Would I make my children sign a contract?

My daughter has written a sometimes moving, sometimes disturbing, consistently well written and ultimately insightful post over at her blog. She concludes with the sensible observation about my son:

. . . he is still my brother, who despite having bad judgment is still family and will love me and my son as family no matter what.

". . . no matter what."

And that, if I may say, leads me to one of the reasons I find Rowan's Anglican Covenant so profoundly disturbing.

I have said before that, if Anglicans can meet together, no Covenant is necessary - and if Anglicans cannot meet, no Covenant will suffice to heal the breach. The Anglican Communion, no mere federation of the likeminded (indeed, rarely likeminded about anything) is rather like a family. If socialist Aunt Martha and neoconservative Uncle George can sit at the same table, you don't need to write a family contract - and if they can't, no contract will get them both to come for Christmas.

My daughter loves her brother because they are family. My son will love his nephew because they are family. I can't imagine demanding that my daughter and my son sign a contract that they will love me and I them. We are not held together by contracts and laws. We are held together by (if I might borrow from the Anglican Communion's rhetoric) "bonds of affection.

This radical demand that we hold the Anglican family together by law instead of by grace is abhorent - as abhorent as demanding our parents or our children or our siblings sign a contract to love us.

(And before anyone brings up the marriage covenant, I note that there is a difference. My children and my parents and my siblings are family by nature - as the Anglican Communion became a family through natural process. A wedding - or for that matter, an adoption - creates a family by deliberate choice, analagous to the intercommunion between the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada or among the Porvoo partners. These relationships are created through a deliberative process.)

Anyway, that all said, I'm signing up for Lionel Deimel's good idea.

Straining on a gnat

There I was, on Saturday, doing my usual daily websurf, when I found my previous post was the lead link at Thinking Anglicans. Heck, there I was, ahead even of Lionel Deimel's excellent essay and the Mad Priest's provocative ecclesio-political analysis. It's all a bit startling.

Unfortunately, I think that Thinking Anglicans missed one of the most excellent blog essays I've read in some time. Tim Chesterton, one of the most thoughtful bloggers from the conservative side of "the issue," has posted a remarkable reflection on why the Anglican Communion, having survived disputes over biblical interpretation, baptismal and eucharistic theology, liturgical practice, pastoral and canonical responses to the breakup of marriages, the ordination of women and most everything else now threatens to collapse over an issue that Jesus (remember him?) never mentioned - not once. In particular, he contrasts our intractability on this issue with both usury (the lending of money at interest) and war.

His answer is not very complimentary at all.

I have a nasty suspicion about the reasons why the Communion is not going to take a stand on these two issues of war and usury. I suspect that the reason has a lot to do with the fact that taking this stand would have an enormous cost for huge numbers of us. Many Anglicans are in fact investment bankers, or stockbrokers, and many, many more take advantage of the modern capitalist system (which is based on usury through and through) to get loans to buy houses and cars and to start businesses and so on. Dissenting from this all-pervasive system would have enormous economic and social consequences for us. And in a similar way, we all depend (or at least, we think we do) on our armies to keep us safe from international rogue states and terrorists and so on. Making a decision to follow Jesus in loving our enemies and refusing to strike back against them would inevitably have deadly consequences: after all, it led Jesus to the Cross, and he assured us it would do the same for us ('take up your cross and follow me').

Sadly, for the vast majority of Anglicans the issue of homosexuality does not carry that personal price-tag. Most of us are straight; we aren't the ones who would be bearing the cross if the church as a whole agreed that same-sex unions are not a legitimate part of a life of following Jesus. Gays and lesbians are an easy target, because there aren't many of them (tho' more, perhaps, than some Christians would like to think).

Jesus (remember him?) refers to those who strain on a gnat yet swallow a camel. His assessment of them isn't very complimentary either.

If you meet the Anglican Communion on the road . . .

There is an old Buddhist admonition which has entered the popular culture: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" It actually comes from a koan of the Zen master LinJi. (See an explanation here.)

I'm beginning to wonder if the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury isn't subconsciously channeling the ancient - even if he isn't intending to do so.

