Thursday 7 November 2013

Business as usual ...... Really?

It would seem that some Anglican bishops and others who are determined to (shall we say, to be charitable for a moment) 'modify' the Church's apostolic tradition as regards the sacred ministry are letting it be known that despite objections to these developments within the Anglican Communion from the Orthodox and Roman Catholic hierarchies, no one should be unduly concerned because the business of ecumenism continues much as before. It's hard to know who they are trying to fool more, themselves or those of their own flock who they seem to regard both to have no place in Anglicanism as it is becoming and, indeed, rather stupid to boot.

However, despite such dangerous myopia in high places it is very clear that both the great apostolic churches of East and West regard what we are now doing as placing intolerable strain upon such dialogue as is still taking place and, in addition, has had the result of downgrading the ecumenical process with the Anglican Communion to one which will be unlikely to result in full communion. There's the rub.
It would be hard, to take just one example,  for Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev to be more explicit in representing the views of the Russian Orthodox Church on these and related matters. But he clearly has not been explicit enough. 

It has always seemed curious to many of us that, while strutting on the world ecumenical stage, our own leaders seem concerned to eradicate from their own provinces those very traditions which are shared with our 'catholic' ecumenical partners, who should perhaps themselves take note of the modern Anglican propensity to be utterly impervious to criticism and stone deaf to any voices which dare to differ from those of western, 'liberal ' secularism...... 

2 comments:

  1. modify? you are charitable indeed. someone less charitable might have chosen to use the word 'abandon.'

    and you make an excellent point - what does it really say about the sincerity of ecumenical dialogue with those outside anglicanism when so many of the anglican hierarchy have a disdain for those within anglicanism who views are ad idem with those they purport to be in dialogue with?

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