Lambeth Palace has an opening for a media spin consultant.

As predicted yesterday, here is the LamPal clarification. ++Rowan intends to remain in communion with TEC. He intends to remain also in communion with whatever else pops up, even though, I believe, he would much prefer that nothing else does. The CofE without her eldest daughter would look like rather peculiar family.

I'm afraid I don't see how this clarifies much of anything. It seems to be saying that a diocese can exist outside the structure of the national church or province. That's not how I read the canons of the Episcopal Church. The diocese is a creation of the national church; its choice of a bishop must be ratified by the General Convention.

If Rowan thinks a diocese can somehow be created by the Anglican Communion, then I'd like to see something that supports that thinking, other than Rowan's own beliefs.

Ah yes, the *audience* IS much larger than once thought...thank you Lam Pal for drawing the "secret" curtain back!

RW's aim is, and always has been , to keep as many people on board as absolutely possible, and to elongate processes to enable that if necessary.

In doing so he irritates everyone equally.

Really, he does himself no favours. You can't please everyone all the time.

So if lots of similar "peculiar" circumstances arise, they will continue to provide counsel in kind?

They should have called someone like Senge in a long time ago. They would have known that they needed to proactively scenario the different strategies and their outcomes. They would also have known that these modellings needed to take into account the various stakeholders and their influences.

It looks like the only models they have been using are predicated on the bishops being the legitimate manifestation of their charges' will and authoritative in making that happen.

The recent Church of Sweden example clearly demonstrates that the majority of dioceses can be in a contrary position to their bishops.

Further, it also explains why they have such appalling communication and appeal channels. I know when my personal stuff was going wrong I was repeatedly referred back to the line of authority that went from local diocese, to bishop, to archbishop, to primate (who was also the archbship at the time) to Lambeth; with no avenues for alternative communications or appeals if there were problems of abuse or intimidation. Paperwork simply disappeared into a black hole as if it had never been written.

My time on the internet has seen me witness many similar stories.

The culture Lambeth has is based on the presumption that what is is good and that it should not be changed. It is myopic which makes it open to manipulation and so myopic that eveyone can see that they are wearing very bad prescription glasses.

Pat O'Neil says: -
The diocese is a creation of the national church; its choice of a bishop must be ratified by the General Convention.
I must disagree about General Convention. The reatification of a Bishop's election comes from on the one hand Bishops with jurisdiction and on the other hand by a mayority of the members of each Standing Committee and all must be received within a set time frame. It is only when a bishop has been elected within a certain time prior (a very few months) to a General Convention that the consent process is turned over to the General Convention.
This means that bishop is generally NOT ratified by General Convention but by a majority of the Dioceses. I could also say that the method by which General Convention deputations vote underlines the fact that they vote as Diocesan deputations and not as individuals. Thus the vote is one of dioceses. They are ratified AT General Conventions by the assembled dioceses and bishops withy jurisdiction.
This may beg the larger discussion. However at teh moment there is much discussion and even dispute as to the nature of the "control" that can be exercised by the "national church" since the Diocese is the primary component/unit of the Church. The diocese as a unit has never before been subject to limits upon its autonomy in terms of decisions re property. It bows to the community of dioceses in matters of doctrine and discipline. This latter is what has broken down as historically and by unwritten custom the Church so described has not set itself outside the historic doctrine and discipline of the Apostolic Faith as determined - at least in then last 100+ years - by the community of Provinces in the Anglican Communion. The best example of which was the ordination of the first woman priest in Hong Kong in the 1940s.
Part of the present Anglican scandal is the unilateralism on the part of the EC, USA decision making in the face of Communion wide disapproval and pleas not the tear the fabric of the Communion.
Sadly what has been undone cannot be easily made whole and this is not helped much by the establishment of a monolithic device called the "National Church" and its CEO.

Once again, it is clear that neither the ABC, nor his spokespersons understand TEC the way that most of its members, not to mention its Consitution and Canons understand it. Indeed, in TEC, the diocese exists as an extension and presence of the national Church. For TEC, "the Church" is the national Church, whose constitutional and sacramental relationships are embodied in the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops. As Episcopalians, we are in communion with our diocesan bishops and the national Church, its House of Bishops and its House of Deputies. A diocese or a bishop in TEC that severs its relationship with the General Convention has "abandoned the communion of this Church." For most TEC teachers, bishops, and elected deputies, there is no "Anglican Church" which subsists in the structures of the Anglican Communion. Rather, as its founding documents declare, we regard the Anglican Communion as a fellowship of national Churches, bound together by shared history and tradition, and the bonds of affection. The idea that a bishop could be in communion with the ABC, except through his relationship to the national Church is alien to the theology of TEC. For RW to understand this, he needs to take his theology of communion and sacramental relationships in the Church and apply it to the relationship that lay people, clergy and bishops have to one another and to the two Houses of the Episcopal Church, not to the relationships between bishops throughout the world and his office. TEC will not enter into any kind of a Covenant that creates a worldwide catholic style "Anglican Church" with RW,or his successors as its plenipotentiary patriarchs, and with bishops deriving their authoritty and sacramental significance by their communion with him. We have all seen the way that this theology works out in the real world. Lay people vanish from significance and authority becomes more centralized, irrelevant and abusive. We're not going that way, no matter how good the ideas sound to some theologians, and no matter what promises have been made in dialogue with the Romans and the Orthodox, by professors who never got our consent, except for the consent of bishops in some of our Churches.

"not to increase the level of confusion"

Seems, however, that that is exactly what the email did...

Is Rowan Cantuar a frustratingly ineffective communicator? Yes.

At the same time, I'm both relieved, but unsurprised, by this clarification.

Think about it: if this email had said what +Howe and the StandFirm/T19 crowd *thought* Rowan intended, wouldn't he have said that "orthodox" priests OUGHT to leave their heterodox bishops, in order to remain in the "Windsor-Compliant" AC?

But he didn't. He is saying "EVERYBODY, STAY PUT!" (and within one's own diocesan boundaries)

Beyond that, he was trying to calm +Howe's (easily) ruffled feathers (doing so in that "I mean what I don't mean" Rowan-kind of way ;-/)

What Revkerenm and others may have misunderstood (in my view) is that the Archbishop was NOT simply saying that Bishops only relate to Canterbury directly.
Rather that within a complicated Anglican system Bishops are connected to him. As has been made clear recently the Bishops are invited individually to Lambeth not in provincial blocs.
At the same time the other Anglican "instruments of unity" are made up of provincial representatatives. This is fundamental to the structure of both the ACC and the Primates' meeting.
An Anglicanism made up of relationships, can have relationships between provinces and dioceses BOTH relating directly to each other. And as individuals relating as members of the body of Christ, too.

Who wrote this?

Happily, this statement does not actually employ the word, "clarification," or I would use the line of Inigo Montoya to Vizzini (regarding, "inconceivable"), "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." (viz. "The Princess Bride")

As it is, it sounds like something from Sir Humphrey Appleby to make sure that the Prime Minister Jim Hacker doesn't understand what is actually happening. ("Yes, Prime Minister")

The "clarification" at least does state that this was addressing a specific situation and not intended to be a unilateral redefinition of the Anglican Communion (which is not and has never been and has never claimed to be "a Church"), but the original statement nevertheless still stands and clearly reduces the significance of the national church or province -- like The Church of England -- thus undermining the whole justification of the Church of England (Hooker would not be amused).

While it is true that I am ordained and canonically resident in a particular diocese, I am nevertheless a priest in The Episcopal Church (& so could transfer between sees without having to be re-ordained, etc.). Membership in the WWAC has always been through provinces/national churches (except in those exceptional & anomalous circumstances of extra provincial dioceses -- which number four, IIRC). You can check any definition from any source to obtain this information. Any suggestion that this is not the case seems Orwellian.

The ABC, and his media "expert" minions, may have created an unintended invitation to dioceses in every Province of the Anglican Communion (ignoring local canons and local civil laws pertaining to property, which would be unaffected by whatever the ABC might think) to declare themselves free of their Province, but in communion with Canterbury.

Just imagine a handful of dioceses in England who feel that the CofE is not sufficiently "liberal," and another handful of dioceses who feel that the CofE is much too "liberal," and all of whom begin to act independent of the CofE per se. Admittedly, this gets more dicey than for other Provinces, given that Canterbury is within the CofE, but it is not beyond possibility.

Indeed, going beyond the CofE, what Provinces would not have some bishop, or bishops, who feel themselves out of step with their Province at any point in time.

This could become chaotic.

++Rowan Cantuar's confusion may have been triggered by +Robert Pittsburgh's Resolution to disaffiliate from TEC. The rationale for the Resolution has been presented by Dunkin's canon lawyers as follows:

"The Diocese is acting within its own canonical and constitutional structures. The governing documents of the diocese lay out a clear path for changing the Constitution of the diocese. The proposed Resolution One follows that course exactly and allows the diocese to make decisions about its future in good order.
The Episcopal Church has no authority over its dioceses.
It is by Diocese that consent is given to bishops, and by Diocese that they are elected.
The Executive Council is given no constitutional or canonical authority to overrule the
constitutional decisions of a Diocese.

There is no national executive department. The role of the Presiding Bishop is principally ceremonial or gathering.

The canons of the Episcopal Church do not assign any authority to the General Convention or to the Presiding Bishop over the Dioceses. In the last General Convention legislation that “directed” a Diocese to do something, was regularly and intentionally changed to “urge” or “request.”

There is no National Court that has jurisdiction over a Diocese, only a Court for the Trial of a Bishop and Provincial Courts of Review (Clergy Discipline). Attempts at several General Conventions to establish such a Court have been rejected.

Contribution to the budget of the Episcopal Church is free-will..." (cf. The Lead Blogsite, 23rd Oct. 2007).

Rowan Williams answered a specific problem via a general statement, the result of which was huge confusion at the very least, much of which has not gone away. Indeed his importance of the national Church seems little other than administrative. I will read again (and make a comment) but I think this response to clarify is inadequate and may add to the confusion.

