Does that mean that, suddenly, the HoB's decisions will be respected in Canterbury? That would be a step in the right direction.

The FIFNA letter would be funny except it is so sad, mainly in its blithe and facile presuppositions.

Ah, con evo presuppositions, when will we ever be free of their mind-numbing power in all our conversations, which bite into us and rule this or that domain of the human brain and heart out of bounds, even before we have started to explore hot button issues or very much talk things over from various key points of view.

FIFNA apparently cannot grasp the simple written notion that the canons focus on a bishop abandoning the communion of TEC - not the worldwide communion's bonds of affection which FIFNA and other con evo realignment leaders are campaigning to shred into confetti - by next New Year at the latest? Look for a New TV show called Anglican Cops to debut soon after TEC, Canada, and a few other provinces or even more local members are dissed and kicked out of worldwide Anglicanism as FIFNA blindly presupposes it to be.

And the Horsham bishop's letter - presuming that all may come together at Lambeth as if DSJSC were not leaving TEC as an attack maneuver in a larger realignment battle campaign? Where has this fellow been? Is he secretly planning to take Harsham over to the Southern Cone sometime soon? Sounds to me as if he is not yet sufficiently realigned against the foundational Elizabethan Settlement - and now he wants to disavow any weaponizing of doctrines? One wonders what he thinks and feels about the invisible weaponizing of worldwide Anglican closets, too.

Alas, all so funny except all so tragically unnecessary. Neither TEC communion nor worldwide Anglican bonds of affection are broken - at least not in ways that policing, punishment, and weaponizing our differences can resolve or heal. Lord have mercy.

"We further must call into question the use of the particular Canon pertaining to the abandonment of the Communion inasmuch as the American Province is not a Communion. That particular designation is reserved for the worldwide expression of Anglicanism." Bp Ackerman

Here is proof positive that while being gay may be considered a bar to the Episcopacy, being ignorant (or perhaps duplicitous) is not. This man's rather narrow (if not downright bizarre) interpretation of the term "communion" is a true wonder.

It's at moments like reading the Archbishop's statement on Schofield's Lambeth invite that one is particularly grateful for Fr. Hagger's blog, since one's reaction to reading that "at the moment [Schofield] still has an invitation" would be quite unprintable on TA!

Just out of curiousity, how many bishops in the CofE are liberal vs conservative?

It seems to me that the problem in TEC touches on one that will trouble most of Christendom, that of liberal vs conservative theology/people.
Bob

"Look for a New TV show called Anglican Cops to debut soon"

The detective is Frank Canon: you know, the one who is no higher than his car and is obese.

Dr Danfee writes: "Ah, con evo presuppositions", and repeats references to "con evo" several times.

I'm puzzled. FiF is basically an Anglo-Catholic organization, in which there is some debate about the extent to which common cause can be made with evangelicals. (There's a particularly interesting article in the current issue of New Directions on just this issue, with regard to the church-planting activities of the evangelical Christ Church, Bromley, in the parish of S. Barnabas, Beckenham!) The Bishop of Horsham is an Anglo-Catholic, whose theology is conservative, but not stridently so. I can't see what 2con evo" positions have todo with it.

I do understand where +Horsham is coming from. I'm not a particular fan of +San Joaquin. In fact, I wrote to FiF protesting at the presence on its website of of a pastoral message from that prelate which read like a party political broadcast on behalf of Likud. However, I do find the determination to get him and his colleagues more than a little disturbing.

Considering who is still invited and how schismatic some of them are, I really don't understand why Gene Robinson can not be invited.

Unless, it's that old scapegoating victim. It's much easier to vilify and blame somebody (Eve, gays) if they are not in the room and no one knows them personally.

That way you can pretty well say whatever you like about their honesty, capacity, gifts, weaknesses or character traits and no one has to worry about whether there is a dissonance between the allegations and the actual person.

Much better to insult gays when there are no acknowledged gays in the room. Much better to insult gays when no one is game to speak up for them.

