Closer to Home
Here’s the latest from Gene Robinson’s Blog:
Now, we’re off to Scotland. I will be preaching and celebrating at the Cathedral in Glasgow on Sunday morning. Scotland, the Dean/Provost is eager to tell me, is NOT England! If I didn’t believe that already, it was confirmed when he said he would not be able to meet us at the train station, because he was doing a same-sex blessing in the Cathedral at the time of our arrival. Dorothy, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore!
Er Rowan? Got something to say about that?
Haven’t we been over this? IIRC Kelvin explained when you objected to his first same-sex blessings that a) his actions were entirely consistent with the “pastoral support” that clergy are allowed to offer to gay people and b) he had the full support of his bishops. What has changed?  Lambeth is a work in progress and ++Idris hasn’t announced any change in the SEC’s same-sex blessing policy. Should clergy who have the blessing of their bishop to do certain things refrain from doing so based on what they hear (e.g. reading it via Ruth Gledhill?) is happening at Lambeth?
 Tangentially, clergy in the Scottish Episcopal Church don’t have to swear to uphold the 39 articles either (which relates to an earlier post of yours denouncing Jenkins style “heretics”).
Yes Ryan, we’ve done this before but:
a) His actions go beyond “Pastoral Support” and contravene the guidance of the Windsor Report, thereby causing further damage to the Communion, so therefore
b) His bishop is wrong in allowing him to perform them
In which case shouldn’t you be attacking the SEC *bishops*? It does seem very unanglican, however, for you to say that the Windsor Report should supersede the authority of Primates.
I should add that although it may be a bad idea for bishops to do something which *in your eyes* damages the communion this hardly means that they *can’t* legally do so.
Ryan,
If the Primates have collegialy endorsed the Windsor Report there’s no problem is there?
Have they done so? Even if I was a conservative that would be no reason for me to believe you over the Very Reverend (and fully frabjous!) Kelvin or ++Idris when it comes to what the SEC is and is not allowed to do. I assume Gadgetvicar (for example) disagrees with the SEC offering such blessings but that’s hardly the same thing as saying those offering them, or the Bishops approving such actions, are operating illegally.
The blessings aren’t illegal, because at present there is no international body of canon law. What they are though is a huge two finger salute to the Primates, the Windsor report and Lambeth 1:10, the last of which Canon Kearon reiterated only today was still the mind of the Communion.
 Saying something is the mind of the communion does not , to me, imply that every Primate has to march in lockstep with the “official” line. Akinola (sorry, not being petty : ++ Akinola) doesn’t exactly give the impression of a man who worries about giving two fingers up to the wider communion before making his pronouncements ( I think even you’d concede that his actions contradict the emphasis that the sensitive pastoral care that those in ordained ministry should give to homosexual persons), and isn’t such alleged valuing over biblical truth over mere temporal demonination-specific politics and conferences one of the things that conservatives claim to be standing for? I would be very suprised if a Primate’s job description required (or even suggested) that their hands should be tied in this way. There’s a world of difference between saying that ++Idris is being politically insensitive and saying that he is being wilfully unwise or immoral.
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Ryan,
It does imply that the Communion thinks that *this* is the correct answer to the question and that therefore doing *that* is to deliberately ignore the very things that are trying to hold us together. In other words, to do *that* is to be schismatic. To respond to *that* by doing something else (which is what Akinola has done in forming CANA) is not schismatic.
In +Gene’s book he recounts that (in the aforementioned meeting with the AB of C) that +++Rowan said that he should have campaigned on allowing the relevant canons to be changed before his consecration. Had the TEC done so I seriously doubt ++Akinola would have abstained from the schismatic implications of forming CANA . I (and I suspect, many) would have more respect for evangelicals ( I don’t know how universal the reappraiser/reassserter labels some use are; are they applicable when discussing the C of E and the wider Anglican communion?) if they *conceded* that things like GAFcon are divisive/schismatic but necessary instead of the disingenous “when we do it, it’s faith when they do it,it’s provocation” nonsense. As I’ve asked frequently: can you imagine *any* date since +Gene’s consecration that Kelvin could have invited him that *wouldn’t* have had evangelicals metaphorically breaking out the green ink? If a majority of SEC Bishops and clergy (and perhaps laity, I believe that 15% or so are evangelicals although they contribute more than this figure financially) regard +Gene as a fully consecrated bishop with all that that entails then why shouldn’t they act on it?
Even if TEC had changed its Canons, it would still have violated the express will of the Communion when it consecrated Robinson. Just because a Province changes its Canons doesn’t mean that what it does is Scriptural and therefore Christian.
So any province can have its canons overturned if someone else claim that it isn’t Scriptural? I thought (that in the example of women being ordained) a agree to disagree/ different anglicans can have different beliefs on what is scriptural standard was the norm? Do (or should) Primates really have so little authority? You can say that Anglicanism should be Scriptural but that doesn’t mean you’re being accurate to conflate the two when it comes to church law.