Okay. Secure the sirens, klaxons and emergency strobe lights. Set a fire watch. Back to Level Orange from Level Red. Everybody calm down and report any suspicious activity. In otherwords, SNAFU.

(If you're an American, and/or military, you know what that means)

revkarenm, that is also what I imagined the TEC to be, though Ford Elms seems to have a different understanding. I suppose one cannot just Google and get the correct answer!

Priests splitting from dioceses was not, I had thought, the issue, but rather dioceses splitting from the TEC. Has the TEC any properly theological status, or is it just a pragmatic arrangement at the service of dioceses, like national or regional episcopal conferences in the RCC (particularly before Vatican II? Dioceses are the basic atoms of the church, the basic local churches. But are there any theologically significant mediating structures or groupings between the individual dioceses and the universal church which they embody collectively?

The rationale that Pittsburgh is using to justify its proposed separation from TEC sounds like it could have been cribbed from Rowan's email. It can be found on the Daily Episcopalian site. Rowan may have thought that he was just engaged in good hearted theological speculation. However, he may be surprised to learn that he has taken the lid off Pandora's box and he can't get it back on. In a highly political world it's not as simple as saying I never intended for my musings to be used that way.

Rowan is an undoubtedly an introvert meaning he processes his information privately and puts it out without comprehending all the possible problems other people may have with his thinking. He really needs someone who can honestly tell him the problems he might cause with his "solutions" before any communication goes out.

I've commented on the clarification, combining it with Pete Broadbent's points made at Fulcrum.

http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/10/clarification-confusion-communion.html

Ian is correct. I mis-stated the process. However, that does not change the fact that under the canons of TEC, a diocese is a creation of the national church and does not exist outside of it. As revkarenm notes, it is clear that Rowan (and possibly a good deal of the rest of the AC) simply do not understand the polity of TEC.

It may well be that Archbishop Williams understands the claims provincial church entities make about their status, and has dismissed them as false.

It sounds like he needs to make an argument for his position, or at least cite the documents that would make the argument for him.

As he himself said in another--but related--context: Whatever happened to persuasion?

It is evident that Ian Montgomery is spinning the spin from Lambeth Palace.

The idea that all and singular must have the same "beliefs" - lest they be punished, is Calvinism and Calvinist congregational disciplin.

Whereas what TEC and the Anglican churches have is an Idea of the diocese as franchise (described in detail above by RevKaren) derived from Roman "Canon" Law.

The latter is not true, but even less is the penal way the Way and the Gospel.

How can someone who owes his office to a closeted decision made by Buckingham Palace via ten Downing street, talk about the diocese?

Was Gene Robinson elected by his diocese ...yes
Was Rowan Williams elected by the popular will of the Anglican Church people of southern Kent...no.

Furthrmore , just like a Pope... a private letter reflects is his opinion and not Church doctrine.

You know, we Welsh people get confused sometimes with the English language and its double meanings. Lost in translation.

Prior Aelred - "Membership in the WWAC has always been through provinces/national churches...You can check any definition from any source to obtain this information. Any suggestion that this is not the case seems Orwellian."

As I pointed out on a previous thread, and repeat here - +Williams is merely affirming fundamental Catholic ecclesiology that the bishop and diocese constitute the basic ecclesial 'unit'. Forming together into provinces or 'national churches' is a convenient means of administration for a particular people, but not an ecclesial necessity. Previous Lambeth Resolutions have made this clear:

Resolution 49, 1930:
"The Anglican Communion is a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted DIOCESES, provinces OR regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury"

It is thus perfectly possible, if unprecedented, for individual dioceses in communion with Canterbury to be members of the Anglican Communion, without being members of a province.

Organisation of dioceses into provinces or 'national churches' is furthermore merely seen as 'desirable' and to be 'encouraged', to prevent isolation and to become more effective in a given national culture:

Resolution 43, 1920:
"Whereas it is UNDESIRABLE that dioceses should remain indefinitely in isolation or attached only to a distant province, the gradual creation of new provinces should be ENCOURAGED, and each newly founded diocese should as soon as possible find its place as a constituent member in some neighbouring province."

Dioceses remaining outside a province is therefore 'undesirable' but not impossible. The creation, and membership, of a province is merely 'encouraged', not demanded.

Resolution 52, 1930:
"Saving always the moral and spiritual independence of the divine society, the Conference APPROVES the association of dioceses or provinces in the larger unity of a "national Church," with or without the formal recognition of the civil government, as serving to give spiritual expression to the distinctive genius of races and peoples, and thus to bring more effectively under the influence of Christ's religion both the process of government and the habit of society."

The association of dioceses into provinces or 'national churches' is 'approved', but not demanded, as being more effective.

Resolution 53, 1930:
"In view of the many advantages of the organisation of dioceses into provinces and the difficulties and dangers of isolation, the formation of provinces should everywhere be ENCOURAGED."

Again, the formation of dioceses into provinces is 'encouraged' but not demanded.

It is evident that the basic ecclesial unit envisaged here is the diocese - and further organisation or 'grouping' is merely strongly approved or encouraged, but is not mandatory for membership of the AC.

Reading Pluralist's clarification my confusion diminished somewhat. It is surely correct to say that since Bishops are consecrated by other bishops, they cannot stand alone, but must belong to a church. In the RCC that means the church as a whole; but since some decades before Vatican II and especially after Vatican II national or regional Episcopal Conferences have asserted their importance. In the early church local synods -- of the African bishops in Carthage for example -- had huge importance. The question is whether this importance entitles them to some kind of properly theological status. Ultramontanists tend to think of Bishops as if they were directly consecrated by the Pope and as if the Pope was the source of their authority; but that is bad ecclesiology.

In the Anglican Communion the church to which individual bishops belong is not, apparently, the Communion as such but one of the churches of the communion, such as the Church of Ireland or the Episcopal Church -- which title themselves churches. So these groupings would appear to have a far more crucial theological importance than local groupings of bishops within the Roman Catholic Church. Rowan may be relying on older definitions of Anglican ecclesiology from 1920 and 1930, which have been quoted on one of these threads, but that perhaps do not take into due account the status of the regional churches.

Robert Ian Williams said:

"How can someone who owes his office to a closeted decision made by Buckingham Palace via ten Downing street, talk about the diocese?

"Was Gene Robinson elected by his diocese ...yes
Was Rowan Williams elected by the popular will of the Anglican Church people of southern Kent...no."

I find it interesting that so many people claim that TEC's polity is misunderstood - often the very same people who then falsely describe the C of E's. Direct election isn't everything. The majority of the members of the Crown Nominations Commission, appointing an Archbishop of Canterbury, are elected by the Canterbury Diocesan Synod, and by the respective houses of General Synod. The Commission thus acts as an electoral college. There is no doubt that Rowan was nominated as first choice by the Crown Nominations Commission, and we know that was the case with the previous Archbishop of Canterbury as well. In other words, the Crown and PM concurred in the choice of the Crown Nominations Commission. This is a perfectly legitimate way of choosing the overseers in an episcopal church. It has elements of democracy, but also takes in all facets of the role of a bishop and Archbishop - not least the sense that a bishop symbolises the unity of the whole Church rather than just the diocese concerned.

To refer to people as a nominee or appointee of a particular Prime Minister is to denigrate a system of appointments which very seriously tries to do justice to the appointment of bishops in an increasingly complex situation. You may disagree with the way we do things in the C of E (and I have reservations about aspects of it) but at least understand it. It's not rocket science.

revkarenm wrote:

"TEC will not enter into any kind of a Covenant that creates a worldwide catholic style "Anglican Church" with RW,or his successors as its plenipotentiary patriarchs, and with bishops deriving their authoritty and sacramental significance by their communion with him. We have all seen the way that this theology works out in the real world. Lay people vanish from significance and authority becomes more centralized, irrelevant and abusive. We're not going that way, no matter how good the ideas sound to some theologians, and no matter what promises have been made in dialogue with the Romans and the Orthodox, by professors who never got our consent, except for the consent of bishops in some of our Churches."

The word patriarch has become synonomous with "user" in some circles.

Once upon a time God used to give us matriarchs and patriarchs and they were respectable and respected each other e.g. Abraham and Sarah.

The problem is that souls did not really understand them, what should be respected about them and how they should not be abused.

So some souls saw that other souls had a "divine spark" and sought to enter into a relationship in order to co-opt that divine energy to satisfy their selfish whims. They would often the abuse or insult those same souls when they did not give their divine input into their selfish schemes.

Others saw the divine energy and recognised that it was divine, but then had complete contempt for the human vessel.

Leah is the embodiment of one of the worst case scenarios. Her husband marries her in order to appease God and "does the right thing", but has no respect for her or her progeny and doesn't care if they go off the rails provided he get his satisfaction from the "purer" Rachel. Esau gives away his inheritance for a bowl of lentils, Jacob takes Esau’s inheritance but has no respect for the responsibilities that came with it (his brother's half-inheritance was made manifest through Leah).

Similarly today, there are those who want the "pure" Rachel, and forget that half God's inheritance comes through the inadequate Leah. They are prepared to squander their own inheritance across three women and ignore their responsibilities to that half that was meant to be for Esau.

Remember, grace and the covenant of peace came through Aaron/Levi and not the aggressive Moses.

Whilst Fr Joseph is right up to a point, I suspect that the ordination of bishops solely by bishops of their home province (or almost so) is a hangover from the days of difficult travel. I suspect that some of the fall-out over +Robinson would have been avoided were it normal for overseas bishops to be invited to act as co-consecrators. One of the things we might hope for from the upcoming Lambeth is an agreement to be much more international in the consecration of bishops. At the very least it would provide an early warning system of +Robinson style problems in the offing.

I'm probably being terribly simplistic, but do I detect that Abp Williams has neatly returned the ball into the potential-schismatics' side of the court? If they refuse to come to Lambeth on the basis that "my enemy's friend is my enemy" (which is a classic donatist view) then they are the ones who break communion with Canterbury. It is their choice, not TEC's choice, or the Archbishop's choice. It also wrongfoots those in the global south who are eager to discipline those with whom they disagree.

