Wednesday 17 April 2013

Alarm bells in Wales

The latest edition of Highlights is now online [here], reporting officially on the last meeting of the Church in Wales' Governing Body. 

Read it VERY carefully, particularly the response made on page 5 under the heading 'Question Time' by one of the Welsh archdeacons on the subject of proposed amendments to the current (two-tier) women in the episcopate legislation. It may ring alarm bells, particularly in view of some rather optimistic comments about constructive dialogue left previously on this blog:
"Three proposed amendments are
under consideration: dropping the
reference in the Bill to Civil Law; that
the provision for those who cannot
accept a female bishop should be
extended to those who cannot accept a
male bishop; and that all references to
the second Bill should be removed."
The vexed question of trust becomes ever more complicated and even more significant... 

17 comments:

  1. In my discussion group at GB there was a consensus that old labels should be left behind if there is to be any dialogue carried out in trust, so I am glad that you have edited your original post and removed the label you included there.

    The Archdeacon of Newport prefaced his response with a quite lengthy preamble describing the amendment process. Put briefly, the three amendments were received from GB members, and have to be considered by the Select Committee, followed by the Standing Committee. The proposed amendments will then be put to the entire GB in September, where they will be fully debated. They cannot be incorporated into the Bill without the formal consent of the GB. (And I guess that they can be simply withdrawn…)

    What the amendments show is that by allowing this issue to drag on the CinW, like the CofE, has allowed considerable distrust and hurt to develop on either ‘side’. If we are to have a helpful debate, these feelings will have to be left aside in favour of a humble seeking after God’s will. My fear is that too many will already have made their own decision on God’s behalf; my hope is that we can be guided by God’s Spirit in September and in the intervening months.

    As the perpetrator of the ‘previous optimistic comments’ I am still wondering about the willingness of the constituencies beyond the GB to engage with each other; and I am disturbed by the comments offered in this blog and its combox on Bishop Jonathan Baker’s eirenic address to FiF. Are they telling us that it is the end of the road and there is no longer any purpose for FiF? As also the perpetrator of a proposal concerning the possibility of moving forward together in the CinW, I am intrigued that there has been no response.

    I continue to occupy a largely agnostic ground on whether this is the opportune time to legislate for women bishops. It would trouble me considerably if either ‘side’ allows this opportunity for dialogue and renewed mutual understanding to fall by the wayside.

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    1. This time without typos!

      Thank you for the clarification - it's helpful.
      I have just two responses, really.
      It's in no one's interests to allow this issue to drag on - actually, it need not have done, but I won't weary you or anyone else by reciting the various reasons for the failure of the last vote in Wales on women in the episcopate...
      And, secondly, the key to the whole matter is the G.B. and if matters can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion there, the rest will follow and enable an element of trust and understanding to grow up because of a growing sense of mutual security.
      And, by the way, 'labels' are not always a barrier to understanding; it sometimes helps to know where people are coming from: to know whether someone is a member of FiF or Affirming Catholicism or Inclusive Church or whatever, simply describes broadly where they stand on the vital issues; I don't think that presents a barrier to dialogue at all; indeed, it can facilitate it.
      The problem we all have here is that trust, understanding and co-operation don't happen overnight, nor can they be brought about by good intentions alone. A generous 'organisational' solution (and there are several possibilities, as you have pointed out before) will provide the necessary structures to begin working together.
      I won't apologise for being such a conservative about this: adequate constitutional structures are vital protections for endangered minorities, even within the context of the community of faith.

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  2. If you will excuse the term Father, presumably someone is 'extracting the Michael' with the amendment:

    "provision for those who cannot
    accept a female bishop should be
    extended to those who cannot accept a
    male bishop".

    If anyone cannot accept a male bishop, what are they doing in what claims to be part of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?

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    1. If it were only that! That particular proposed amendment reveals only too clearly the complete refusal in some quarters to see anything in the opposition to female ordination other than misogynistic bigotry.
      Of course, it's not only 'a male bishop' that traditionalists need, but one who actually believes in the tradition...