Mind you, we shouldn't be surprised, they've been doing it to Eve for millenium and apparently even Jesus' sacrifice wasn't sufficient to stop scapegoating her. So if the mother of all living things is unforgiven and still okay to vilify, why not expand the circle to include GLBTs, women, non-Christians, non-humans.

I've just got one tiny little problem with all this. How can these souls possibly have any credibility when they purport to worship a loving and forgiving God as embodied by Jesus?

Sorry Pluralist

Did you mean obese or obtuse?

Why does John-David still have an invitation? After all, the Anglican Communion Office website, correctly, lists the diocese as vacant.

re "Anglican Cops"

Shouldn't that be Canon Frank? Or possibly the Revd Canon Dr Frank?...........

Thanks AH, I do not wish to gloss over the underlying - and possibly tense? - differences between anglo-caths and cons and evos - except that the constant realignment campaign narratives keep collapsing them all together as if either no differences exist, or at least, as if no differences exist that matter to our vexed campaign for a realignment that, pardon my saying so, is continually being preached as both con and evo. (And only occasionally sprinkled with candied bits of anglocath, if ever?)

If I were a certain closed sort of anglo-cath believer I would long since have started to wonder what use I was to the con and evo bits of the realignment campaign, except as a passing means of increasing their virtual Anglican realignment numbers count - and oh yes, wondering whatever the con and evo believers were eventually planning to do with a nagging demographic which reasonably estimates that the numbers of closeted anglocath queer folks is as high as it ever was - even way back in the lost days of the real Anglican closets.

Nobody wants much to scare the horses, but surely these differences do exist, and surely they matter more than we are led to estimate, if the underlying and odd presuppositions of the realignment are really the only absolute possible truth.

"Why does John-David still have an invitation? After all, the Anglican Communion Office website, correctly, lists the diocese as vacant."

Actually, this is premature of the ACO... Not even TEC yet considers the see vacant, and it won't until Schofield is formally deposed by the House of Bishops. Despite his inhibition, under TEC's Constitution and Canons he remains Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin until deposition, and his inhibition (basically a suspension, not a termination) applies only to sacramental etc. acts, not to his mundane administration of the diocese.

I'm counting down the days until he gets deposed (ideally, with Duncan and Iker to follow shortly thereafter), but by any standard of TEC canon law, the ACO website has jumped the gun on decalring his see vacant.

>> re "Anglican Cops"

>> Shouldn't that be Canon Frank? Or possibly the Revd Canon Dr Frank?...........

Ah, don't we then mean "Anglican *Keystone* Kops"?

Obsese. He was a small chap who ran down the road with a gun and could hardly go far. Or start a new series altogether: Canon's Law.

RE the Bishop of Horsham's letter:

As to the good bishop's pseudo explanation it seems to me that being marginal is not being marginalized.

There might be a whole series of spin-offs: "Primate Suspect", "Fort Worth Vice" or (the ABC's favourite) a revival of "Softly, Softly").

No more, I promise. I'd hate to be thought frivolous.......................

in his letter, the bishop of horsham expresses his opposition to marginalisation and his desire that people should be honoured and respected. this is the bisohp who took part in a meeting which took 40 minutes to work out a way in which a woman priest, who was to be present at the ordination of her curate to the priesthood, should not be allowed to lay hands on him at the ordination. the bishop of horsham's main contribution to was to say that it wasn't a problem in his area because no priests were allowed to lay on hands, but were limited, in his words, to giving a nuremberg salute. marginalisation? honour and respect?

I do wish folks who want to pronounce on the canons would pay due heed to clauses and sentences as well as words. The "abandonment" canon is not about abandonment of "the Communion" full stop, but of the "communion of this Church" -- which, as attention to the rest of the canons shows, is a reference to The Episcopal Church -- the one governed by the General Convention and with The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop and Primate. One cannot detach oneself from the authority and discipline of "this Church" and still pretend to be in communion with it. This does not mean one may not still be an Anglican: there are quite licit ways for individuals to transfer their canonical membership to other Provinces. Certainly it doesn't mean one has abandoned communion with the Church, the Body of Christ. But Bishop Schofield has manifestly abandoned the communion of The Episcopal Church, no longer considers himself in communion with it or its Primate, and holds it in unconcealed contempt.