"those duly constituted DIOCESES"

Is The Diocese in Europe, belonging to the Province of Canterbury, but geographically outside Southern England, an example of this?

Otherwise it seems nonsensical to regard a diocese as operating outside of its church, especially in the C of E, which is the established church and accountable to Synod, Parliament and the Supreme Governor. It would be like a UK constituency under its MP defying Parliament to align itself with, say, Brussels.

Depends, though, if we're talking about abstract realities or concrete ones.

MJ,

Thanks for adding in some meat to chew on in this debate. But look again at this that you provided,

'Resolution 43, 1920:
"Whereas it is UNDESIRABLE that dioceses should remain indefinitely in isolation or attached only to a distant province, the gradual creation of new provinces should be ENCOURAGED, and each newly founded diocese should as soon as possible find its place as a constituent member in some neighbouring province."'

The operative phrases/words here I think are "indefinitely ... distant" and "soon ... neighboring."

“There is one way, at present, the Archbishop might demonstrate his “concern” for ordinary faithful Anglicans and stem the tide of those “taking refuge in foreign jurisdictions” and that is to withdraw Lambeth invitations from every bishop and/or primate who permits same sex blessings to occur and/or who has given consent to the election of non-celibate homosexual bishops.

Short of that, the Communion will break apart, as it should. And the responsibility for its loss will fall, as it should, squarely on the Archbishop’s shoulders.”

So writes Fr Matt Kennedy at the end of this interesting piece on Stand Firm http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/7052 .

While the invitation of those who consented /took part in Gene’s ordination seems settled, I have a sneaking feeling that Rowan is quite likely to disinvite those bishops who continue to “approve” liturgies to celebrate same sex unions following the HOB New Orleans statement and the response of the JSC.

Concerning Andrew Carey's piece on the appointment of bishops in the Church of England, is use of the adjective "jesuitical" in its perjorative sense still permissible?

It seems good to have a closer look at Lambeth 1930 which spent some time reflecting on the nature and status of the Anglican Communion. In response to MJ, however, it needs to be asked what "duly constituted" means in Resolution 49. How is a diocese "truly constituted"? To the best of my knowledge, no diocese has ever been constituted by the "Anglican Communion" (whatever that might be in this context).

The Anglican Communion has never been structured in imitation of the Roman Catholic Church and this is one reason why the situation in places like Germany can be so confusing with at least three different ways of being Anglican (Diocese of Europe, TEC, Old Catholic).

Resolution 48: "The Conference affirms that the true constitution of the Catholic Church involves the principle of the autonomy of particular Churches."

Resolution 51 follows logically: "The Conference, believing the formation of a central appellate tribunal to be inconsistent with the spirit of the Anglican Communion, holds that the establishment of final courts of appeal should be left to the decision of local and regional Churches."

John B. Chilton - "The operative phrases/words here I think are "indefinitely ... distant" and "soon ... neighboring."

Yes, but these are on purely practical, not theological grounds - dioceses may group together in order to prevent isolation and to function more effectively within a given national culture. But a diocese does not become theologically 'more' of a Church when it groups with others. A diocese under it's bishop IS the Church Catholic in that particular area - the bishop should be the visible source and foundation of unity in their own 'particular Churches' (dioceses) - the basic ecclesial portions of the universal Church. Grouping into provinces, patriarchates, regions, 'national Churches', based on culture is of practical rather than ecclesiological significance, and can shift and change - e.g. those Central American dioceses which left the ecclesial grouping of "ECUSA" and formed a new grouping of "Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America". The official Anglican requirement in order to form a province is 4 dioceses - which is why Ceylon, Bermuda, Spain, Portugal and the Falkland Islands function as extra-provincial dioceses directly under the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Michael

There are really only two models for a communion of (geographically organized) churches, on the one hand the Roman model in which national or regional churches are ultimately subject to a central authority which must approve local decisions, and, on the other hand, the Eastern Orthodox one in which decisions of international councils and conferences must be locally accepted. It is hard to see a middle way between these two models. And it should be obvious that the Protestant, including the Anglican, model has been the "Eastern Orthodox" one.

At the end of the day, conferences and gatherings and meetings at international level should guide local decisions within the Anglican Communion but "canonical" decisions are always made by national or regional churches. That's how I understand it at the moment, anyway.

The ABC has arguably the right to determine who is (or whom he would like to be) in communion with him. This is where the e-mail comes in. The ABC reserves his right to invite some but not all TEC (or Church of Nigeria or whatever) bishops. He does not feel that he has to make a blanket decision, either all the bishops of a national church or none. That's it. This reminder does not change the constitution of the Anglican Communion.

Andrew,
We live in a society that assumes democracy to be somehow God given. This causes problems for the concept of the KINGDOM of God. I have heard reference many times to the "Commonwealth" of God, 'kingdom ' connoting oppressive hierarchy. It's a little bit reactionary, I think, since what we're talking about isn't all that well expressed in words, but given that the Almighty has authority over it, Kingdom seems as good as any. It's a bit arrogant to think we can ever expect God to be subject to the democratic process! There is also the unspoken, and little considered, idea that, democracy being God given, it is the best way to run a Church. A recent poster bemoaned the fact that the Church does not have built into its government structure the "checks and balances" that any American civics class teaches is one of the cornerstones of the democratic system. That the Church's selection of leaders was never designed to be a "democratic process" in that way is not an automatic thing to consider. Now, I believe the laos should have a voice, I think the Canadian system of 2/3 vote in both houses to elect a bishop is pretty good, and gives us that voice. I also believe that electoral synods, fractious and unedifying though they may often be, are a better way of listening to the will of the Spirit than most others. But just because it superficially looks democratic doesn't mean that's its purpose, or even that the process is INTENDED to be democratic.

"A diocese under it's bishop IS the Church Catholic in that particular area - the bishop should be the visible source and foundation of unity in their own 'particular Churches' (dioceses)"

Therefore there is no issue with the bishop of New Hampshire, as he is the visible source and foundation of unity there, duly elected by the people.

So where's the catch?

Michael - I understand that for some "Catholics" (in a specific sense of the word), the church is "a diocese under its bishop" rather than, say, the local gathering of baptized believers. But I find it utterly unreal to speak of "the Church Catholic in that particular area" in a way which disregards, say, Lutherans and Roman Catholics. It just doesn't make sense to imply that each geographical unit has precisely one bishop, unless you follow a centralized model which declares every bishop who is not in communion with the centre episcopally non-existent.

(I am not as well informed on this as I would wish but I suspect TEC recognizes all three Lutheran orders and thus allows for the presence of two bishops in the same geographical area.)

By the way, "Lambeth" issued that "clarification" on the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the Bishop of Central Florida because of developments yesterday in the Virginia lawsuits - make no mistake about it.

Don't we just love how Episcopal litigation is what is driving the Archbishop of Canterbury's office these days? Rowan Williams speaks from his heart, then the henchmen have to come in and "fix it" because it proved to be a "problem" for David Booth Beers. And now we know.

Has Rowan turned into Tony Blair now? Who's lapdog is he? David Booth Beers?

Thomas Renz: "It just doesn't make sense to imply that each geographical unit has precisely one bishop"

It is how the Church quickly developed and organised itself, was the norm pre-Great Schism, and continued as the norm until the Reformation. Our current situation is anomalous, because the Church is in schism. But one need not 'unchurch' others while affirming the basic ecclesiological norm. Where such situations are 'fixable' then they should be - as Lambeth affirmed in regard to Europe with its overlapping Anglican, Episcopal, Old Catholic and Lutheran jurisdictions.

Hugh of Lincoln: "Therefore there is no issue with the bishop of New Hampshire, as he is the visible source and foundation of unity there, duly elected by the people. So where's the catch?"

The catch for many is that a bishop, or diocese, or regional grouping is not a law unto itself. The bishop is meant to express, and be the guardian of, the unity of faith and practice of the WHOLE Church Catholic, as it has been received and interpreted. If a bishop is not recognised as doing that by (part of) the wider Church then problems arise.

"By the way, "Lambeth" issued that "clarification" on the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the Bishop of Central Florida because of developments yesterday in the Virginia lawsuits - make no mistake about it."

What devlopments yesterday? I've not seen a paper this morning.

Michael - you are quite right that one need not abandon the idea. Indeed, we may/should long for a return to the situation in which the Christian world could be divided into geographical regions, each with its own bishop. But it isn't the world we live in and for that reason alone it is wrong to say "A diocese under it's bishop IS the Church Catholic in that particular area".

At present to speak in such terms, in any way other than as a pious wish of what should be, reflects an ecclesiology which is inherently violent. In the past this violence was expressed physically in the persecution of nonconformists, whether these were Protestant, Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Today, the violence is more often verbal, declaring other denominations to be "sects". I recognize that in our days the Roman Catholic Church is trying hard to avoid these violent implications, e.g. speaking of "ecclesial communities" more often than "sects", and I hear that it is your own wish not to unchurch other Christians. But the fact of the matter is that you cannot say "my bishop and his diocese is the Church Catholic in my place" without implicitly stating things about other Christians and gatherings in your area. In England and Sweden, it may have been possible to ignore these implications for a while by not thinking about them, but not in the USA, I should think, and increasingly not in contemporary England.

Matt Kennedy is referred to above. He is talking about the maintenance of orthodoxy of belief (as tested by attitudes to same-sex relationship blessings and consecrations). But there is no guarantee at all of so-called orthodoxy once you have the relationship between a diocese, a bishop and a national Church on this Catholic model. It is the baptismal-unity model. What Matt Kennedy is talking about is something to do with being Reformed, that is the fellowship that exists on the basis of doctrinal standards (and whichever doctrinal standard you want).

Where this has all gone wrong is that those who want a Communion method of punishment tend to want the Communion as a standard of doctrine and fellowship, whereas the Archbishop in response to all this is applying a Communion view of baptism-unity (via bishop etc.) and it all begins to look un-Anglican.

