That could also apply to every revisionist ECUSA bishop and a goodly number of Canadian Anglican bishops as well, not just to Bishop Michael Ingham of New Westminster. There is more wrong with the state of the Anglican Church in Canada than is publicly known. Only about 25 percent of their bishops are orthodox. What is not known is what Rowan Williams will do about the Primate of Brazil and the dogfight that Primate is in with his token orthodox diocese - Recife in Northeast Brazil.
Read moreThe meeting dubbed Third Trumpet and chaired by the Nigerian Primate archbishop Peter Akinola saw the CAPA bishops reject the apology by the American Episcopal Church and they will take that message to Ireland later this month where the 38 Primates representing more than 50 million faithful will, for the last time, call on ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold to repent.
Read moreWhile no formal concordats were announced they did engage in talks to deepen the relationships between the orthodox Anglican entities. The Most Rev. Peter Akinola is clearly ratcheting up the ante on the US Episcopal Church prior to the Primates meeting in Ireland, and seems to be sending a loud signal that he will do business with just about anybody in North America except The Episcopal Church. (The REC and APA are in concordat with each other.)
Read moreIf you have any doubts about what will happen in February in Ireland it won’t be the Three Furies that Griswold faces but 23 Primatial Furies, and they won't let The Pluriform One off the hook. They might just move to suspend him. Dr. Rowan Williams has been given the green light by his synod to uphold the Windsor Report which does not bode well for Frank Griswold, and my discussions with five orthodox archbishops this past week reveal that they will hold Griswold's feet to the flames.
Read moreCalling a person a fundamentalist is a powerful smear word, even and especially when it is not true. But when it is used, it can cower a person into submission, destroy arguments instantly, and when it is used in an ad hominum fashion make people of faith feel that not to be nice or inclusive is to be less than Christian. It is the great silencer.
Read moreNothing much is expected to come out of it except perhaps another vague regret for the pain ECUSA has caused the rest of the Anglican Communion, but Griswold will make sure that the HOB will continue the process of (endless) conversation, offering no conclusive statements or resolutions that propose any about face in the church's direction on pansexual behavior. No one would dare suggest that homoerotic bishop V.
Read moreThe much ballyhooed covenant which was supposed to keep order with a minimal level of agreement demanding "dialogue with those who dissent" from normative interpretations of Scripture did not go down any more than cries for "reconciliation" or "mediation".
Read more"School districts in New Jersey and Florida ban Christmas carols. The mayor of Somerville, Mass., apologizes for "mistakenly"'' referring to the town's "holiday party'' as a "Christmas party." The Broward and Fashion malls in South Florida put up a Hanukkah menorah but no nativity scene. The manager of one of the malls explains: Hanukkah commemorates a battle and not a religious event, although he hastens to add ``I really don't know a lot about it." He does not.
Read moreIn the tortured ecclesiastical world of Anglicanism with its myriad branches and liturgical permutations, this comes as yet another knot that tightens or loosens, (depending on your viewpoint), the noose that encircles the neck of the Anglican Communion and its leader Archbishop Rowan Williams.
Read moreAnd the end result has been not liberation at all but oppression, and for the past 35 years the orthodox constituencies in the Episcopal Church who have fought against this false liberation have been slowly vilified and mistreated, its priests marginalized, or constructively dismissed, with parishes bullied and browbeaten, and what was once advertised as permissive legislation has become not just mandatory but dismissive realpolitik.
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