>>>The Bishop of Horsham is an Anglo-Catholic, whose theology is conservative, but not stridently so.

His theology is not why he has become so famous lately.

>>>I'm not a particular fan of +San Joaquin. In fact, I wrote to FiF protesting at the presence on its website of of a pastoral message from that prelate which read like a party political broadcast on behalf of Likud.

This sort of thing is probably why the Bishop of Jerusalem is not so keen on GAFCON. It might be different in other places, but here is the U.S., right wing Christians are very "Pro-Israel," because their particular reading of Revelation requires all the Jews in the world to return there. We have churches in this country raising money to fund "settlements" in the Occupied Territories. Having the average Arab-on-the-street identify Christianity with this kind of thing will not make life better for Arab Christians.

"The U.S., right wing Christians are very 'Pro-Israel,' because their particular reading of Revelation requires all the Jews in the world to return there. We have churches in this country raising money to fund 'settlements' in the Occupied Territories." - JPM

Spot on. The Episcopal Church supports, through ERD, hospitals and health care for impoverished Palestinians. The Dio. of LA also has a 'companion diocese' relationship with the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem. Another reason why the Bishop of Jerusalem doesn't want GAFCON to complicate matters.

"We further must call into question the use of the particular Canon pertaining to the abandonment of the Communion inasmuch as the American Province is not a Communion. That particular designation is reserved for the worldwide expression of Anglicanism." Bp Ackerman

And to emphasize Father Haller's point. The abandonment Canon in nearly the exact same language as now dates to c. 1857, well before the first Lambeth Conference.

What Tobias (who is supposed to be on retreat) said! This twisting of facts to suit one's prejudices is very sad. I can't help but contrast that with a recent discussion of the restriction on Communion in TEC -- those who want to change the current rules are not trying to twist the rules to allow them to do whatever they want, they are advocated changing the current canons. I don't agree (entirely), but at least they are being honest.

But it seems that the ABC will withdraw Bishop Schofield's Lambeth invitation of the TEC HOB says he is not "one of us" -- but not extend an invitation to Bishop Robinson when the TEC HOB says that he is -- I still fail to see the logic (or justice or morality) here.

A propos of the Horsham Area "Nuremburg salute"-I wonder what a Roman catholic sacramental theologian would make of that? If there is one reading TA it would be nice to know.

"...but contrast that with a recent discussion of the restriction on Communion in TEC -- those who want to change the current rules are not trying to twist the rules to allow them to do whatever they want, they are advocated changing the current canons. I don't agree (entirely), but at least they are being honest."

Alas, my dear Prior; it pains me to have to disagree with you. Many advocates of Communion Without Baptism (and perhaps most of the clergy who support this innovation, including several bishops) not only advocate changing the current canons, they plow right ahead and simply ignore these canons.

When they do, they unfortunately do give a degree of substance to the reasserters' claims that we reappraisers are hypocrites, that we "prophetically" but selectively pick and choose which canons to honor and enforce. (E.g., we plowed forward with the ordination of women without waiting for the GC process to catch up, and now give Holy Communion to the unbaptized, even proactively inviting them to receive.) The canon against Communion Without Baptism remains in full force and effect, yet in many parishes is routinely ignored/flouted.

I think we reappraisers need to do some serious self-appraisal and reflection on this selectivity. Strong "reappraiser" though I be, I personally oppose Communion Without Baptism on major theological grounds. If the canon gets changed, then it gets changed, but until it does, those who support the innovation -- and this goes for *any* innovation -- should continue to abide by the canon, lest we prove true reasserters' assertions of our selectivity and hypocrisy.

Kyrie eleison.