Most of the time many of us here have discussed the demands for orthodoxy on the doctrine-fellowship basis and that these demands are also unAnglican, in that there are other, broader, standards of doctrine that are Anglican.

The Archbishop has encouraged the separation of these two by over-pushing his Communion centred Catholicism, just as others have over-pushed the Communion as a standard for doctrine. It is responsible for neither. It is simply up to national Churches to decide who they wish to be in communion with: it is why the process over doctrine Covenant is one mighty mess. It is not doctrinal (any more than is some Anglicanism, understood in many an actual Anglican Church) but nor via process can it be Catholic. Except the Archbishop took it upon himself to espouse a Communion view of Catholicism that is not Anglican!

Thanks to John B. Chilton for pointing out that the points quoted by MJ actually prove my point (rather than the contrary).

There are three extra-provincial sees directly under the ABC: The Lusitanian Church, The Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain (both of which, according to Bishop Pierre Whalon, worked with the ACC to combine with the Diocese of Gibraltar & the Convocation of American Churches in Europe to form a single province, but decided it was not practicable & have formed an ad hoc arrangement with each other & the Old Catholics of Utrecht) & Bermuda (which is simply not geographically close to anything -- presumably if there were a few other English settled Mid-Atlantic islands, there would be a province).

And then there is the Diocese of Cuba (which was a plant from TEC & is separate because of the ridiculous politic squabble that has gone far too long -- a gerrymandered arrangement between Cuba & the Canadian Church & TEC is currently in place).

Thomas, I've a feeling you've misunderstood slightly. To say a diocese is the Church in a particular area is merely to say that the diocese is not LESS than Church. Bishop and diocese, with the Eucharist, (the 'local church') constitute a full and catholic church in that area; the eschatological community is present in its fullness - something which being a member of a province or 'national church' does not ADD to. A diocese does not 'lack' something ecclesial by not being part of a wider cultural grouping, although they may do so practically. The local churches in communion with one another (unity of faith and practice, focussed in the bishop) constitute the wider Church. But to say that a diocese (local church) constitutes a full and catholic church is not saying that it is the ONLY full and catholic local church in that area. It is not to 'unchurch' other overlapping jurisdictions, anomalous as that situation may be in today's Church in schism. The same anomalous situation exists in the US as regards Orthodoxy - with various bishops having oversight over various ethnic groupings in the same geographical area - but that does not mean they somehow 'unchurch' each other.

"the WHOLE Church Catholic"

One, holy, catholic and apostolic Church?

Democracy is the least worst option, Ford.

We seem to be discussing two different aspects of a diocese (corresponding, historically, to two different aspects of a bishop in England--Vicar of God or licensee of the Crown). Theologically, as has been pointed out, there is a venerable tradition that a diocese is the fundamental local church (as opposed, on the one hand, to a parish, or, on the other, to a province). That does not, however, answer the question of where dioceses come from or who can combine them, or even extinguish them altogether. In TEC, these latter functions are performed by the Province (in a process which has been detailed on other threads); in the UK, so far as I can remember, those latter functions are vested in the Crown, and exercised by Parliament, to the great irritation of John Keble & Co. Presumably, Parliament could decide tomorrow to make Rochester an Archbishopric (or, for that matter, to replace +Rowan with a Methodist). General Convention has much less freedom, but dioceses are still subject to the National Church.

What an apology for the establsishnent from Andrew Carey. Is this the same Andrew Carey, whose father was appointed the same way?

The Archbishop of Canterbury derives his jurisdiction from the Crown of England and the Queen is his ordinary.

At the end of the day a pro gay, pro abortion prime minister , who attends Roman catholic services made the final choice and picked the Archbishop.

Another point in this is that the diocesan system is actually an artifact of the Church having grown up in the urban areas of the Roman Empire. Thus, it became natural to consider, as the Church became Imperial and the Church's leaders began to think of themselves as Imperial government officials, that a bishop's "dominion" so to speak, extended into the areas controlled legally and economically by that city. The Celtic Church had no such thing, since the Celts had no cities. Their bishops were also monastic, so for them organization wasn't on the basis of the faithful gathered around their bishop inn his urban seat, but the faithful gathered around their bishop in his monastery. Thus, the Synod of Whitby imposed an Imperial model, by that time though to be divinely ordained and not simply the byproduct of Roman Imperial Civic organization, on a society that didn't have the structures that had given birth to the system. One could argue that by virtue of guiding the hidtory of the Church the way He did, God DID ordain the diocesan model. I think in many instances, especially in rural areas, it might be better to revert to a Celtic model, but we'd need a functioning monastic tradition for that, and that wouldn't be tolerable to a good number of Anglicans.

Michael, I am not confident that I understand your take on the Church Catholic. It seems to me straightforward to define the Church Catholic (a) in such a way as to equate it with “all baptised believers in Christ” or something similar.

It seems to be also reasonably straightforward to claim (b) that the Church Catholic subsists in local gatherings of Christians, in which the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance.

The hard work of theology begins when we try to speak of church in expressions which are less than (a) and more than (b). In other words, when we speak of units which do not encompass all the baptised but embrace more than a local gathering. In which sense is an Anglican or Lutheran or Roman diocese with its Bishop “a full and catholic church in that area”?

Do you really mean to say that such a diocese has no need of the wider church to be fully Church Catholic? In one sense, I could agree with this, namely in the same sense that a local gathering does not need a diocesan bishop to be fully “Church Catholic”.

But in so far as diocesan bishops, being the visible sign of the inter-communion of (some of the!) local gatherings within a geographical area, enhance (the visibility of?) the catholicity of these local churches, then surely their being in communion with churches beyond the diocese enhances (the visibility of?) the catholicity of their dioceses? And in this sense national churches and provinces and the Anglican Communion do add something, don’t they?

Granted what I said earlier about the risk of confusing two different issues, I think the traditional language of Church Catholic in a locality creates further confusion because it antedates the invention of the parish--and, indeed, "parochia" in older texts inevitably means what we would call a "diocese." The core idea, I think, is that a _parish_ is *not* a local church: it is, rather, a _subdivision_ of a local church (i.e. a diocese) in which the overseer and high priest of the local church (i.e. the Bishop) has allowed one of the local church's advisory council of elders (i.e. a presbyter) to preside in the Bishop's absence. Only when the Bishop presides at the Eucharist with his or her presbyters around him or her and the deacons and laity performing their liturgies is the local church fully present. But, again, to my original point, in the UK and the US, neither the diocese nor the parish simply springs up from the earth.

"I have a sneaking feeling that Rowan is quite likely to disinvite those bishops who continue to “approve” liturgies to celebrate same sex unions"

Martin,

If your sneaking feeling (and Matt Kennedy's wet dream) do, in fact, come to pass . . . I hope The Disinvited show up at Lambeth anyway. A "Salt March" (see Gandhi) if you will, to show solidarity for the disinvited, the disinherited THROUGHOUT the AC. Lead on, Lord Christ! :-D

Part 1
For me, these issues are not just matters of ecclesiological or sacramental theology, nor are they primarily matters of history. These things are surely important and several valuable contributions have been made about them in this conversation. Rather, I am concerned for the future of TEC in the Anglican Communion and for the future nature of the Anglican Communion itself. For the past several years, propelled primarily by our disagreements over the full inclusion of LGBT persons in the Church, and by the ordination of women to any office in the Church,several de facto developments have taken place in the exercise of eccesiology in the Anglican Communion. The primates have, when assembled, taken to acting as an authoritative body which can issue demands on Churches in the Communion, demands which contain the implied penalty of some form of excommunication. The primates have based this self assumed authority on a few statements of the last two Lambeth Conferences, urging a greater role for themselves and for the ABC in issues affecting relationships in the AC. No resolution of any Lambeth Conference granting authority to the primates could ever be accepted by TEC. Our nature as a Church requires that decisions of this kind be made by all orders of our Church, especially including the lay order. Some writers have used resolutions of the Lambeth Conferences as prescriptive for the Churches of the Communion. No resolution of any Lambeth Conference is prescriptive for any Church, and membership in the Communion cannot be based on any Church's adherence, or lack thereof, to any resolution of the Lambeth Conference. The Windsor Report has moved from being a document calling for reflection and response to a quasi-official statement of the Anglican Communion, to which bishops are expected to be "compliant". So, in the same way, for the proposed Covenant. There is no authoritative basis for these developments. Now the ABC, no doubt well intentioned, writes a letter to a bishop who is "Windsor compliant" but several of whose parishes wish to separate from his jurisdiction because he remains in communion with the House of Bishops and the General Convention of TEC. Please note that all of these developments are by bishops and directed to bishops. This way of relating is just alien to TEC. Where are the lay people in all of this? Obviously, they are without authority in such a way of doing church.

Part 2

Now the ABC, no doubt well intentioned, writes a letter to a bishop who is "Windsor compliant" but several of whose parishes wish to separate from his jurisdiction because he remains in communion with the House of Bishops and the General Convention of TEC. RW makes simple statements of catholic ecclesiology. Fine. But, then, RW, in his remarks refers to TEC and its governing bodies as merely practical instruments of administration and asserts that the primary relationship is between a bishop and his office, as if TEC were not a Church, in itself, whose bishops are commissioned to hold office by virtue of their communion with TEC. This from a bishop who has no jurisdiction in TEC, at all. These are examples of the changing of facts on the ground that are, if they are not resisted, inexorably leading to a profound change in the Anglican Communion, towards a Roman or Orthodox model of an international Church, with a patriarch (not referenced pejoratively, but historically) holding an historic see, who governs that Church by convening meetings of Primates who exercise authority to make doctrine and to excommunicate dissenters. For TEC to consent to this movement would be to destroy itself and the gift that it offers to the other Churches of the Communion, of more democratic Churches which decide consensually with the full involvement of the lay order, and with a passionate commitment to the Baptismal Covenant. We seek to strengthen the bonds of an international family of Churches who listen to each other and learn from each other, who assist each other in mission, and who gather together at the Table of the Lord in a witness to the world of the actual practice of the teachings of Jesus. We have no problem with Lambeth Conferences whose resolutions are offered for advice and reflection. We have no problem with primates’ meetings which gathers for mutual support and reflection. We have no problem with the historic role of the ABC in the AC. What we have a problem with is the rolling out of a profound change in the nature of the AC and these moves in the direction of becoming an international Church.

