RainbowNetwork.com - Excommunication For Americans?: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, will face demands from over half the leaders of the Anglican communion to excommunicate the American church over its decision to appoint an openly gay bishop. Of a total of 38 primates, 22 believe the appointment of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire earlier this month was wrong, revealed The Sunday Times. At an emergency summit in October on gay issues, the group will insist that unless the Episcopal Church of the United States reverses its decision then they should be considered out of communion with the Anglican world, a decision that can be taken only by Williams.
My goodness.
You know, I always thought I'd see a formal schizm within my lifetime. It would be primarily a divide between the Americans and the Europeans, and it would be over sexuality and related issues.
I just thought it would be the Catholic Church, and not the Anglicans and Episcopals. And I thought the issue would be more over women, and the rights of clergy to marry, and not over whether or not to ordain celibate gay ministers.
The interesting question is, how much will American Anglicans and Episcopalians feel that they owe to the Church of England. Will they feel that this is an issue that should lead to the break? Will they feel that the break would have come anyway, so might as well get it over with?
I make you a prediction: if M. l'Archbishop of Canterbury does make any type of movement to excommunication -- and given his history on this particular issue, I rather think that he won't, unless he's confronted with some sort of outright rebellion in the dioceses (which would put them in violation of their vows of obedience -- naughty, naughty!) -- if the archbishop is actually cornered into taking some sort of action, at the first sign of any serious repercussions, the bishop in question will likely resign. Which will be a pity, really.
Purely a side note: I wonder if the Anglican church retains the power of the formal interdict. It would be an interestingly antique intermediate step for them to take, if so; the last general local interdict from the Catholic church was in 1606. And does the Anglican Episcopal excommunication ceremony retain the bell, book and candle from the Catholic version. (Maybe if things get really medieval, and the American church continues to hold ceremonies after excommunication, they can be declared "contumacious and in contempt", just like Catherine of Aragon. And, peculiarly, for much the same reason.)
UPDATE, 6:50pm: OK, now while I did expect that the Archbishop would try to find some way out of this short of interdict or excommunication, I didn't expect quite this degree of desperation or cynicism quite so soon.
Secret paper reveals Church spin plans to defuse gay crisis (Daily Telegraph, London, October 1, 2003): The Church of England is trying to spin its way out of the crisis over the issue of homosexuality, according to a document drawn up by one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's closest advisers. Jeremy Harris, Dr Rowan Williams's secretary for public affairs, wrote a three-page memorandum, entitled Notes towards a Handling Strategy on Gay Issues, outlining how the Church could manipulate the media. Mr Harris is a former BBC journalist with great influence at Lambeth Palace. In the "strictly confidential" document, which has been seen by The Daily Telegraph, he said: "In addition to attempting to manage the gay issue strategically, there is at least the challenge . . . of displacing it at least partially from public and media attention. "This involves, principally, finding attractive alternative stories involving ABC [the Archbishop of Canterbury] and/or the Church." Among other ideas, he suggests: "ABC as poet - do a reading, make a high-profile Lords intervention, announce a theology prize." [...] The overall tone of the document suggests that senior aides are deeply worried that the homosexuality issue could disrupt the Archbishop's agenda by dominating the news coverage of the Church. It says: "The Church is committed to continuing dialogue, so the issue cannot be closed or rapidly resolved. It therefore has to be managed in media terms by seeking to take the sting out of it and displacing it in the public mind." The issue of homosexuality is described as "hydra-headed". The document says: "The monster cannot be slain with a single sword thrust, but steps can be taken to try to render each of the heads less dangerous."
Somehow, this really strikes me as being past the stage of being defused by media management. When a majority of your dioceses are saying, "We do not agree with this," and are on the edge of open dissension, then the media are perhaps not the greatest of your problems.
Posted by iain at October 01, 2003 06:51 PMComments
