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Friday, January 26, 2007

Betrayal



Louie Crew: Publication of Private Email a Betrayal
1/26/2007

The publication of details from a private e-mail message sent by the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Consultative Council to Episcopalian Louie Crew was a betrayal, according to Mr. Crew, a five-time deputy to General Convention from the Diocese of Newark and a former member of Executive Council.

“I shared the message with a limited number of trusted friends, one of whom betrayed me,” Mr. Crew told a reporter for The Living Church. “I have harmed an important leader in the Church and I deeply regret that.”

In the message, details of which were published on the internet by a British weekly newspaper, Church Times, Canon Kearon is quoted saying he shares some of the same concerns that Bethlehem Bishop Paul V. Marshall made public in an open letter sent Jan. 16 to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

“Our relationship to the one who is expected to be first in a world-wide college of bishops is distant, confused, and multiply triangulated,” Bishop Marshall wrote. “We are ceaselessly told by those who would destroy our church that the [Archbishop] endorses this or that crudely divisive action or position. Questions to Lambeth on these occasions are sometimes met with silence and sometimes with stunning equivocation. This distance, confusion, and triangulation ought not to be. Can the Archbishop of Canterbury not come to meet us just once at a regular or special meeting in any city he would care to name?”

In a related development, Anglican Journal, the official source for news about the Anglican Church of Canada, reported that Archbishop Williams will make his first visit to Canada since he became Archbishop of Canterbury in 2002.

Archbishop Williams is scheduled to lead a full-day retreat for the Canadian House of Bishops April 17. Archbishop Williams is scheduled to arrive in Niagara Falls, Ont., in the evening on April 16 and leave after the retreat concludes. The bishops’ April 16-20 spring meeting is significant because they will be choosing candidates for a successor to Archbishop Andrew Hutchison. The election of a new Canadian primate is scheduled for June 22, midway through the Anglican Church of Canada’s triennial General Synod.

“He is a brilliant theological thinker whom we want to have access to,” Archbishop Hutchison told Anglican Journal. “I anticipate he’ll give a series of addresses that the bishops will be reflecting upon.”

Although political subjects won’t be on the agenda for the House of Bishops’ April 17 retreat, Archbishop Hutchison said, “there are mealtimes and coffee breaks” at which such discussions might take place.

Steve Waring

http://livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=2886

6 comments:

W said...

Ouch. I think we deserve and need to know what was going on with ++Rowan. However, whoever leaked Louie's email should not have done so.

Bateau Master said...

Rev. Canon Kearon made a mistake in emailing anything he didn't want widely published.

Louie Crew and one or more of his trusted friends betrayed the Canon.

Stuff like this gets folks fired!

B

Elizabeth Kaeton said...

Louie Crew betrayed no one.

I believe there are hints all over the place in that article.

The spelling of Louie's name: Louis Crewe. Very British.

It was described as "an unguarded emial"

Agan, very British. Sounds like something straight out of a P.D. James mystery novel.

I think MP has it right: There are too many of the "old" administration sitting at desks in offices at Lambeth Palace, just itching to do mischief.

Which is the last piece of evidence: when you get past the tragedy of the betrayal - of Crew and Kearon - the only person made to look bad in all of this is Rowan.

Which I believe was the point in the first place.

W said...

B, Rev E is right, in no article does it say that Crew intentionally leaked the email. now, I'm sure he regrets sharing that email with his trusted friends in the first place, but it doesn't sound like this was primarily his fault, at the very least.

however, I am guiltily satisfied that we know. an article in the Telegraph, posted on Madpriest's blog, goes one further: +Kearon accused the Archbishop, in the email, of "fostering schism" in TEC.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/28/nchurch28.xml

Bateau Master said...

Loiue Crew is as much a victim here as Canon Kearon if:

He didn't forward the emails,
or
He forwarded them with the caveat of confidentiality.

But if neither is true, then it was an intentional act and a betrayal of his relationship with the Canon.

Just a remininder .... secure email servers "aren't"! So whether at Lambeth or in NJ .... emails can be intercepted and published.

Elizabeth Kaeton said...

Dear BM,

You are clearly in "shame and blame" mode - a mode that seems primary among the neo-puritans.

Louie has, I think, 3 doctoral degrees, one of them being an earned PhD, the others, honorary.

His is a brilliant mind.

He practically invented cyberspace communication in TEC and the AC.

Please, let's not insult the man's intelligence by suggesting that, at this stage of the game, he's send out information without confidentiality caveats.

This is British mischief - as clear as the Iberian nose in the middle of my face.

And, it has the handprints of a Carey appointee all over it.

As I said, the onewho really looks bad in all of this is Rowan.

Not only is he an inept leader, he can't even control his office staff.

Pity.