Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Archbishop of Canterbury is an Ass

As I expected, the Archbishop caved to right wing pressure and pulled the rug out from under his former friend Canon Jeffrey John again. The story that's running around on the newswires is that ++Williams became furious and scuttled the nomination when he heard that John's name was leaked to the press. If I want a cock and bull story, I'll read Hemingway. Someone leaned on him to withdraw the nomination. And if that story is true, then it makes the Archbishop look capricious as well as irresolute.

Never was I more glad to be an Episcopalian and an American.
As Goran pointed out, Judas only betrayed his Friend once.

You can read all about the whole sorry mess at Thinking Anglicans.


ADDENDUM:

For a little insight into the English process of choosing bishops, see this post on Church-Mouse's blog, and especially read the comments section (hat tip to Grandmere).

Our system of picking bishops is by no means perfect. Sometimes a compromise candidate that no one really likes will win out over an excellent candidate who alienates a particular faction. But, our system has transparency, accountability, and participation, things I see conspicuously lacking in the C of E system. Whatever the result of an election process, it has a legitimacy that rarely comes into question (even in the case of +Gene Robinson).

"Confidential" or not, I'm very surprised John's name was ever on any list of candidates if he never had a serious chance for consideration.

UPDATE:

According to The Guardian (hat tip to Thinking Anglicans), it appears Jeffery John was screwed from the beginning, that it was conservative evangelicals who leaked his name in order to sabotage his appointment. The Archbishop, as usual, played right into their hands.


5 comments:

  1. Your blog post's title says it all!

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  2. Screw him. Maybe it's time we secede from the Anglican Communion. Whatever our meshugas in TEC, we're the picture clear headed, functional mental health compared to the train wreck that is the ABC, the CoE he's leading to hell in a handbasket, and the Communion. Let 'em have the ACNA-CANA-AMiA alphabet soup. They deserve each other. We'll hang with the Lutherans and the Moravians. I'll even eat the green jello.

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  3. Well said, Wilfried. The gall of the highly dysfunctional CofE in trying to manage ECUSA business from afar is amazing.

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  4. And now I'm just waiting for him to throw women clergy under the bus, as he is poised to. Can we just call him Neville?

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  5. I agree with Wilfried when he said over at Grandmere's that English conservatives tend to project their own system upon us, especially when they make the canard that a cabal of liberal bishops foisted gays upon a reluctant church. Not only is that claim false on its face, but subsequent events have not borne it out.
    There was no mass exodus from the Episcopal Church. If ACNE has a the masses of new members that they claim, then they are not disaffected Episcopalians. They are coming from someplace else, probably from evangelical and fundamentalist circles where the Book of Common Prayer does not mean much, and so is not used much.

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