I mentioned earlier that I would give a more reasoned critique of Dr. Williams's recent essay. I was intending to be a little less dyspeptic. I'm not sure that's the case.

But I am becoming ever more convinced that Dr. Williams's sincere attempts to save the Anglican Communion will, if allowed to come to fruition, ultimately destroy it.

There are a number of problems with the document. I'll try to hit the main ones point by point.

2. However, a realistic assessment of what Convention has resolved does not suggest that it will repair the broken bridges into the life of other Anglican provinces; very serious anxieties have already been expressed. The repeated request for moratoria on the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favour, although a significant minority of bishops has just as clearly expressed its intention to remain with the consensus of the Communion. The statement that the Resolutions are essentially 'descriptive' is helpful, but unlikely to allay anxieties.

One of the remarkable things in modern Anglicanism is how something becomes authoritative merely by being included in someone's report. Such is the dubious provenance of the Windsor Moratoria.

And, as always, only two of the three moratoria are given any attention. If the North Americans violate the first two (gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions), all hell breaks loose. If the so-called Global South Primates violate the third (illicit interventions across provincial boundaries), Dr. Williams's silence is deafening.

Of course, there is the added hypocrisy that both gay ordination and the blessing of same-sex unions are more common in the Church of England than in either the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada. The difference is that we silly North Americans won't sweep it under the rug with a nod and a wink.

4. The first is to do with the arguments most often used against the moratoria relating to same-sex unions. Appeal is made to the fundamental human rights dimension of attitudes to LGBT people, and to the impossibility of betraying their proper expectations of a Christian body which has courageously supported them.

I actually agree with the Archbishop that a secular human rights argument is not definitive or decisive on a matter of Church doctrine or practice. That's the not the problem here.

The problem is his implication that no one has presented a theological or scriptural or pastoral argument. That is simply false. Tobias Haller's Reasonable and Holy is one recent example.

One may not be persuaded by the theological case that has been made. To imply that it hasn't been made is simply dishonest.

5. In response, it needs to be made absolutely clear that, on the basis of repeated statements at the highest levels of the Communion's life, no Anglican has any business reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people, questioning their human dignity and civil liberties or their place within the Body of Christ. Our overall record as a Communion has not been consistent in this respect and this needs to be acknowledged with penitence.

10. This is not a matter that can be wholly determined by what society at large considers usual or acceptable or determines to be legal. Prejudice and violence against LGBT people are sinful and disgraceful when society at large is intolerant of such people; if the Church has echoed the harshness of the law and of popular bigotry – as it so often has done – and justified itself by pointing to what society took for granted, it has been wrong to do so. But on the same basis, if society changes its attitudes, that change does not of itself count as a reason for the Church to change its discipline.

Nothing wrong with this per se. However, when the Archbishop so frequently briefs against the Americans through the Lambeth bully pulpit, I am moved to wonder why he is never prepared to say boo when various of the so-called Global South Primates deliberately sanction violence and discrimination against homosexuals. The most flagrant example, of course, was when Akinola of Nigeria pushed for neo-fascist legislation which would have established a five year jail term for merely suggesting in public that perhaps gays and lesbians shouldn't be beaten, arrested and jailed. Where were the prophetic pastoral letters from Lambeth then?

7. In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.

8. This is not our situation in the Communion. Thus a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires.

9. In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences. So long as the Church Catholic, or even the Communion as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle. (There is also an unavoidable difficulty over whether someone belonging to a local church in which practice has been changed in respect of same-sex unions is able to represent the Communion's voice and perspective in, for example, international ecumenical encounters.)

This is a curious argument. It is also inherently unAnglican.

By this measure, the Church of England had no right to reform herself in the 16th century without the consent and support of a certain Bishop in central Italy. She had no right to permit married bishops when such a thing was not permitted in Rome or Constantinople. She had no right to insist that the liturgy be "in a tongue understanded of the people."

The argument is equally spurious in post-Reformation Anglicanism. The ordination of women to the diaconate, the priesthood and the episcopate would not have occured had the consensus of the Anglican Communion been a prerequisite.

