Wednesday, March 21, 2007

A Polite Fiction

Last week I predicted the meeting of the House of Bishops over the weekend would yield "a blathering of obfuscation that will fool no one." Well, a statement was issued yesterday and I was half right: there is indeed blather aplenty but no obfuscation at all, the majority of bishops have told +Cantuar to stuff it. In the end this is a good thing. The revisionists who control ECUSA have now made it perfectly clear to the orthodox they run the show. Any talk of orthodox accommodation in the past was merely a polite fiction and shall no longer obtain; no more empty talk.

Plenty of other bloggers have dissected the statement so there's no use in my doing so. For those whose tastes run toward evisceration, I heartily commend Christopher Johnson's Fisking of it. My favorite jab:

"And while we're on the subject of moves that 'are inappropriate under the most ancient authorities,' Rome called. They want their cathedrals and their Westminster Abbey back."

Ruth Gledhill of the London Times offers a more cerebral take on the statement and brings up a good point at the end:

"So, in effect, TEC are subverting Dr Williams' wider unity plans by playing their own unity card with ruthless clarity. We already know who is holding the queens in this high-stakes ecclesiastical poker game. And I know of at least two pretty major aces that have still to be shown. I just hope Dr Williams has some good cards still close to his chest. Because neither TEC nor Akinola are bluffing."

One of those "aces" (and I assume "holding the queens" is mere unfortunate metaphorical coincidence) has to be the minority (orthodox) bishops' position. The are fairly large in number and so far they have issued no statement of their own. Look for one, it could be a bombshell.

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