Martin

Thanks for referring us to the Stand In Firm proposition.

A couple of problems with their advocacy of exclusionism.

They've already done that, Griswald has commented that at least Schori has been to a global primates meeting, something that he never personally achieved.

The TEC has been "outside of grace" and meetings for quite some time.

Rowan surprised us all when he invited Schori to Tanzania and then made the Lambeth invitations.

Perhaps it was because the poker game's bluff have been called. "Repent or be outside of communion" had already become "you are outside of communion, but give us your money anyway". Now the strategy seems to be how to connive to get the money without dealing with the entity that is TEC.

They don't want communion with TEC, they want communion with puppets just like themselves, and they will use whatever strategies they can to keep priests who justify complacency, tyranny and vilification as "the holy communion" representatives.

Thomas Renz: "I am not confident that I understand your take on the Church Catholic."

Not my take, the patristic understanding of the Church.

Thomas Renz: "Do you really mean to say that such a diocese has no need of the wider church to be fully Church Catholic?"

Each local church (a diocese under a bishop, continuing in the apostolic faith and celebrating an authentic eucharist) is the Catholic Church. The universal Church is the communion of these local churches, the koinonia of all the Catholic Churches. The one indivisible church of God (apostolic and catholic) thus exists in each local church. And therefore each local church under its bishop must act in communion with all the other local churches, in order to keep it in the koinonia of all the churches. The bishops of the local churches are charged with the maintaining and strengthening of the koinonia of the churches. They are thus called to be the loci of unity in apostolic faith and practice. And each local church must be able to recognise in its sister churches that same apostolic faith and practice. Thus major issues, decisions and interpretations concerning the faith and life of a local church (or group of local churches) cannot be taken by that church in isolation but only in conjunction with the wider Church. Substantial disagreement leads to a break in the koinonia of the churches - impaired or broken communion, or schism. Provinces or 'national churches', comprised of local churches (dioceses), provide that cultural and regional ecclesial solidarity and support which is necessary for the mission and well-being of the universal Church.

The coexistence of an Anglican and a Roman Catholic diocese in the same place is no objection to recognizing both of them as a full embodiment of the Catholic Church in that place.

Are regional episcopacies and churches a thing of the past in our globalized world? I think not: national tradition is a huge factor in church life, as shown in the cult of national patron saints.

Note that the Roman Catholic Church calls itself 'mother of all the churches' because there are churches within its communion that are not strictly identified as Roman -- Armenian, Syrian and South Indian churches that celebrate different rituals etc. This is a fringe of Catholicism I have only a vague idea of, but it might be a very significant point in giving theological status to regional unities within the Catholic web of dioceses.

There seems indeed to be a push to change the Anglican Communion from a federation of churches into one single Church. (Would that entail the disestablishment of the Church of England?)

'If they refuse to come to Lambeth on the basis that "my enemy's friend is my enemy" (which is a classic donatist view) then they are the ones who break communion with Canterbury.' Since when has merely failing to show up at Lambeth come to constitute breaking communion? It is surely a much more formal and weighty matter than that.

Michael - the problem in my eyes is that you continue to speak, as if we still lived in the fourth century. The point at issue is not what the patristic understanding of the church is but what happens when you impose that understanding on current realities. Ever since “the church” stopped burning heretics, we have lived in a world with overlapping dioceses, claiming to continue in the apostolic faith and celebrating an authentic Eucharist, here in the West anyway. Their bishops sometimes are in communion with each other (Lutheran, Anglican), sometimes not (Roman). In the patristic period, it was possible to use the direct article and to speak of the diocese with its bishop, today this is not possible without denying alternative and overlapping diocesan structures.

But I largely agree with what you say in the second part. We may add that just like “national churches” provide “cultural and regional ecclesial solidarity and support,” so did the Anglican Communion offer ecclesial solidarity and support beyond nations and regions - but we bear in mind the difference in legal structures. The “instruments” of the Anglican Communion do not enforce solidarity but they may help to define how solidarity between “national churches” can be preserved.

4May1535+ the claim that “parochia” in older texts means “diocese” today needs teasing out. Presumably you mean to say that at one time each “parochia” had its own bishop. So in that sense it is equivalent to a diocese. But I am convinced that if London had been the size then as it is now, it would not have consisted of one diocese (let alone Europe!) but of, at least, eighteen dioceses. And I don’t think this is just a matter of size - we are not comparing like with like. As Ford Elms has reminded us earlier in the thread, the diocesan model we know today has its own history.

I don't have a problem with the Catholic Church calling itself the mother of all Christian churches.

Chronologically that is correct.

Plus, every sensible mother knows she can not guarantee what kind of child God will give her, nor how they will grow up, nor if she will approve of all their choices and actions.

But a mother loves all her children, even if she sometimes has to put her foot down to stop the more aggressive ones making the meeker or less advantaged children's lives a misery.

"The coexistence of an Anglican and a Roman Catholic diocese in the same place is no objection to recognizing both of them as a full embodiment of the Catholic Church in that place." I would largely agree with this, as long as one does not speak of the Church Catholic as subsisting in its dioceses and bishops in a (patristic) way which presumes that there is only one set in each geographical area.

The claim that “the Bishop and the Diocese” are “the primary locus of ecclesial identity” seems to me compatible with such ecumenical sentiments, only if by that we mean “the _Anglican_ Bishop and the _Anglican_ Diocese” are “the primary locus of our _Anglican_ ecclesial identity” (and even then it raises the question where the diocese came from in the first place).

I agree that national tradition is a significant factor in church life but I am not convinced that we should be content with this, cf. the “Anglicanism and Protestantism” thread below. National tradition does not seem to be a good enough reason for allowing oneself to be out of communion with another tradition. It would be hugely problematic, arguably schismatic, to establish a separate diocese based on ethnic identity rather than principles of Orthodoxy and territory.

In this respect, what some might want to uphold as the ecclesiology underlying the CofE will not work as an Anglican ecclesiology beyond these blessed shores.

"It would be hugely problematic, arguably schismatic, to establish a separate diocese based on ethnic identity rather than principles of Orthodoxy and territory."

Like CANA? As to Orthodoxy, why should we be governed by what they do? I admit I find their liturgy and worldview attractive, but they have a host of problems as well.

Thomas Renz wrote "the claim that “parochia” in older texts means “diocese” today needs teasing out. Presumably you mean to say that at one time each “parochia” had its own bishop. So in that sense it is equivalent to a diocese" That is more or less what I meant, yes, but I'd put it the other way around: "parochia" was the word for the territory a bishop had pastoral care over, which we would today call a diocese. What I meant to get at was that part of the evolution to what we think of as a diocese today was the development, particularly in the large northern European dioceses, of local congregations with only vestigial reminders (e.g., restrictions on where baptisms could be performed, or on how holy oils were distributed) to indicate that such places had originally been thought of as branch offices of the mother church, rather than as "churches" in themselves. I agree with the implication that a lot of dioceses are way too big, territorially: here in the states, we'd be better off (imho) with a lot of the "cardinal rectors" of urban mother churches being the bishops of much smaller and simpler "dioceses," and with the current administrative overhead of our several dioceses contracted into a reduced number of "something-elses"--archdioceses, provinces or what-do-you-call-'ems: more bishops being bishops liturgically / pastorally, in any case, and fewer running the corporation. But this is all off the main topic, I fear.

Ford, we agree that we are not governed by Eastern Orthodoxy and we might agree that Eastern Orthodoxy has not actually solved the various problems we have been talking about. My point is that if you believe in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, and if you also believe that (presumably geographical) dioceses and their bishops are the primary locus of ecclesial identity, you should be very reluctant about creating a new diocese which overlaps with existing ones (under a bishop who is not in communion with your group of Christians).

The problem can be eased, once “diocese” is no longer defined territorially but the concern with border-crossing demonstrates that we are thinking in geographical terms.

As for CANA, I need to back-track a little and ask a few exploratory, not merely rhetorical, questions. (1) Why is establishing an Anglican diocese in Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox countries not a case of schismatic border-crossing? I suppose because we are not in communion with them, or maybe more accurately, they are not in communion with us. There is thus no (communion) border to be crossed, as we do not belong to the same (communion) entity. But of course, those who belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, do belong to the same entity. All I am saying is that those who believe that the Church Catholic subsists in geographical “dioceses” need to be sure that they have allowed themselves to be out of communion for good reasons, otherwise they should consider themselves schismatic in establishing overlapping dioceses, should they not?

(2) The situation is different, if we ask whether establishing Anglican dioceses in Lutheran countries should be considered a case of schismatic border-crossing. It is different, because this time we are in full communion. Why do we not consider the existence of an Anglican diocese which overlaps with a Lutheran diocese with a prior claim to represent the continuing Church Catholic in this place schismatic? (And the same would apply the other way round, Lutheran churches in England.) I believe that this is because implicitly we have accepted that -for the moment- dioceses are not a matter of geography (only) but relate to faith (or maybe cultural) traditions. I am not convinced that once we allow for this, we can still appeal to the Fathers for our understanding of the relationship between church, diocese and bishop.

So what about CANA? The establishment of CANA dioceses is an act of border-crossing only on the assumption that there is a geographical entity of which TEC and the Church of Nigeria are separate, “adjoining” rather than overlapping, parts. That would be the Anglican Communion. So yes, as long as there is an Anglican Communion which is also geographically defined, this should be considered an act of border-crossing.

Is such border-crossing schismatic? In a wider and polemical sense, it is surely either schismatic or a response to schism or both. But in the proper sense of the word, such border-crossing can be described as “schismatic” (church-splitting) only by those for whom the Anglican Communion is not only a communion of “churches” but a “church”.

