Hmmm looks like the Gledhill cautions still apply - what does she know, how does she know it, and what else is going on in context that she just happens to background or ignore?

Meanwhile she paints a rather pat view of Rowan Williams as the Great Preserver of our global communion fellowship of provincial churches. Does anybody in their right, common sensical mind really believe that dividing the communion in this way - one tier that is doggedly pre-Galileo in its presuppositional hermeneutics and one that is more or less post-Galileo in a range of varied Anglican hermeneutics - will long serve?

Even having a future, solid first tier new biggie at Canterbury after Rowan will not likely resolve the dilemma. Any CoE that is completely unobjectionable to, say, Reform, FiF, Mainstream and the like will be all too mean, weaponized against everybody else in a faked polarization familiar from the demonstration wins of the USA right (now failing, at least for the moment in its aspirations to power), and way too smug so far as the rest of CoE believers might be concerned. What might be the collective judgment of all the other Brits and related, upon such a newly conformed first tier CoE?

All this first tier business will do is serve as a way to empty out an Anglican first tier of most believers who make any use of the best practice tool kits of modern inquiry and scholarship. That shift may play fine in some parts of Africa where survival trumps hermeneutics in human circumstances of suffering that would sway almost any of us who had to live through them, to get our of our libraries or labs for the crisis time being. Will it do as the new Anglican Way, for all, forever, globally?

If the first tier finally turns out to be what Gledhill and others are busy predicting it will be, I - plus others? - will be content as a believer to be brashly defined as anything other than first tier Anglican. Far better to join Galileo in his virtual symbolic house arrest, than to repeat the intellectual follies of our past when we could plausibily say as believers that we hardly knew any better. Now, the homework has been done, and the lessons are clear for all who will study them and be taught accordingly.

Pope Shenouda authored a booklet very much against homosexuality and female ordiantion. I met him In Egypt and called him to Catholic unity.

Such modesty, RIW.

More nonsense from Robert I williams: "Pope Shenouda authored a booklet very much against homosexuality and female ordiantion. I met him In Egypt and called him to Catholic unity."

What on earth has this to do, Robert, with the meeting of Pope Shenouda with the Anglican Primates in Alexanria?

Second question? As a newly-born-again R.C., did your approach to Pope Shenouda have any practial outcome, or did he simply put the phone down?

Looks like the main benefit of the Communion's decision making procedure is that it is so lengthly and boring that it might serve to stop people getting over excited. When it comes to finding a way to solve disputes, and to open minds to the opinions of others, the Church appears no more Godly than other political forums in civilised lands.

I met him in Egypt, Ron. By the way the GAFCON Diocese of Nelson has strong links with the Diocese of Egypt.

Pope Shenouda's views on homosexuality are not in doubt, see
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ShenoudaHomosexuality.php

Surely, there are enough clever theologians in North Atlantic Anglicanism to talk this “Covenant” idea to death for the next 10 or 20 years; or until the con-evos and Anglo-Papalists get tired and leave of their own accord, yes?

By the way, happy Ground Hog Day to all!

Simon Sarmiento wrote: "Pope Shenouda's views on homosexuality are not in doubt, see
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ShenoudaHomosexuality.php"

I just wonder how the history behind the reasoning might look, for - as we know - Greek malakós ("soft" of clothes, cf Luke 7:34 and Matt 11:8), but in Western late modernity translated "passive gay" (Fr Zerwick 1966), stil translates (also erroneously) "men - and women - who masturbate" in the East - and has taken that meaning in Modern Greek ;=)

How does ++Shenouda translate???

Colin Coward's remarks seem encouraging (to me, anyway).
BTW, Egypt's laws against homosexual practice are Draconinan in the extreme (& result in many complaints about violations of human rights).
Also, I haven't noted any comments about the fact that Pope Shenouda traveled to Nashotah House several years ago to receive a DD.

"Pope Shenouda's views on homosexuality are not in doubt, see..."

Pretty unsurprising, except for the linkage of AIDS and homosexuality. I would think that somebody from Africa might know better.

LGBT folks, step to the back of the bus.

Surely, there are enough clever theologians in North Atlantic Anglicanism to talk this “Covenant” idea to death for the next 10 or 20 years; or until the con-evos and Anglo-Papalists get tired and leave of their own accord, yes?

By the way, happy Ground Hog Day to all!

Any sightings of Minns and Sugden skulking around the corridors yet?

Instead of this whole hierarchical "Two-Tier" schema, wouldn't a better way to describe it be, "A Communion with a Holier-Than-Thou CLIQUE within (?) it"?

[Note: the noises out of Alexandria still suggest that the CofE will be part of the clique---when we know that, by law, it can't be.]

Thank you, Simon, for pointing us to the article by Pope Shenouda. What he has to say about Gays should convince the Anti-Gay protesters in our Church that the Coptic Church in Egypt might just be their true spiritual home. The absolute diatribe this papa is capable of will, no doubt, have excited the vivid imagination of people such a David Virtue (of virtueonline infamy) who is present at the Primates Meeting in Alexandria, ready to act as handmaiden to the likes of the Global South Primates, who will now be able to look to the sayings of Pope Shenouda to stregthen their anti-gay sentiment. May God preserve us from such bigotry!