One could even argue that William Wilberforce (who the American Church honours today) erred in advocating an end to slavery at a time when there was no ecclesiastical consensus. Who'd like to offer up that argument?

14. Sometimes in Christian history, of course, that wider discernment has been very fallible, as with the history of the Chinese missions in the seventeenth century. But this should not lead us to ignore or minimise the opposite danger of so responding to local pressure or change that a local church simply becomes isolated and imprisoned in its own cultural environment.

I would agree that we must not make an idol of local autonomy and local initiative. On the other hand, neither should we make an idol of the Communion. Both local and wider discernment are fallible. Thus it is absurd to demand that in this case and on this issue only Communion-wide discernment is valid.

15. There have never been universal and straightforward rules about this, and no-one is seeking a risk-free, simple organ of doctrinal decision for our Communion. In an age of vastly improved communication, we must make the best use we can of the means available for consultation and try to build into our decision-making processes ways of checking whether a new local development would have the effect of isolating a local church or making it less recognisable to others. This again has an ecumenical dimension when a global Christian body is involved in partnerships and discussions with other churches who will quite reasonably want to know who now speaks for the body they are relating to when a controversial local change occurs. The results of our ecumenical discussions are themselves important elements in shaping the theological vision within which we seek to resolve our own difficulties.

Of course, Dr. Williams's Covenant reflects the desire of the most extreme elements (heavily backed with money from a small number of American far right extremists) to impose precisely that sort of universal and straightforward rule. His Grace may rest assured that without the hammer of expulsion and a Primatial Inquisition, his Covenant will never gain the support of the GAFCON signatories.

And again, on the ecumenical issue, this same argument applies against the ordination of women, yet here we are. If our ecumenical relationships are based in refusing to do anything that might offend, then our ecumenical relationships are based on a lie.

18. To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent 'community of Christian communities'.

And to accept without challenge the supremacy of international factors would be to deny the very legitimacy of Anglicanism as a distinct ecclesiastical community. Fundamental to who we are is the rejection of governance by foreign bishops. "The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England," as Dr. Williams may recall. Neither does the Bishop of Abuja (or, for that matter, the Bishop of Canterbury) have any jurisdiction in this realm of Canada.

His Grace also seems to have a somewhat skewed idea of how "coherent" the idea of the Anglican Communion is. The Communion is, after all, the accidental creation of Archbishop Longley when he invited Bishops from around the world to a bun fight at his house. Anything prior to the first Lambeth would deny any coherent definition at all. The precise relationship, for example, between the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in the US was utterly undefined.

Rowan, it seems to me, makes a false idol out of a revisionist history.

21. They [Covenant proposals] have been criticised as 'exclusive' in intent. But their aim is not to shut anyone out – rather, in words used last year at the Lambeth Conference, to intensify existing relationships.

With due respect, Dr. Williams's aim is off. His aim may be to strengthen relationships. He seems incapable of realizing that his Covenant musings have added to the divisiveness of the Communion. Whatever his intent, the Covenant (in it's various drafts) has become an Instrument of Division.

23. This has been called a 'two-tier' model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a 'two-track' model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure. If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the 'covenanted' body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.

I don't think the "who speaks for whom" question is anywhere near as complicated as His Grace makes it out to be. The Primate of Nigeria does not speak for the Episcopal Church, the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone of America does not speak for the Anglican Church of Canada. How complicated is that? Really?

A two-track model is the end of the Communion in any meaningful way. The one satisfaction we nasty North Americans will have is that we will not be alone in the outer tier. We will be joined by Scotland, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil and several other provinces who will not submit to the Primatial Inquisition demanded by the paid agents of the American right.

Ironically, the Church of England will be at the back of the bus with us, since it is illegal for her (in her established state) to sign onto a Covenant which will effectively deny the Royal Perogative and have the Church of England by Law Established governed by foreign bishops.

24. It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion. It should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated. The ideal is that both 'tracks' should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency. It is right to hope for and work for the best kinds of shared networks and institutions of common interest that could be maintained as between different visions of the Anglican heritage. And if the prospect of greater structural distance is unwelcome, we must look seriously at what might yet make it less likely.