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    2. Jonathan Williams18 April 2013 at 16:45

      It is unusual for such a question to be asked at GB and I answered it as Chairman of the Select Committee on the proposed bill. In my answer I simply stated the nature of the three amendments submitted without comment. The Committee will report to the Standing Committee on our recommendations and our report will go to the GB in September. Ultimately it will be for the GB to decide which, if any, of the amendments it chooses to adopt. Looking for hidden meaning or plots achieves nothing but can cause further fracture, which is something I would wish to avoid.

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    3. Thank you for the comment. It was precisely that which I picked up on. I agree the last thing any of us needs at the moment is unnecessary alarmism or a tendency to see plots where there are probably none. The unpredictable and necessarily politicised nature of the synodical process itself, however, can often lead to results which are different from that which we wish to see, so perhaps a degree of vigilance and even, yes, suspicion is forgiveable. We all want a just and permanent solution to the present impasse which will free us to be what the Church is called to be. Just how we achieve that without crushing the hopes of those on either side of this argument is what is evading us all at the moment...

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  3. I sometimes wonder how strong is the traditionalist challenge to the liberal movement in Welsh Anglicanism? We read frequent dire warnings from them about the state of the church and the loss of orthodoxy, but who really cares? Church is a once a week or once a fortnight activity for most of us. Nothing much happens during the week. We can bleat about declining congregations, lack of vocations, and the rise of secularism, but who does anything about it? The traditionalists talk and write at great length about preserving a male priesthood and episcopacy as if repeating the same arguments over and over again will suddenly cause the bishops to wake up and change course. Let’s face it, that isn’t going to happen. So the choices are simple. They can give up and leave, or as predicted by Joseph Gologhtly ‘eat the fudge’ and stay. But that culinary delight will exasperate the already agitated corporate indigestion. Or, perhaps there is another way? Forget the words, gossip and endless negative blogs and let’s have some positive direct action. How big is this traditionalist constituency? Who actually leads it? Who speaks for it? When those questions are answered let them galvanise the traditionalists into action. Club together, demand from the bishops the appointment of a flying bishop, if not withhold all of your quota payments. Direct the monies to a common fund to support the clergy and buy in a flying bishop from across the border. Some how that isn’t going to happen is it because I reckon there aren’t that many people who actually care, and their congregations are in fact split and wouldn’t follow them? So we’re back to the depressive articles bemoaning the passage of time and waiting for someone to pass the fudge.

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    1. That's quite a superficial judgement. Those of a more traditionalist theology tend also to have a more conservative outlook on life generally - instinctively, they shy away from militancy and irregularity; unlike those filled with a kind of reforming zeal they are not natural 'religious activists.'
      Not only that, traditionalists in the pews have a tendency to suffer in silence while their more radical fellow worshippers take over the institution. That can easily be interpreted as weakness or even indifference. Yet these battles are about truth rather than about who can most noisily shout the raucous certainties of modernity.

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    2. At last, a call for a positive direct approach, that’s what we need! Come on then let’s see some action from Forward in Faith Wales and the Society of the Holy Cross. How about organising something at St Arvan’s on the afternoon of Pentecost for the traditionalists in Wales to sort out how our parishes can declare UDI from the dioceses and stop direct giving money to central funds until the bishops give us what we want, a new flying bishop?

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    3. I could not agree more. What has happened to Forward in Faith Wales? There seems to be no action. Is it that people are happy to ignore what goes on and hope it won't happen. We need some action to show that there is a traditionalist movement within the Church in Wales and that the Church has to take notice of it. Otherwise we may as well just give up.

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  4. The 'battles' are indeed about truth, and I think it is incumbent on all concerned to realise they cannot in their own right grasp the fullness of truth this side of death.

    In many parishes throughout the Church in Wales we are holding together people of differing viewpoints and focusing on what we are really here for: to live and proclaim the Gospel. In my view, the Church in Wales is neither big enough nor ugly enough to survive as an institution the sort of 'positive direct approach' suggested here. Thank God for all those people who, despite their various disagreements and hurts, instinctively know this and remain loyal to the cause of the Gospel within the Church in Wales.

    PS: Sorry if I am in fact feeding the troll(s) :-)

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  5. All the more reason, of course, for those who believe this to do our utmost to reach a lasting solution now - one that doesn't result in 'traditional orthodoxy' - forgive me, but the original integrity of the Church in Wales - having no place within Welsh Anglicanism.