To Aloysius (or anyone) I give up!! What were the developments in Virginia Aloysius mentions above?? Thanks reference= "By the way, "Lambeth" issued that "clarification" on the Archbishop of Canterbury's letter to the Bishop of Central Florida because of developments yesterday in the Virginia lawsuits - make no mistake about it"

"To Aloysius (or anyone) I give up!! What were the developments in Virginia Aloysius mentions above?? "

Yes. I'd like to know that also - I believe that both sides are in the process of discovery, with the next public event coming in mid-November.

And please remember if anyone is feeling the urge to chastize the Diocese of Virginia for unChristian behavior in using the courts - it is the departing African congregations that are suing us. They initiated the lawsuits. We would have been bad stewards indeed not to have responded vigorously to defend that which we hold in trust for TEC.

With respect to Thomas Renz's well-taken points about establishing Anglican dioceses in places already Christian, and especially in ones served by people with whom we are in communion: I seem to remember that there was precisely this hesitation in the nineteenth century over the idea of setting up a Protestant (joint Lutheran-Anglican, if I remember correctly) bishop in Jerusalem.

I just cheked the website of the Richmond [Virginia] Times Dispatch and they had no stories about the Virginia lawsuits more recent than last August, which was when the Diocese's motion to dismiss the suit was [not unexpectedly]denied. Richmond is where the main diocesan offices are, the the RTD usually does a thorough job covering such news. I read the sections of today's WPOst that would have such news before I drove to the office, and they had nothing. I've not looked at the Moonie paper, the Wash Times.

"Why is establishing an Anglican diocese in Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox countries not a case of schismatic border-crossing?"

It is. It is a product of the Reformation, which was a sinful act of schism. There's a hymn we sing often at Mass, that has the line "Make Thou our sad divisions soon to cease." The fact that in this city there is a Roman Catholic bishop and an Anglican one is a painful reminder that, 500 years on, we are still suffering the effects of the sin of the Reformation. We should be one, but we are not because of our own pride. Our faces are rubbed in it, every time, or should be, when the two bishops meet and put on some great show of ecumenism. Rather than shrink from that painful reality by doing away with he concept of the geographical diocese, I think we need that concept as a thorn in our flesh, a reminder of how far we have gone from our first love.
The diocese as we understand it is a result of the development of the Early Church in the urban Roman Empire. It was originally the place cared for by a bishop. As things changed politically, it grew into a quasi-Imperial division of land, in effect an Eccliastical princedom to mirror the political princedoms of Europe. That is explicit in many Orthodox formularies that give elaborate lists of Civil authorities and their Ecclesiastical equivalents. The Church was structured like the Empire. The Celts had it somewhat differently. But, there is still the basic premise that the church as locally manifested consists of the eucharistic community gathered around its bishop, whether actually, or symbolically when priests serve as the bishop's "agent" so to speak. If we cannot have that in its purity, we need to keep its present impure form, if nothing else than as a reminder of how far we have to go to get back to what we are supposed to be.

We now return you to the Diocese of Central Florida:

[quote]

Letter Doesn’t Sway Central Florida Parishes
10/24/2007

A letter from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida has changed nothing for the rectors and wardens of seven parishes and two church plants in that diocese, said a spokesperson for the group.

“We remain committed to disaffiliation from The Episcopal Church and continue in discussion with Bishop Howe over that process,” said the Rev. Don Curran, rector of Grace Church, Ocala, and president of the standing committee. “We want to handle this as expeditiously as possible, but there is no established deadline.”

Fr. Curran said he and the other clergy were shown Archbishop Williams’ letter by Bishop Howe during a meeting Oct. 18 at the diocesan headquarters in Orlando. The meeting was scheduled after Fr. Curran approached Bishop Howe on behalf of the group. Under terms agreed to during the meeting, each parish will submit a proposal for consideration by the bishop.

The rector of one of the parishes, the Rev. Lorne Coyle of Trinity, Vero Beach, is a candidate for election to the standing committee this year. Fr. Curran said both he and Fr. Coyle remain ready to serve in whatever leadership capacity beyond their parish that they are asked until they are received into another province.

Steve Waring

[close quote]

See: http://www.livingchurch.org/publishertlc/viewarticle.asp?ID=3895

and 4May1535+ when the Church of Ireland consecrated the Lusitanian Bishop in Portugal and the Spanish reformed Bishop in the 1880's

Ford Elms,

If you consider the Reformation to be a sin, it would seem that the logical thing to do would be to become a Roman Catholic. There are many of us who do not wish to be Roman Catholics and find possitive value in much of the heritage of the Reformation.

Thank you, Richard, these were precisely my thoughts. If you, Ford, consider the Reformation "a sinful act of schism", are you not living in sin by remaining in a church which has been shaped by the Reformation? I acknowledge that there is a case for remaining loyal to the church family by which one has been nurtured etc. and therefore, on an individual level, things are more complex than all that. But as a church, we either have a good reason for the sad fact of being out of communion with Rome or we don't. If you identify the Reformation itself as the "sinful act of schism", you seem to be saying that we don't have a good Reformation reason. Does this mean we have other good reasons or that we have in fact no good reasons? And would not the latter demand of us that we return?

Perry - thanks for the reference to the Lusitanian Church and the Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain. I was unaware of the existence of extraprovincial dioceses "under the metropolitical authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury". I am not quite sure how this relates to the comment made by 4May1535+ but this is because I lack the historical knowledge to make full sense of his allusion to the Jerusalem situation.

Are you, 4May1535+, saying that serious thought was given to setting up one Protestant diocese rather than two (one Lutheran, one Anglican) overlapping dioceses? And what prevented it? Or was the hesitation about setting up an Anglican diocese because there already was a Lutheran one?

Claiming that when the Bishop of Rome speaks, God speaks, as does the 1073 Dictatus papae,
or making Celibacy (an individual call from the Holy Ghost) Mandatory, as does Lateran II,
or Christ's death wasn't once for All but is to be "repeated" in Mass, as does Lateran IV,
or counting (and selling) the extra "Merit" of dead people,
or sexualizing the Latin Bible, putting the crowd control of Empire in the text,
or justifying the persecution of "minorities” invented for the purpose, to make the majority “obedient” (Lateran IV, again),

and all the other I-am-better-than-thou hierarchically de-valuing anti Gospel stuff continuing to this day...

surely this is Sin?

Of course schism is a sin. We may have felt there was/is no option, but lets not try to justify it as something other than what it is - a mentality that has led to the currently c.20,000 different Christian denominations in world. If there is no absolute need for it, it should never happen. If it is possible to overcome it after the fact, it must be done. The 2006 Agreed Statement of the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue expresses it well:

"Schism, whether it arises from un-Christian behaviour, false teaching or an unwillingness to live under authority, causes the fabric of the Church to be strained until its threads begin to come apart. Schism, which involves physical, bodily separation, is an outward blatant sign of an inner disease. Because the disunity of the churches betrays Christ's prayer 'that they may be one' and abrogates the credal proclamation of the 'oneness' of the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, schism was often considered a more serious matter than heresy. For this reason John Chrysostom went so far as to argue that 'nothing angers God so much as division in the Church...not even martyrdom can wipe out that crime' ('On the Epistle to the Ephesians', Homily X.15). Division, whether in the form of schism, heresy, or simply unreconciled hostility, is a sin that renders the mode of being of the Church in which we live our daily lives an imperfect and distorted image of its true self. It may be that reflection on the existential reality of the Church will turn us from the analysis of heresy to the analysis of schism and division as the foundational sin that we are called to overcome."

The sad reality of schism is especially poignant in regards to the ancient patriarchate of Antioch. As John Binns points out - in Straight Street in Damascus, the only street named in the Bible (Acts 9:11), there resides the:

- Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
- Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
- Greek Catholic (Melkite) Patriarch of Antioch.

Thirty miles away in Beirut lives the:

- Antiochian Syrian Maronite Patriarch of Antioch
- Syrian Catholic Patriarch of Antioch.

At one time there was also the:

- (Latin) Catholic Patriarch of Antioch (although that name is no longer used)

All ancient Churches torn between the schisms which led to Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism.

Those interested in the tangled jurisdictional web which is Europe (which Lambeth 1968 'deplored') might find a couple of essays by Bp Pierre Whalon interesting, as well as the letter of European Bishops to the Lambeth Conference 1998:

Anglicans in Europe—A Model?
http://anglicansonline.org/resources/essays/whalon/europemodel.html

The Blight of Parallel Jurisdictions
http://anglicansonline.org/resources/essays/whalon/parajurisdiction.html

A letter to the 1998 Lambeth Conference from
The College of Anglican Bishops in Continental Europe
http://www.tec-europe.org/partners/COABICE.htm

we need to be clear.....sin causes schism but this does not mean it is wrong to separate from false teachers or a corrupt church - the New Testament would support such separation and I would argue that Luther left the RCC because of the sins of its leadership....he was not sinning by leaving.

the new testament simply does not support the view that we should just accept the teaching of whoever happens to be a church leader or whatever a church happens to teach.....unity is to be based on truth (and telling the truth...)

NP - "I would argue that Luther left the RCC because of the sins of its leadership....he was not sinning by leaving."

Luther did not wish to leave, and saw the terrible seriousness of doing so. In fact he did not 'leave' and found his own church - his refusal to recant resulted in his excommunication. Schism for himself and his followers was forced upon them, not something they chose to do.

“I never approved of a schism, nor will I approve of it for all eternity. . . . That the Roman Church is more honored by God than all others is not to be doubted. St. Peter and St. Paul, forty-six Popes, some hundreds of thousands of martyrs, have laid down their lives in its communion, having overcome Hell and the world; so that the eyes of God rest on the Roman church with special favour. Though nowadays everything is in a wretched state, it is no ground for separating from the Church. On the contrary, the worse things are going, the more should we hold close to her, for it is not by separating from the Church that we can make her better. We must not separate from God on account of any work of the devil, nor cease to have fellowship with the children of God who are still abiding in the pale of Rome on account of the multitude of the ungodly. There is no sin, no amount of evil, which should be permitted to dissolve the bond of charity or break the bond of unity of the body. For love can do all things, and nothing is difficult to those who are united.”

