Listening to Saturday's General Synod debate, and the tearful reaction of some to its rejection of Archbishop Rowan's proposal, I feel very strange. That apparently intelligent men could think that such a proposition, offering so little in terms of a guaranteed discrete ecclesial life, was some sort of Cup of Salvation, bewilders me. Talk about clutching at fig leaves and hiding ones shame with a straw ...
I agree that the lacrimæ make no sense.
ReplyDeleteGood for General Synod! You can't be both Catholic and Protestant. You can be credally orthodox, sacramental and liturgical like a Catholic, but if you believe in a fallible church in which essentials are always up for a vote for change, you're a Protestant. The C of E obviously is. So it ought to act on that boldly: women bishops with no exceptions for naysayers and stop treating Jeffrey John so badly. Either make the changes or - like Catholics - don't. Likewise Anglo-Catholics have to choose which side they're really on.
I defend the Protestants' rights to govern themselves and to their property. Case closed.
In truth, "Res libertatis". However, the situation does remind me of Rhett Butler finally taking up arms against the Yankee invaders: "Maybe it's because I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56QC3Syo8D0&feature=related
But surely Dr Williams' proposals were always aimed at the Evangelicals, not at the Catholics? They worked if you believed that a bishop was just a higher ranking dorm of ministry, but were incompatible with the idea of a sacramental priesthood and episcopate.
ReplyDelete"I defend the Protestants' rights to govern themselves and to their property. Case closed."
ReplyDeleteVery good of you, and thank you for closing the case.