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  6. It has never struck me as particularly obvious, or even clear, why one would wish to ensure the coexistence of "traditional ortodoxy" and whatever-it-is we should term its antithesis in one communion fellowship. It is not as though the defenders of "homoousios" in the Fourth Century were contending for an "honoured place" in a body which professed, at various times, "homoios" and "homoiousios" as its "official" creed, alongside, one supposes, the equally-reprobated proponents of the radically Arian "anomios." In the longer run, after all, the proponents of rival and opposed orthodoxies (unless "orthodoxy" is reduced to mere sentiment) must nesessarily reprobate and seek to marginalize or exclude its opposite as purveying falsehood; and in the case of woman bishops it surely must be a case for opponents that any church that adopts the practice must by definition cease to be "a church." Proponents of WBs, on the other hand, must intuit that if the other side were "in the driver's seat," the ordination of women would necessarily cease and, as in Latvia, the problem of purportedly ordained women would be solved by the passage of time.

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    1. As you would have guessed by now, I can't take issue with either the logic or the theology of what you say - or, for that matter, the historical analogy. It's not so much co-existence I'm concerned with as, in the short-term, mere survival. And this is really a matter of what happens in the short-term and, if I'm going to be totally honest (never such a good idea in any 'public' forum in these inharmonious days) I suppose, a 'sentimental' refusal to abandon any part of the Lord's vineyard and not want to rescue souls from the wreckage of what is being trampled underfoot.
      Yes, ultimately, we have here two visions and models of the Church (and of the truth) which are mutually exclusive: only one will survive in the long-term.
      Those on the other side of this debate can only say the same unless, like Pilate, they would wish to deny the concept of truth altogether ...
      Before anyone objects, I would also have to say that the (neo)Hegelian method of thesis / antithesis / synthesis (employed by some in this regard) doesn't recommend itself to any theology of the Body of Christ which attempts to do justice to the mystery with which we are confronted.

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  7. If this were a matter of such central importance as the nature of Christ, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. But you both pass over an essential element of what is going on here: there are those of us who think that the ordination of women in all three orders is perfectly orthodox and has until now been hindered for cultural reasons.

    Even if this were not so, I would argue that the sex of the ordained is not of the essence of orthodox faith. I recognise that you do not agree, and that there is still for better or worse an argument to be had over this. I also recognise that in the Patristic era words like ‘orthodox’, traditional’, and ‘heresy’ were bandied about quite liberally. So please do not dismiss so easily the claim that one can with full integrity recite the Nicene Creed and accept the validity of a woman’s orders as priest or bishop.

    Indeed – as has been frequently pointed out in this blog – the most important thing in today’s Church is to teach and represent in every particular the vision of God described in those ancient creeds. When we all start doing that, we might then prayerfully achieve some further clarity about issues concerning gender and sexuality.

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  8. I understand the concept of "survival," as this has been the common hope, more or less, of those Swedes, clergymen especially, with whom I have been acquainted. In their case, though, it has not been a case of Louis XV's purported "Ca durera bien aussi longtemps que moi; apres moi le deluge," but rather driven by the belief that a collapse or "implosion" of the Church of Sweden is inevitable, as its evisceration of the Christian faith and its implicit (when not explicit) denial of the hope of the world to come causes a further emptying of the pews (in the 2003 census, on the average Sunday 1.53% of the Swedish population attended a service in the Church of Sweden, and 1.52% a service elsewhere) and, more significantly, a decline in the willingness of those Swedes who do not practice the Faith or believe it, but who nevertheless participate in "church elections" and serve in its bureaucracy and synodal processes to continue to do so. Their idea is, that after the impending "implosion" (le deluge) conservatives such as themselves will be in a position to take over the resultant ruinate desolation, and begin to rebuild, unhindered by the now-departed liberals.

    It is a brave hope. In the year 1999, when I interviewed one of the leaders of the Swedish "orthodox integrity," he told me that he expected the "implosion" to begin in "fifteen or twenty years." I see little sign of it yet in Sweden, though.

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  9. This is the interview to which I referred in the comment which I made on this thread about an hour ago:

    http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-06-035-i

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