Martin Luther to Pope Leo X, January 6, 1519
more than a year after the Ninety-Five Theses

Schism leads to schism, leads to schism, leads to schism...in that eternal quest to separate ourselves from the 'impure'.

MJ - many thanks for the links to the lucid and helpful Pierre Whalon essays.

NP - Luther did not leave, he was excommunicated.

"If you consider the Reformation to be a sin, it would seem that the logical thing to do would be to become a Roman Catholic."

Only if you assume the only sin in the Reformnation lay with the reformers, and even Rome hasn't been that blunt in ages.

"sin causes schism but this does not mean it is wrong to separate from false teachers or a corrupt church"

It's the behaviour of the parties involved that is the sin, NP. So I would say the Reformers sinned by breaking up the Church, but I would also say that the "Papal Church", for want of a better term, sinned by creating and perpetuating the situation that caused it to happen. Our modern Anglican situation has parallels. There is also sin on both sides. So, whose sin is more acceptable, TEC's because it is acting out of a desire to follow the Gospel and "help the afflicted" as the old blessing goes, or that of the GS who are trying to follow the Gospel by asserting the sole authority of Scripture? That they have no respect for that authority themselves reflects on them, and means for me that they have no right demand others do what they themselves do not, but that's another issue. Your, "well yes, it's sin to break the Church, but it was justified" is just justification for sin. I am not saying anybody's sin is justified by someone else's, but you seem to be saying that the sins of the medieval Church justified the sin of the Reformation. I'm interested in seeing how you will deny that this is using the sins of one person to justify another, which you have been falsely accusing me of for the past year. The problem is that you see sin as a specific action, like schism. In fact it lies more in the pride and arrogance that lead to the schism, which is merely the last step in a long process.

Thomas - thanks for the correction re Luther

Maybe we will see +Duncan "excommunicated" from TEC(USA) too...

I you want to take the matter to a logical extreme, then split of Christianity from Judaism could be seen as "sinful schism".

Ford, "well yes, it's sin to break the Church, but it was justified" does not represent my view. The parties involved spoke both truth and error. All were sinners; integrity and gentleness could be found on both sides. But this was not a no-fault divorce. The Reformers taught the truth and were excommunicated for it.

This is not to say that the Reformers always spoke right and wisely. Neither do I wish to deny that there were many factors involved in the various acts of schism which were not honourable -- and that on both sides.

But as far as the crux of the schism is concerned, the Reformers were right to say what they did. They were right not to keep quiet, even after the authorities warned them that they would be excommunicated.

Of course we disagree on this. But for myself I do believe that at bottom the schism was caused by the refusal of the Papal authorities to listen to the Word of God. What’s more. The schism is maintained by a continual insistence on burdening the people of God with teachings which cannot be proven from the Scriptures.

In all humility, with repentance for our sins, but with a clear conscience as to the cause of the schism, Reformed Catholics will have to say (a) that the schism was and is sin, and (b) that it was not and is not justified, and (c) that the fault lies not with us.

PS: This is not to say that the fault always lies with those who excommunicate. The church must guard the truth by refuting error. Thus the church did well to excommunicate Arius, even if he may have been a godly man in many ways. The excommunication of Martin Luther and others was wrong, however, even if Luther was sometimes not acting in a Christ-like manner. I hope you do not think me too bold for stating these things with confidence.

"But for myself I do believe that at bottom the schism was caused by the refusal of the Papal authorities to listen to the Word of God. What’s more. The schism is maintained by a continual insistence on burdening the people of God with teachings which cannot be proven from the Scriptures."

It is just as much based on the arrogant claim that, after 1500 years of Christians believing otherwise, a group of men who lost trust in the traditional authority structure, valid though that loss of trust may be, were right in their radical concept that all authority was to be vested in Scripture and the traditions of the Church must be cast off as what they equally arrogantly scorned as "the traditions of men". That same Scripture exhorts us to be faithful to the TRADITION we have received, not the books nor the letters, the TRADITION. That's the point. There was corruption that needed to be cleaned up, but they went way too far in their "reforms", because they were arrogant in their own "rightness". Just like the Popes were arrogant in THEIR own "rightness".

Sorry, I'm not a "Bible only" kind of person. Your claim about "listening to the Word of God" falls flat with me because my attitude, as I have put it before, is that the Bible is the user's manual for Christianity. You can no more build Christianity from the Bible than you can build a computer from the user's manual, but once you have the computer, you can learn what it can do.

Richard Lyon - Judaism in the first century was very diverse, so much so some scholars have stopped speaking of pre-70 Judaism in the singular and use "Judaisms" instead.

The first Christians were being kicked out of the synagogues rather than turning their backs on "Judaism". The intriguing question, from the other side of the divide, is "why it is that Judaism, after tolerating sectarianism and schism for the entire length of the Second Temple period, elected to regard Christianity as another religion entirely" (L. H. Schiffman).

What we now call Judaism is as much a daughter religion of the pre-70 "Judaisms" as is Christianity. Thus, while Protestantism is the daughter of (Roman or what became Roman) Catholicism, Judaism and Christianity are really better considered sisters rather than mother and daughter.

Ford - with all due respect, I think you are again projecting views onto the magisterial Reformers and myself which we do not hold. As for the Reformers, they can speak for themselves, many of their works being readily available.

As for myself, I may remind you of an earlier thread (.../archives/002418.html), on which, in a post addressed to you and Erika, I have distanced myself from some contemporary (evangelical and anti-evangelical) versions of sola Scriptura, cf. the remark by "Chris" in a later thread, also addressed to you (.../archives/002675.html).

There are those for whom “tradition” is neither here nor there. But I expected that you, Ford, know that I, Thomas, do not belong in this group, just as well as I know that you don’t belong in this group.

I am not denying the existence of literalistically-minded “evangelicals” shouting “Bible alone” and meaning “don’t bother me with facts, if they seem to contradict Scripture, and don’t come to me with tradition!” I have met a few of them myself. I even grant that some TA posters may not have met many other evangelicals. But the ease with which such views are projected on anyone who is happy to be called “evangelical” suggests to me that a number of TA posters are not able to recognise evangelicals like myself, even when they meet them - and that may of course be one reason why they have only ever met "the one sort".

"TA posters are not able to recognise evangelicals like myself"

I'm definitely one. I have had huge problems in the past, but I've gotten to the point where I can say that what follows is NOT true of all Evangelicals, yet there IS a loud group to which these things DO apply. I don't know the difference between an Evangelical, a Charismatic, and a Pentecostal. I have asked, but not gotten a satisfactory reply. Frankly, you all look alike. Sorry to sound so dismissive. The Evangelicals I have met here tend to use the same catch phrases, blithely unaware or uncaring of how insulting they are to the rest of us, to have the same willingness to deny the faith of those who are not as they are, to distort reality to support their points. Look at the widespread Evangelical delusion that the West has a spiralling rate of violent crime despite published statistics that show a decrease. That many of the leaders of the anti-gay charge are Evangelicals who quote blatant propaganda and slander against gay people as though it were fact shows how they think, and the fact that they cannot see, even when told, that their behaviour, their siding with the lie, reveals their true colours shows just how much arrogance is in them. There is the conviction, (?longing?) that we are currently being persecuted, and while we ARE hated in some parts of society, none of them seem willing to examine what they do to cause that. For the past year, I have been talking about how the listening process would have given Evangelicals the understanding of why their approach makes gay people fear them. Not once has there been any sign of understanding of why this should be. If any notice at all, usually NP, it is to claim they have listened and not been convinced, and that listening doesn't mean agreeing, as though anyone other than them ever said it did! Sorry, I confess ignorance, prejudice, and an incredible amount of baggage going back to my youth. In recent posts I have told some true stories of my encounters with Evangelicals, to give some insight. If you are not as they are, I apologize for my judgemenatlism and stereotyping.

Ford,
I can't find the thread now, but I had a long conversation about same sex relationships with Thomas a short while ago, and although we did not agree, I found him to be thoughtful, respectful and sincere. He genuinely did listen and I only hope I was able to repay the compliment.
I was greatly encouraged by our exchange.

Ford, your apology, if needed in the first place, is readily accepted. I did not take your words as a personal attack although I felt frustrated when I read them. We all have our areas of ignorance and prejudice. Just as in my case, some of the baggage is reinforced by a number of TA posters, so it must be in your case. "NP" and "Will Prynne" spring to mind.

Thank you, Erika, for your encouraging words.

I happened to read an essay over the weekend which quoted from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.ii.5-6. So here is Calvin in his own words:

“As to their charge of heresy and schism, because we preach a different doctrine, and submit not to their laws, and meet apart from them for Prayer, Baptism, the administration of the Supper, and other sacred rites, it is indeed a very serious accusation, but one which needs not a long and laboured defence. The name of heretics and schismatics is applied to those who, by dissenting from the Church, destroy its communion. This communion is held together by two chains—viz. consent in sound doctrine and brotherly charity. Hence the distinction which Augustine makes between heretics and schismatics is, that the former corrupt the purity of the faith by false dogmas, whereas the latter sometimes, even while holding the same faith, break the bond of union (August. Lib. Quæst. in Evang. Matth.)…”

Calvin provides a long citation from Cyprian which uses metaphors such as “many rays of the sun, but one light” to stress that unity has its fountain in Christ and continues: “Words could not more elegantly express the inseparable connection which all the members of Christ have with each other. We see how [Cyprian] constantly calls us back to the head. Accordingly, he declares that when heresies and schisms arise, it is because men return not to the origin of the truth, because they seek not the head, because they keep not the doctrine of the heavenly Master. Let them now go and clamour against us as heretics for having withdrawn from their Church, since the only cause of our estrangement is, that they cannot tolerate a pure profession of the truth. I say nothing of their having expelled us by anathemas and curses. The fact is more than sufficient to excuse us, unless they would also make schismatics of the apostles, with whom we have a common cause. Christ, I say, forewarned his apostles, “they shall put you out of the synagogues” (John xvi. 2). The synagogues of which he speaks were then held to be lawful churches. Seeing then it is certain that we were cast out, and we are prepared to show that this was done for the name of Christ, the cause should first be ascertained before any decision is given either for or against us. This, however, if they choose, I am willing to leave to them; to me it is enough that we behoved to withdraw from them in order to draw near to Christ.”

