I'm reminded of Mark Twain's quip that the Republic was in grave danger because Congress was back in session

Just how does Kearon and his ACO staff manage to make such a complete mess of all this.

They do indeed come very close to making the whole Anglican Church project a pantomime with those loudmouths at the ACI playing a credible evil stepmother!

Let's see if I have this right; 8 Bps or Abps, 3 laypersons, and 2 clergy members - that seems highly representative (not!).

"Let's see if I have this right; 8 Bps or Abps, 3 laypersons, and 2 clergy members - that seems highly representative (not!)."

Oh, but it's very very representative because [pick one]:

[1] Each Archbishop or Bishop speaks on behalf of millions of mere priests and people.

[2] If we believe in the priesthood of all believers, there are actually 13 priests present.

[3] Purple is the most equal color.

[4] Shut up and listen to your betters.

I've pasted in a link from Washington Post below. Does the Catholic Church have a future? I've posted it not only because it speaks to some of the conservative Roman Catholic apologists who feel that "thinking Anglicans" need to be continually reminded about their Baltimore catechism era opinions; I've posted it because, as I read articles about our Communion structures and political infighting, I think the question the article asks about Rome is a valid one for thinking Anglicans to ponder with regard to ourselves.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/patheos/2010/07/only_the_saints_can_save_us.html?hpid=talkbox1

If you stop and consider, there will always be a preponderance of bishops because of where the membership of the Standing Committee is drawn. So it seems silly and childish to whine and make off-the-wall snipes about that fact. After all, we are not presbyterians or congregationalists, we are episcopal in nature, culture and structure.

1. The President of the Standing Committee will always be the ABC, by fiat.
2. The current chair happens to be a bishop, that is who was elected to the position by the full ACC. But that is not static, another time a clergyperson or a layperson could be elected.

From the Primate's Meeting-
3. The five members from the Primate's Meeting will always be 5 primates. Imagine that!

From the ACC-
4. The ACC tries to elect equal representation from its membership to represent itself from the orders that make up the ACC; bishops, clergy and laity.

But Primates are bishops, so why should the ACC seek to have equal representation from all three orders when there are already five bishops there from the Primates' Meeting?

But David | Dah•veed, you only reinforce the point. This "Standing Committee," formerly the JCSC, is still a relatively new thing, and it has been distorted via the addition of the entire Primates Meeting to the AC, and so many representatives of the Primates Meeting sitting on this "Standing Committee." It's all part of the undermining of the most democratic and representative of the Instruments, the ACC and what had been its own standing committee, in order to insert greater primatial control.

David's response to David is on point -- addition of the primates "overthroweth" "equal representation of the membership" (it is simply a successful attempt of seizure of power by the primates).

At present there are but 5 primates on the Standing Committee David, but the primates are actively seeking to increase that to 8. Obviously the primates do not consider themselves of the same order of bishop as the mere bishops who are on the Standing Committee from the ACC.

What I would submit is in order is a reassessment of the entire concept of the Standing Committee. Not because it has bishops, but because it has primates. The Primates Meeting has no authority in the Anglican Communion. The Primates Meeting in its original concept at its inception was but a Spa Retreat for the primates. To borrow from the Wizard of Oz, a gathering where primates hobnobbed with their fellow primates. The only body with authority in the Anglican Communion is the Anglican Consultative Council. And yet there is this Standing Committee that supposedly holds interim decision making authority between ACC meetings that consists of, in addition to members of the ACC, a group of primates. Why is any authority of the ACC handed over to a Committee that includes voting members from a Meeting that is otherwise powerless? Primate membership on the Standing Committee with voice and vote now gives this group of 5, perhaps soon 8, primates more power than all of them combined hold when they get together in their own little soiree.

The primates tried to get themselves appointed en masse as de facto members of the ACC. ACC 14 voted that proposal down. What we should be doing is raising up an opposition to this capitulation of any of the ACC's authority to primates by the backdoor, which the Standing Committee provides. It is an unprecedented power sharing. The primates as a whole have no authority in the AC, and yet a group of them who have not been elected by the ACC are handed the authority of interim decision making for the ACC by way of the Standing Committee.

David/Dah-veed, I believe we are describing the same phenomenon of the primates' power grab(s) and the consequent distortion of other bodies' membership by enhanced primatial presence.

My point was in reacting to this statement: "If you stop and consider, there will always be a preponderance of bishops because of where the membership of the Standing Committee is drawn. So it seems silly and childish to whine and make off-the-wall snipes about that fact. After all, we are not presbyterians or congregationalists, we are episcopal in nature, culture and structure."

The point is, no, even being episcopalians (lower-case "e"), Anglican ecclesiology does not require such lopsided episcopal (or primatial, a subset of episcopal) power. Most Anglicans provinces, while episcopally led, are "synodically governed," with stronger lay and non-episcopal clergy involvement than what the "Standing Committee" represents now (and even less where some folks are trying to make it go). So when you write that "there will always be a preponderance of bishops because of where the membership of the Standing Committee is drawn," my point is simply that no, that need not "always" be the case, because from "where the membership of the Standing Committee is drawn" can and ought to better reflect the model of the more dispersed/democratic polities of most Anglican provinces (and historically of the ACC itself).