Viriato da Silva --
I daresay you are correct that some are violating the canons, but my point (badly expressed) is that they are not saying that the canons say something other than they say (as the schismatics have) -- it is all a terrible mess & was intended to be (see the Chapman Memo):
http://frjakestopstheworld.blogspot.com/2007/03/for-those-who-missed-it-chapman-memo.html

perry, i'm neither a roman catholic, nor a theologian, but my guess is that there is an analogy with consecrating the eucharist. every priest who consecrates at a concelebration does so, and the distance of the hand from the host does not diminish the intimacy or the efficacy of the action. similarly, every person present at mass is considered to be participating in a manner appropriate to his/her status. so, even when not formally consecrating, any priest present at the mass is performing a priestly-consecrating function, just as all the laity there are performing a related, but different, lay-consecrating function ('answering the mass' in the old terms). so, any priest holding out a hand at an ordination is ordaining, and any priest present at an ordination is ordaining, by virtue of their office and their presence. does that work for you?

My dear Prior -- Thank you, I do now understand your distinction, although on a practical level I'm not sure it's much better to (a) acknowledge the actual meaning of a canon while expressly and intentionally violating it and contradictorily excoriating the conservatives for their own violations of the canons than to (b) twist the interpretation of a canon to suit one's own agenda. Indeed, imo, the former is arguably worse than the latter; in scenario (b), there may at least plausibly exist some degree of sincerity / wishful thinking in the misinterpretation, on the part of at least some individuals, yet in scenario (a), the violation is done in full knowledge that it is a violation.

But ah, yes, the Chapman Memo... Why this wasn't sufficient evidence for ++Rowan et al. as to The Game Plan is beyond me.

Have to admire their chutzpah, though. ("Admire" in a perverse way, to be sure, yet undeniably clever, and apparently somewhat effective.)

A furore reassertorum libera nos domine.

poppy: I'm an old-fashioned Catholic in this respect: I don't believe every priest present at a concelebration does consecrate. I think that performing the manual actions as well as saying the words is necessary to consecrate. This bizarre way in which concelebrants hold up their hands as if they are consecrating by zapping is, in my opinion, badly thought-out, and only reinforces the impression that they believe they are working a magic trick of some sort. I think there is actually only one consecrator at each Mass, unless the concelebrants each have their own missal and elements. I know the current Roman fad for lazy concelebration, but I think it is misplaced, and only divides up the clergy from the laity needlessly: at a RC Mass nowadays, every priest always concelebrates, usually very sloppily, when they woul be better sitting prayerfully in choir, or in the congregation.

Perry -- Well, I'm only an ex-Roman Catholic and only a wannabe theologian, but my understanding of RC teaching on operation of the sacraments is not consistent with the analysis you articulate: "so, even when not formally consecrating, any priest present at the mass is performing a priestly-consecrating function, just as all the laity there are performing a related, but different, lay-consecrating function ('answering the mass' in the old terms)."

IIRC, in the RC view one of the required "ingredients" for an effective/valid sacrament is "proper form." A priest merely being present at Mass is not deemed to be performing any consecratory function. The case of a priest sitting in the back pew but stretching out his hands and mumbling along with the words of institution presents an interesting question as to what effect he is having, but at least back in the day, priests were told to be unambiguous in consecrating. For concelebrants not holding a host or chalice, but merely stretching out arms, I was always told it wasn't a "magical zap" or secret invisible Jesus-rays emanating from their palms, but for the outward sign to be valid, it had to *look* like the outward sign, which meant being right there at the altar, in immediate proximity to the elements.

Would be curious to know if anyone has a different understanding of the RC view on this...

Interesting discussion about baptism and communion.

And if the present troubles were really about theology rather than power, that's what we'd be arguing about.

But we're not.

"I do wish folks who want to pronounce on the canons would pay due heed to clauses and sentences as well as words. The "abandonment" canon is not about abandonment of "the Communion" full stop, but of the "communion of this Church"

It is a failing of our society that people will not go to the original source when they feel that a concept is incorrect.

And a little knowledge of history, and the nature of the Anglican Communion would be in order. The Episcopal Church (in the USA) is an independent church - created as a matter of practicality after the American revolution, and long before there was an Anglican Communion. It isn't just the "American province." No connection to the AC is necessary for legitimacy, or even - apostolic succession.