"Just as in my case, some of the baggage is reinforced by a number of TA posters, so it must be in your case. "NP" and "Will Prynne" spring to mind."

Thomas, you don't know the half! The sameness between your frustrations and mine will give me something to reflect on for a long time.

When I read the Calvin bits, I could hear his frustration as well. The thing is, I read the rest of what you quoted as justification for giving in to that frustration. It's all "their" fault, because "they" wouldn't listen to "us" and "we" are right because "we" agree with those words of the Apostles that have been written down, and "we" have decided that those writings are the only place we can go to for authority. Sorry, but, corrupt Papacy or not, losing patience with our fellow Christians, however understandable or inevitable, is still wrong. We are to forgive our brother 7 times 7 times, after all. I'm not saying the Reformation wasn't necessary, just that no necessity negates the sin of it, for both sides. We're still paying for that sin 500 years on, and not just in Church upheaval.

Ford, there has been a sad inclination among Protestants, particularly of the Reformed variety, towards split, which has to be acknowledged and repented of. Yet I am reluctant to attach the blame for this to Calvin himself, (a) because of his desire for Christian unity, evident also in other passages, (b) because of his pastoral concern for keeping peace, evident in his letters, and (c) in the light of his insistent reminder here that the Reformers have been excommunicated, not vice versa - which corresponds to the facts of the matter.

Calvin did come to the conclusion that the Roman Catholic Church is not "church" (I would disagree with this), but there is also a famous saying about him exclaiming that he would cross ten seas to promote the unity of the church - and by that he did not mean his own brand of church. But once you have been excommunicated, there is only so much you can do - the Reformers did not think that renouncing what they had firmly come to believe to be true was an option. And I think they were right in this.

We are all the poorer for the schism - no doubt about it! This is why we need to have a very good reason for being and remaining in broken communion - with Rome or anyone who are called by the name of Christ.

To suggest that Reformation reasons are good reasons for allowing ourselves to be out of communion with Rome is, in a sense, a justification for the fact of broken communion (schism). I have granted this implicitly above in talk about good reasons.

But I consider the Reformation position to be more Catholic than the position of those who allow themselves to be out of communion with Rome without justification. I also consider it more Catholic than the Roman position because I do not believe that they were right to excommunicate the Reformers, nor that they are right to enforce policies today which keep a large part of the Christian body in broken communion.

I realise that to put it in such terms can sound arrogant but for me it is merely to explain why I am Reformed Catholic rather than Roman Catholic. If I did not believe Reformation reasons to be good reasons, I would want to be Roman Catholic rather than Anglican - simple as that.

"I am reluctant to attach the blame for this to Calvin himself"

As am I. The blame lies on all. The ease with which Protestants split comes automatically once one accepts that a split is possible. In an atmosphere where everyone believed his reading of Scripture was right, the question was rapidly asked, "If we can break with Rome, why can't I break with you?" I don't see it simply as a right and wrong issue, that if the Reformation was sin then we should all trot back to Rome. It's not that simple. Sin isn't simply a matter of breaking a law and then making reparation. Sin is commonly seen in terms of lawbreaking, which blinds us to the full effect of it in the world. It affects our societal situation as well, making it at times impossible to make reparations. This might begin with arrogance or pride or greed or powerlust, but it ends up in a situation where it CAN'T be reversed. That's the situation we're in now. It is also interesting that you accept Calvin's argument that HIS side was excommunicated, "so what is one to do?" TEC could well, just like Calvin, be excommunicated from the AC. Like him, they believe themselves to be right. If his behaviour was justified, why is their's not? I don't think we should see it in terms of blame, despite my quips about medieval men not getting over their adolescent rebellion.

I find it difficult to regard Calvin positively.

_(b) because of his pastoral concern for keeping peace, evident in his letters_

Yes, he burnt Michael Servetus, instructing he be kept conscious whilst he was on fire.

I am not sure how lawbreaking came into this, Ford. We have been talking about a broken relationship. Having our relationship with Rome restored need not require reparations. But at the moment it would require of us to renounce the principles that have separated us - which would seem to me fair enough, if what has separated us is no longer or never has been a good reason.

"TEC could well, just like Calvin, be excommunicated from the AC. Like him, they believe themselves to be right. If his behaviour was justified, why is theirs not?" You are right to draw the parallel. I have done so myself on another thread, when I called TEC's behaviour "Protestant".

TEC had to ask themselves (a) how confident they are that their interpretation is right and that the mainstream interpretation is wrong, and (b) whether their truth requires them to take actions, even if such actions lead to broken communion. As a body, they have given affirmative answers to both. Formally, TEC’s move is indeed analogous to the situation of the Reformers. But in and of itself this says nothing about the cogency or acceptability of the move.

I believe that the Reformers were not reckless. The Protestant principle is not that we need to insist on each and every aspect of our (perceived) truth, regardless of its effect on our communion with other Christians. The Protestant principle is that there are some truths which need to be uphold and maybe embodied in actions, even if -sadly- doing so will have a negative impact on our fellowship with others.

For the time being, anti-Protestant Catholics really ought to be against the ordination of women, against same-sex blessings and other practices which have clearly communion-breaking effect. Protestant Catholics will have to test each case on its own merits. Well, it's maybe not quite as simple as that but given that this is a weblog, it'll have to do as a rough outline.

"Yes, he burnt Michael Servetus, instructing he be kept conscious whilst he was on fire."

No, he didn't. It was the Geneva governing council which insisted that Servetus should be burned at the stake against Calvin's plea for a more merciful method (beheading), cf. Calvin's letter to William Farel, 20 Aug. 1553. And you don't need to take my word for it. The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography acknowledges this - see http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/

We need not agree with the common view of the time that heresy deserves the death penalty to acknowledge that the Roman church and the Lutherans condemned Servetus as much as the Swiss Reformers and that Calvin himself inclined more to mercy than others.

You may well know this, Pluralist, but for the sake of other readers, let me add that Michael Servetus corresponded with Calvin from Lyon in a way which Calvin interpreted as seeking to implicate him in his heresies. Servetus was imprisoned in Lyon by the Roman Church and, having escaped, sentenced in absentia 17th June 1552, "to be burned alive, at a slow fire, till his body he reduced to a cinder." On the same day, his effigy was burned. The Inquisition in Vienna also sentenced him to death.

When Servetus turned up in Geneva, he was arrested and subjected to a trial which involved lengthy discussions and four other Swiss Reformed churches. The case seems to have been perceived as an opportunity for the Reformed to demonstrate their firm opposition to heresy. As far as I know, Calvin was sadly the only one to plead for a milder mode of execution.

I am confident that you will find this confirmed in any historical investigation from the classic (Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, vol. 8, chap. 16) to the recent (R. Keelan Downton, Authority in the Church: An Ecumenical Reflection on Hermeneutic Boundaries and Their Implications for Inter-Church Relations, University Press of America, 2006).

"at the moment it would require of us to renounce the principles that have separated us"

All of us, on both sides. This is my point. Lawbreaking came into it because I believe that our preoccupation with sin as lawbreaking obscures any understanding of its effects. The Reformation was sinful, not because it broke some law, not even the law of "love your neighbour", but because of what it showed of human attitudes and human pride and vainglory and how we justify ourselves by putting on the breastplate of righteousness. I don't think you are being this simplistic, but it seems you are saying that a) the Reformation was Rome's fault, and b) that our confidence of our own rightness is justification for separating ourselves from our brothers and sisters.

I'm also trying to put more clearly for myself this idea of sin as condition rather than act.

Thomas Renz,

You make a strong point on the importance of unity while recognizing the deep issues between the churches. Roman Catholics themselves heeded much of the corrective, albeit a century or more later (after the alienataion firmly set in). I have had RC leaders say to me directly, "If only we had been able to hear Luther at the time." As in much of life pride blinds us, so in the way to unity; think of John Wesley who all his life aimed for unity but within a call to renewal and faithfulness(it is clear he was no "schismatic" and that he gave full allegiance to historic Christian teaching). What can be done when there is no place for that call? When the alternatives are limited to comformity or exclusion? From his side Wesley did not make the break but there was exclusion and finally the break.

In the earlier time much of the issue was the overgrowth of corruption and distortion of Christian teaching over time, now we face the erosion of Christian conviction through "Enlightenment rationalism" that has moved on to a cynical almost despairing relativism in many cases (there is no grounded basis for morality and life, that is finally determined by our inclinations and feelings). This resort to our inclinations can hardly end but in despair! The first priority is finding the ground on which we can think and discern together our call and our purpose.

Peace,

Ben W

When the mother church only offers the alternatives of conformity or exclusion, daughter churches need to ask whether they can conform with a good conscience or not. If they can conform, they probably should. The refusal of the mother to accommodate can hardly excuse the pride of the daughter. I see pride and vainglory where people allow themselves to be excluded for no good reason.

Ford, I am with you in acknowledging sinful attitudes on both sides. Who of us is without sin? But I believe that your emphasis on the wrong on "both sides" is either defeatist or evades the facts that there is no neutral zone between Roman Catholicism and Reformed Catholicism, and that you belong to a church that is out of communion with Rome.

Those facing up to the fact that they are out of communion with Rome, will either continue to blame Rome (and maybe everyone else) and do nothing, or they will, as they should, earnestly ask themselves whether it is only their pride and tradition which keeps them out of communion.

Those who after such questioning conclude that they cannot conform to Rome in good conscience and all honesty are not necessarily proud. And while this sounds like individuals deciding to which church they ought to belong, I am