Those of you who feel that even an update on the Current Unpleasantness in the Anglican Communion would be preferable to another Math Problem are demonstrably wrong:

 

Thanks to a special meeting of Anglican prelates, the Episcopal Church USA (we who have the openly gay Bishop Robinson) and the Canadian Anglican Church (one of whose dioceses okayed the blessing of same-sex unions) have been, as the British say, "sent to Coventry."  First, a cabal of 30-odd prelates of the "Global South" (the Southern Hemisphere) refused to receive Communion with their US & Canadian brethren - and otherwise behaved like a batch of holier-than-thou twits.  When push came to shove, their attitude was voted in by the majority of the prelates, and enforced by the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

 

(In Coventry, according to legend, Lady Godiva's nude ride was, against her request, spied upon by one "peeping Tom," who was ostracized by the community - none spoke to him for the rest of his life, all treated him as if he didn't exist.  This form of ostracism is still used in British public schools, says a native Brit, as a cruel and effective punishment.)

 

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams told an interviewer after the meeting: "I think what has been said to [the US and Canadian churches] is that the cost of carrying on with this particular set of unilateral developments is very high. It might mean that they may not be welcome at the next Lambeth conference but we are still discussing and talking about that." 

 

So we are to cool our heels in Coventry a year or two, excluded from any part in planning or setting the agenda of the international church.  And we are to "repent" the consecration of Bp. Robinson, presumably while reconstituting used toothpaste and stuffing it back into the tube.      

 

Official pronouncements (not to be read by the weak of stomach) try to present the prelates' final decision as "not punitive" toward the US & Canadian churches.  Our two years ostracism is to be a "time of healing." And Williams is spinning the mess as best he can.  He was asked by an interviewer: "[Do] you think that a divorce, if I can put it in those terms, or the expelling or the separation of the American Churches from the rest of the communion is now less likely?"  His response: "Well let’s say I think we are more in marriage counseling mode than in the divorce court."

 

As regards Robinson, here's the ABC’s bottom line: Interviewer - "Do you think that a priest living in a loving, committed, and physically expressed same-sex relationship is living in sin?"  Williams - "The view of the communion, the view of the Church of England bishops as a whole, is that this is not something that the church can publicly recognise as acceptable. That is the view which as archbishop I must maintain."  Interviewer - "But do you personally feel..."  ABC - "Personally is personally, isn't it?"

 

Recall that the Diocese of Dallas is now a member of the AAC Network, which stands in opposition to the national church (which, by a 2/3 majority, okayed Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire).  One observer reports that clergy of the Anglican School of Theology feel their program was shut down because three of them voted against joining the Network. One church withheld funds from Canterbury House (our ministry to SMU students) because the clergywoman who heads it voted against joining the Network.  On the other side of the coin, some of the 21 parishes who voted against joining the Network may withhold funds from the Diocese and, presumably, send them to the national church instead. 

 

On the national scene, the same observer notes that Christ Church, Overland Park, KS has negotiated a separation from the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas because they don't agree with their Bishop's stand on the Robinson issue. 

 

The USA Bishops have recently met & produced an apology for upsetting everyone (a replay of the apology our Presiding Bishop issued after the Windsor Report) and taken other steps hopeful of maintaining what has clearly become a romantic fiction: the peace and unity of the Anglican Communion. 

 

The British have another expression, roughly equivalent to SNAFU: "balls up."

 

Surely, any rational person will find it more pleasant to discover that the year Newton died, 1727, is not a prime number, having the factors 11 & 157.

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