Probably preaching to the choir here, but I don't know why some people have such a difficult time understanding the nature of TEC. Particularly those who graduated from an Episcopal seminary.

Sigh.

The traditional understanding of order and "doing" the liturgy means that all members of the Body of Christ participate in the liturgy according to their order. This is true whether they are vested or not, perform manual acts or not, etc. Thus it is "appropriate" that they should vest & act according to their order. On a practical level this frequently isn't convenient, but that is the traditional theology (& preferable to the later corruption of "Me saying my Mass" -- IMHO).

Virginia asked, "I don't know why some people have such a difficult time understanding the nature of TEC. Particularly those who graduated from an Episcopal seminary."

To be willing to understand the nature of TEC, one must first respect it.. So it depends on *which* seminary, methinks ;) Those which provide for the instruction of EPISCOPAL priests don't seem to have a problem in this regard (e.g. GTS, EDS, etc...). But those schools who exist primarily to graduate students who toe the "conservative" party line of the Christian Right certainly *do* (e.g. TESM).

The point I was trying to get at is this-does the Bishop of Horsham think that allowing a woman priest to stretch out her hand rather than put a hand on a head makes any real difference? Afterall in the old days at anglican ordinations and consecrations there were so many participants that some of them did simply strech out their hands, and everyone then assumed they were participating with the Bishop in the ordination. Does the Bishop of Horsham think that a woman priest vested as a priest participating in the ordination by waiving a hand is NOT participating with him in the ordination,but if she actually lays hands on the candidate she is. I imagine this is sacramental nonsense and therefore not a very sensible way of dealing with the situation if the object of the execise is to keep the bishop "unsullied".Perhaps the Bishop thinks this somehow means he's not participating with a woman priest in a sacramental action, but i would judge he is.I wonder what his F in F friends make of this "compromise"? I just think its rather theologically odd -and doesn't really solve the Bishops problem,though I think he thinks it does!

"I imagine this is sacramental nonsense and therefore not a very sensible way of dealing with the situation if the object of the execise is to keep the bishop "unsullied".Perhaps the Bishop thinks this somehow means he's not participating with a woman priest in a sacramental action, but i would judge he is.I wonder what his F in F friends make of this "compromise"? I just think its rather theologically odd -and doesn't really solve the Bishops problem,though I think he thinks it does!

Posted by: Perry Butler on Monday, 28 January 2008 at 7:55pm GMT"

I am with Perry Butler on this one. Where did +Lindsey Horsham receive his seminary education? From +Jack Leo of Sp-Iker-land?

Prior Aelred: but acting according to one's order doesn't mean that every priest has to be a consecrator at every Mass they attend. Traditionally, the clergy assisted according to their order by being prayerful in choir. I must say I find that way to do it far preferable than standing around the altar in a big bunch of gormless-looking priests feeling rather de trop. I know one RC religious community where each of the priests draws a Mass stipend every day for merely lolling around the altar and waving his hands as a concelebrant at the community Mass (try telling anyone else that's a day's work!): I think that is something of an abuse of the donors' intentions. Fortunately, something of a reaction has been setting in amongst the younger RC clergy, in Europe at least, and I would predict that the current "lazy" form of concelebration will soon be on the way out. The Tridentine way to do it was to do it very rarely, and then for each concelebrant to have his own missal and elements, which seems much more sensible, and aesthetically pleasing, to me. Anglicans in England have generally avoided concelebration until recently. Oddly enough, it's the so-called Anglican traditionalists that have brought this post-Vatican II sloppy practice into our churches.

Fr Mark --

Actually, I don't approve of concelebration except for special circumstances such as ordinations & the Chrism Mass (we don't do it here -- in fact, the assisting priest at the daily Eucharist wears a deacon stole -- definitely not post-Vatican II PC) & Roman monasteries will always keep concelebrations as long as there are Mass stipends (sacristans like them much better than setting up all those Low Masses) -- but I was talking about order, but vesture -- theologically, the members of the Body "do" the liturgy according to their order, regardless of where they stand or how they dress. But what is theologically more proper is not always practical or convenient.

Prior Aelred: sounds fair enough!