Our role is essentially passive. We granted ourselves no active participatory role in the development process.

So, here’s my question: How can there be an authentic covenant if there is not active participation of all of its constituent members in its development?

Ahem . . . . Can you say, ‘magisterium’?

It is becoming reality – The Episcopal Church is becoming more and more dominated by the same ‘foreign rule’ that provided the impulse for the first Reformation. Except, of course, that the purple sacristy slipper is on the other foot, as it were. Now it is England that is the “foreign rule” to America, instead of the Britons objecting to Roman rule.

As bad as that is, what makes me sad – to my very core – are the pages and pages of resolutions which will not be addressed tomorrow, our last legislative day. I look at my big, thick General Convention binder and it makes me weep.

Everyone talks about mission, and evangelism, and justice and our youth, and how very important that work is – and, it is. Most of it will go unattended because we have been completely absorbed ourselves in The Windsor Report. Ninety-five percent of the work that was done in the last three years and reported or acted on by this convention will not be addressed by the national church because we’ve indulged the platform developed by Lambeth Palace.

Here’s what I think. I think we should just ring up Lambeth first thing in the morning and ask them to send us the agenda for the day’s work.

Good morning, good sirs. Tell us, please, what would the Archbishop like us to do today? And, please do tell us what language he’d prefer. We speak only lowly American here, and you Britons speak the Queen’s English, which sounds ever so much more impressive and authoritative. This is, no doubt, why we buckle under so easily. (It’s a hackneyed saying that was never truer – England and America are two countries separated by a common language.)

I suspect there will be an end run by the House of Bishops tomorrow to answer the demands for a moratorium on the election of LGBT bishops and the authorization of rites of blessings for same sex partners. I don’t know if the Senior House (the House of Deputies) has the good will to entertain the heavy hand of authority from the councils of power in our church. I think we’re already really, really pissed off.

I only know that whatever more time we spend on the demands from hallowed halls of Lambeth Palace, the less time we’ll be able to spend on the demands from the people who live on the streets of America.

The more time we spend ‘submitting’ to the so-called ‘requests’ and ‘invitations’ of The Windsor Report, the less time we will spend tending to the cries of the poor.

If I had my way, we’d close this last session of General Convention with a Service of Repentance and confess our most grievous sin of creating and worshipping false idol of unity, communion, and conformity.

For all that we will leave undone, Lord, have mercy.

Elizabeth+ 06.20.06

4 comments:

Jim Strader said...

Elizabeth - I hope that the House of Deputies will continue to stand on the higher moral ground and not approve a resolution (A 161 or whatever it would be) that doesn't truly express the common mind of the Episcopal Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury should help his staff in locating his own backbone and mind his own "pints and quarts." This isn't the 18th century anymore. Loyalists of the crown and the C of E can run off to whatever alternative provintial oversight location they choose. Enough is enough.

A. said...

Jim Strader wrote:

"Loyalists of the crown and the C of E can run off to whatever alternative provintial (sic) oversight location they choose. Enough is enough."

Jim, is that a promise? You'll let us orthodox have alternative oversight without interference? You'll let us worship God as we believe he wants to be worshipped, teach the truth as best we understand it, and continue our fellowship with the global Anglican Community? No property grabs, no depositions on trumped up grounds?

Jim, that's incredibly generous of you! Thanks a lot!

Random Ramblings NJ said...

Thank-you Elizabeth for sharing about all the resolutions that did not get acted on. I serve on one of the Standing Commissions (Anglican and International Peace with Justice Concerns. We worked very very hard on our blue book report and on our resolutions. It was not always easy and we had some difficult discussions. But we prayed together and worked well together on our report. We came through with our final report literally the day it was due at 815.

According to the final status report, only two out of town were passed. I am not sure if the others made it out of the HoB. however, I could be reading the codes incorrectly. It more than breaks my heart.

We had a chance to some real good in setting policy for international peace with justice concerns. I know that some of the debates would have been difficult. Now we have to wait until the next triennium.

Love,
Tyler

Unknown said...

Don't worry, Elizabeth -- ++Rowan and the Communion won't, I'm sure, be annoying the Great Episcopal Church much longer. And neither will at least half of its current congregants.

And as to all the other resolutions that were overlooked during the Convention, again don't worry; I'm sure the DNC will pass them all next year if not sooner.

I'm sure the GC has been exhausting for everyone. Please try to get some rest; it'll do wonders for your frame of mind.