The saddest part of all this silliness is that His Grace here describes the very situation he has created with his ill-conceived Covenant proposal.

Rowan Williams has seen the Anglican Communion on the road . . . and whatever he may intend, it seems inevitable that he is going to kill it.

Cranial - Rectal Colocation*

The 104th Archbishop of Canterbury has written an essay in which he reflects on the state of the Anglican Communion in the aftermath of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

His essay can be found here.

I promise I'll read it again later in the week and post a more incisive commentary.

In the meantime, I offer a short series of observations.

1. It has been suggested that there are more blessings of same sex unions annually in the Diocese of London than in the rest of the Anglican Communion combined.

2. It is similarly suggested that there are more partnered gay clergy (bishops, priests and deacons) in the Church of England than in the rest of the Anglican Communion combined.

3. In light of 1 and 2 above, it seems a trifle . . . odd . . . that the Primate of All England should be quite so p*$$* just because we nasty North Americans prefer to acknowledge that the place of LGBTQ people is a real issue to be grappled with.

4. Seems to me that +Rowan suffers from Cranial - Rectal Colocation.

Now, here's for something far more insightful:

(*Having one's head up one's a$$)

Who'd'a thunk it?

There were, as I recall, something like 27 of us in my graduating class from Trinity. At least one is deceased. A couple were never ordained (at least some of whom had never sought to be). A few of us, including me, ceased active ministry, at least for a time.

I was the first of our class to be ordained a priest. John Gibaut was the first deacon. He's since gone on to be a member of two Inter-Anglican Standing Commissions and a Director of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission.

I was a little surprised that Michael Bird was the first (and so far only) of our class to become a bishop. Not that Micheal wasn't a fine fellow. It's just that Michael never displayed the kind of political hunger that often marks those who aspire to such things.

Yet Michael is not just the first of our lot to get the pointy hat. He also turns out to be something of a trailblazer, having bucked the Wndsor moratoria by authorizing the blessing of same sex unions beginning this September.

(Perhaps it has something to do with our class. Another of our classmates has been an on and off cause célèbre along with her partner. As deacons, they were suspended from ministry in the 1980s as a result of their relationship. The priest that blessed their marriage a few years ago was admonished. And so it goes.)

The Anglican Journal covers +Michael's actions here and some of the reactions to it here. The approved liturgy for such blessings can be found here. (The issue aside, I don't much care for the liturgy. I find it precious in the extreme, trying way too hard to be modern and relevant. In gvstibvs, non est dispvtandem.)

"The" issue isn't going away, no matter how much +Rowan Cantuar may wish it would. Perhaps it is imprudent of Canada's two Michaels (+Ingham of New Westminster and +Bird of Niagara) to push forward as they have - with Ottawa and Montreal likely to follow sooner than later. But I fail to see how it would be any better to pretend that such blessings don't happen. My coreligionists in England are playing at that game (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). Perhaps +Rowan can tell us how such internal dishonesty is working.

Better to have the issue out in the open. Let us argue it out. Let us rail and rant. But let us not pretend such blessing haven't been happening for at least a generation or two.

A not so little light reading

Tim Chesterton and I disagree on an awful lot of things. We've even exchanged slightly heated words online regarding some of those disagreements. Our theological / ecclesiastical differences aren't even limted to the current "presenting issue."

Yet somewhere in all of that, we are able to be friends. Online friends, at least. I've never met Tim in the flesh, though I'd like to sometime. We are friends on Facebook and we link to each others blogs.

From my end, one of the reasons is that he is eminently reasonable, even when I think he's wrong. He is one of a small number of conservative (or at least conservative on some things) religious bloggers in my list of links. (In some respects, it is a mislabel to call Tim conservative. There are a handful of other issues where he is actually to the left of me. The "presenting issue" just isn't one of them.)

This post is a good illustration of why I find him to be so reasonable. He attempts to outline the current Anglican fault lines in a way that is fair to both sides. In general, I think he succeeds - though I think some of the commentators are right to challenge him on a couple of points.