Simon Sarmiento wrote: "Pope Shenouda's views on homosexuality are not in doubt, see
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ShenoudaHomosexuality.php"

As we know that malakós (soft, of textiles, in Luke 7:25 and Matt 11:8) in late modern Times (post 1952) is rendered “homosexuality” in the West, but still (beginning in the 10th century) as “Masturbation” in the East (and the 1966 New Catholic Encyclopaedia) having taken on that “meaning” in Modern Greek, we wonder how Patriarch Shenouda (who isn’t Greek or Western but Copt) translates it? and why? and wherefrom?

@JPM - there is no sign of CANA/Anglican Mainstream. There are two people from Changing Attitudes and that is about it. With the exception of a few primates most here have come without an entourage

"we wonder how Patriarch Shenouda (who isn’t Greek or Western but Copt) translates it? and why? and wherefrom?"

Indeed. And, Goran, you're likely to know if anyone is: I read somewhere that one of the few instances of 'malakos' outside of Scripture is a case where the word is used to describe a man who is getting his face made up, putting on his finest silks and his best soft slippers and going out to seduce women. Can you vouch for that? If that's true, it obviously CAN'T mean 'homosexual', probably more "hedonistic" or "debauched" or something.

JCF wrote, "the CofE will be part of the clique---when we know that, by law, it can't be."

The primates media spokesperson, Archbishop Aspinall, brought up the example of the constitutional inability of the CofE to submit to a covenant with teeth in his news conference. Simon points to the 50 audio above in his post. It's in the last third (unfortunately the ACNS audio does not have time demarcations) of the news conference.

Where are the ACNA people?

Why has there been no discussion of the Sydney crisis?

'Malakos' in ancient Classical Greek can certainly imply effeminacy/homosexuality. It's a natural implication of male ~ 'hard', female ~ 'soft'. Paradoxically, however, great cocksmen (excuse the expression) like Mark Antony can be associated with 'softness', because (a) constant association with women means that their 'softness' rubs off on you; (b) the natural consequence of sexual congress is 'softness'.

I write as a professional Classicist.

None of which matters a jot in the debate about the moral justification of homosexual behaviour.

Ford Elms asked: "I read somewhere that one of the few instances of 'malakós' outside of Scripture is a case where the word is used to describe a man who is getting his face made up, putting on his finest silks and his best soft slippers and going out to seduce women. Can you vouch for that? If that's true, it obviously CAN'T mean 'homosexual', probably more "hedonistic" or "debauched" or something."

So it is said, indeed. The word itself refers to textiles; soft, but may also mean "soft" in a secondary sense, as in "morally/Philosophically" soft, hedonistic, debauched, sacrificing Life and honour for his little pleasures, cf Count Almaviva in Figaro.

There are a few instances outside of the Holy Scriptures (always in the plural), but they can never refer to “homo-sexual” a Concept which is entirely Modern (lust towards the same sex 1869 and symmetric homo/hetero 1890), and changed again in late modernity (“orientation” as identity, Pater Zerwick 1966).

In scripture there are 3 instances of malakós, all plural: Luke 7:25, Matt 11:8, 1 Cor 6:9.

The first two of these (parallels) refer to clothes soft, the third should be disloyal House Congregation members (as pornoì, eídololátrai refer to the 2nd Commandment: Porneía: Cult, and the sequence moixoì, malakoì, arsenokoitai refers to the 7th Commandment; Disloyalty towards the Household, and the following kléptai to stealers of humans for the Slave trade, the rest pleonéktai and so on, refer to Greed: 10th Commandment).

"Why has there been no discussion of the Sydney crisis?"

Imagine what would happen if someone high up in the Church actually pointed out to these holier than thou self proclaimed "orthodox" that are manifestly NOT orthodox, everyone can see it, and they are merely making themselves look even more pompous than they already appear every time the use the term. They would be too self righteous to be ashamed of themselves, because 'any fule knowe' that the only REAL orthodoxy is to be found in one's terror of "the revisionists". Because that's what it's really all about, you know, we homos are just the rock the ship of fear has foundered on.

I found Colin Coward's bloggings moving and encouraging.

"Where are the ACNA people? Why has there been no discussion of the Sydney crisis? - R.I.Williams -

I suppose, Robert, that your lack of knowledge of who has been invited to the Primates' Conference is due to your membership of the R.C. Church. You haven't been invited to send a prepresentative, nor has the ACNA fraternity - simply because this is: what it says: The Anglican Primates' Meeting. As there are no Primates of the Anglican Communion in ACNA - even though Bobby Duncan might aspire to such a title - there is no presence of that entity in Alexandria.

There are, however, some persons accredited to the conference as journalists, one of whom is Mr David Virtue of the euphemistically named 'Virtue-on-line' school of vitriol. Other journalists, such as Riazat Butt, are able to furnish a much more even-handed version of what is going on at the Conference; while The Rt. Revd. Philip Aspinall, Primate of Australia is performing excellent service as Spokes-person for the Primates to the Press.

The Diocese of Sydney's representative is, of course, the Australian Primate, a more senior cleric that Archbishop Peter Jensen, so no problem there about Sydney's status in the Communion - which has no direct influence at the Meeting.

John wrote: "None of which matters a jot in the debate about the moral justification of homosexual behaviour."

O, yes it does!

If only because the European academics behind the KJV, and others following them, thought "effeminacy" amd sexual acts between males, were the same......

@Father Ron - that's the nicest thing I've read on thread for a while. Thank you

Ron, Robert, and any others:
No further ad hominem remarks about each other on this thread, please. Write about the primates instead!

So, we can write ad hominem remarks about the Primates then?

I suppose such remarks might properly be called "ad hominoid."