The News from Camp Allen
All cartoons aside, I find myself of (at least) two minds about the latest communication from the House of Bishops, in which they explicitly rejected the idea of a Primatial Vicar for dissenting dioceses and parishes asked by the Dar es Salaam Communique and (I believe) indicated at the very least an implicit rejection of the other requests of the Primate.
On the one hand, as I indicated to my own bishop before he made his way to Camp Allen, that the time for Episcopal cleverness is clearly past, and that we should speak honestly and clearly about what we intend to do. No more cute "well we didn't authorize the rites used for the blessing of that gay union" for instance.
Well, be careful what you wish for. I seem to have gotten it.
And yet, as a catholic-minded Anglican, I receive this news with great pain. To be catholic-minded in at least a synchronic sense is to be committed to live into what might be deemed the two poles of catholic concrescence: the local eucharistic community and the widest global fellowship. Leaving aside for the moment the question of where local concrescence occurs, the diocese or parish, I have held for some time that it is the global communion that represents the highest level of catholic reality for the Anglican. (Even here, this level of ecclesial existence is called to serve the even large catholic canvass, but the ecumenical question will need to be posed another day.)
But to be an Episcopalian this day is to believe ecclesial concrescence subsists in the national church, as I indicated in at least one other post below. It is thus a step away from being catholic.
The lost of a catholic ecclesial identity is disorienting and excruciating.
On the one hand, as I indicated to my own bishop before he made his way to Camp Allen, that the time for Episcopal cleverness is clearly past, and that we should speak honestly and clearly about what we intend to do. No more cute "well we didn't authorize the rites used for the blessing of that gay union" for instance.
Well, be careful what you wish for. I seem to have gotten it.
And yet, as a catholic-minded Anglican, I receive this news with great pain. To be catholic-minded in at least a synchronic sense is to be committed to live into what might be deemed the two poles of catholic concrescence: the local eucharistic community and the widest global fellowship. Leaving aside for the moment the question of where local concrescence occurs, the diocese or parish, I have held for some time that it is the global communion that represents the highest level of catholic reality for the Anglican. (Even here, this level of ecclesial existence is called to serve the even large catholic canvass, but the ecumenical question will need to be posed another day.)
But to be an Episcopalian this day is to believe ecclesial concrescence subsists in the national church, as I indicated in at least one other post below. It is thus a step away from being catholic.
The lost of a catholic ecclesial identity is disorienting and excruciating.
posted by peregrinator at 8:37 AM
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