He also makes one explicit comment that will doubtless earn him the condemnation of certain elements of the Anglican hard right:

(By the way, conservative and traditional Christians need to recognise this same motivation amongst some [not all] of those who are calling for the acceptance of gay marriage. They are proclaiming this message, not out of a desire to exclude traditional Christians from the church, or out of a desire to plunge headlong into licentiousness and sin, but out of a desire to live lives of faithful Christian discipleship in the situation they find themselves in).

We can disagree with one another's interpretation of the biblical and social science data, but there is no need for either side to bear false witness against their neighbour by imputing unworthy motives to the other, or accusing the other of preaching hatred or exclusion. When it comes right down to it, we're all trying to learn what it means to follow Jesus and crying out to God for the strength to put it into practice (transformation). Maybe it's time for all of us (myself included, mea culpa) to stop yelling at each other and have a bit of the meekness that Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount. That way, maybe we'd be better able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth.

Anyway, please go read the whole thing - including the comments. It's worth the energy.

Wafergate - a throwback to a shameful past

Last week, while attending the state funeral of former Governor General Roméo LeBlanc, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was administered Communion. The funeral and eucharistic rites were those of the Roman Catholic Church. Prime Minister Harper is an evangelical protestant.

(For non-Commonwealth readers, Canada is a monarchy. However, we share our monarch with a bunch of other countries and she normally resides in a nice palace in London. A Governor General represents the Queen for official purposes in each of the Commonwealth monarchies, which also include Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and several others. When HM travels, someone is temporarily deputed to play a similar role in the UK while she's out of the country.)

Yes, it's against the rules for a non Roman Catholic to take Communion in a Roman Catholic mass. (Rome's rules, I note. While some protestant denominations may have rules about receiving the sacrament in other denominations, I don't know that the PM's Alliance Church does.)

Of course, the biggest problem in the event was that the incident was captured on amateur video and it APPEARS that the PM slipped the consecrated host into his pocket.

Frankly, a slanging match about the rules is simply silly. Arch-Romanists apart, whatever happened was clearly rooted in interdenominational misunderstanding and there is no reason to presume any mischievous intent. The priest should have realized the PM was not a Roman Catholic and shouldn't have offered the host. The PM should have politely declined. Nobody wanted to be seen as making a scene. It was a mistake.

The amount of newsprint, airtime and bandwwidth wasted on this story is a trifle bizarre.

More disturbing is the tone of some of the commentary.

Many "progressives" have used the event as an excuse to let loose a stream of vitriol mocking the Roman Catholic Church and their doctrine about the presence of Jesus in the elements of the Eucharist. Of course, it isn't just our Roman friends who believe that Jesus is present in the elements of the Eucharist. Although Orthodox and Anglicans decline to define how that works, belief in the Real Presence is normative for both.

I confess, I don't quite get the point of the hatespeech. How does it build up support for the progressive cause to insult the hundreds of thousands of progressives who happen also to be people of faith?

There used to be quite a long history of anti-Catholic bigotry in Canadian politics, from he bad old days of the Orange Order in southern Ontario in the late 1800s to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan on the Prairies in the 1930s, Roman Catholics were a frequent target for hatemongering rabblerousers.

Religious bigotry played a direct role in the Saskatchewan election of 1929, including the simply bizarre accusation that a Roman Catholic priest was directing the Speaker of the Legislature on how to rule on points of procedure.

I thought those days were behind us.

Those days ought to be behind us.

Apparently they're not.

(I am sticking to my practice of refusing to link to extremist websites. This is the first time I have had to apply that rule to a website of the secular left. Most disheartening.)

Here is just one example (from "Canadian Cynic"):

If you actually want sane people to take your idiotic ritual seriously, why not have the "wafer" magically appear out of the air each time? That would be wicked cool -- the sudden appearance of the mystical biscuit in the fingers of the priest just before he places it in someone's mouth. It might even convince me to give this Catholicism thing a try.

But if wafers come, not out of thin air, but out of mixing flour and water, then baking at 350F for 20 minutes, then they're not magical representations of the body of Jesus Christ, ready to be transmogrified into His actual flesh. They're crackers.