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Thursday, July 10, 2014
From The Guardian
"The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is preparing to drive through legislation to allow women bishops even if it is rejected by the church's governing body, the General Synod." You can see the rest of this news article here.
Canonically speaking, how legal would it be for the Archbishops to push for such a change after a synod has voted it down? Also if the synod is elected, can the ABC just dissolve it? This seems to be on shaking legal as well as moral grounds.
I hope all those who consider themselves evangelicals within CoE find a home they can trust, like the ACC's DoUK.
esp. this, from comment #4 (more remarkable still, because "Pageantmaster" is more a supporter of WO than an opponent):
The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is preparing to drive through legislation to allow women bishops even if it is rejected by the church’s governing body, the General Synod.
The synod is poised to vote again on the vexed plan next week but senior sources have told the Guardian that should the move be blocked again, there are now options being considered to force the change on the church.
Options under consideration include an immediate dissolution of the synod so that fresh elections could produce a sufficient majority by November, or even a move by the bishops in the House of Lords to introduce the legislation without synodical approval.
The dramatic intervention would be designed to pre-empt any attempts, which are already being threatened by parliament, to remove the church’s exemption from equality legislation.
The section that I have boldened puts me in mind of another one of my favorite quotations, from the beginning of Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. (Hegel said no such thing in fact; Engels wrote it as his view of what Hegel meant in a private letter to Marx, and Marx adapted it for his own purposes.). For what would all this amount to but the Church of England leadership adopting the "Swedish solution" of 1957-58? The Church Assembly of the Church of Sweden rejected a WO measure in 1957 (a measure that had already been approved by the Swedish Parliament, but in Sweden then, unlike England now, such legislation required the approval of the Church Assembly, as well as of the Parliament; in England, the Parliament could ignore the General Synod and legislate on its own, if it saw fit to do so), the Swedish Government dissolved the Church Assembly and ordered elections for a new one, which were fought out on a party-political basis, and when the newly-elected Assembly met in 1958 it promptly approved of WO in the face of the Government's threat that if it did not do so the Church would be disestablished and its assets confiscated. The English have "improved on" the Swedes, however: unlike in Sweden, where the Church (and the majority of its bishops) succumbed to external force and threats which even some of the proponents of WO did not welcome, in England it is the Church leadership itself which would be invoking the State to force it to do which it is unable to effect by following its own statutory procedures. Who can take such an absurd situation seriously, who can take such an archbishop seriously (someone like Eusebius of Nicomedia seems to be Welby's ideal archbishop!) or take such an institution the leadership of which could take such action as a "church" in any meaningful sense? Even the Church of Sweden emerges more favorably than the Church of England; the appropriate parallel would be that state civil service religious bureaucracy which calls itself "The Danish Folkchurch."
I believe the vernacular is, "Meh". I'm of the opinion that this is really not relevant to the true Anglican Church (i.e. that which subsists in the Anglican Continuum).
Saying that, there is the potential for the Continuum here in the U.K. to rescue those who wish to be rescued from this disaster, and I humbly request the prayers of the readership here that those who are still hanging on for grim life to this sinking ship may find safe haven in the bevy of our little coracles.
Canonically speaking, how legal would it be for the Archbishops to push for such a change after a synod has voted it down? Also if the synod is elected, can the ABC just dissolve it? This seems to be on shaking legal as well as moral grounds.
ReplyDeleteI hope all those who consider themselves evangelicals within CoE find a home they can trust, like the ACC's DoUK.
ReplyDeleteSee:
http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/55454/
esp. this, from comment #4 (more remarkable still, because "Pageantmaster" is more a supporter of WO than an opponent):
The archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is preparing to drive through legislation to allow women bishops even if it is rejected by the church’s governing body, the General Synod.
The synod is poised to vote again on the vexed plan next week but senior sources have told the Guardian that should the move be blocked again, there are now options being considered to force the change on the church.
Options under consideration include an immediate dissolution of the synod so that fresh elections could produce a sufficient majority by November, or even a move by the bishops in the House of Lords to introduce the legislation without synodical approval.
The dramatic intervention would be designed to pre-empt any attempts, which are already being threatened by parliament, to remove the church’s exemption from equality legislation.
Cf.: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/church-women-bishops-welby-legislation
The section that I have boldened puts me in mind of another one of my favorite quotations, from the beginning of Karl Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. (Hegel said no such thing in fact; Engels wrote it as his view of what Hegel meant in a private letter to Marx, and Marx adapted it for his own purposes.). For what would all this amount to but the Church of England leadership adopting the "Swedish solution" of 1957-58? The Church Assembly of the Church of Sweden rejected a WO measure in 1957 (a measure that had already been approved by the Swedish Parliament, but in Sweden then, unlike England now, such legislation required the approval of the Church Assembly, as well as of the Parliament; in England, the Parliament could ignore the General Synod and legislate on its own, if it saw fit to do so), the Swedish Government dissolved the Church Assembly and ordered elections for a new one, which were fought out on a party-political basis, and when the newly-elected Assembly met in 1958 it promptly approved of WO in the face of the Government's threat that if it did not do so the Church would be disestablished and its assets confiscated. The English have "improved on" the Swedes, however: unlike in Sweden, where the Church (and the majority of its bishops) succumbed to external force and threats which even some of the proponents of WO did not welcome, in England it is the Church leadership itself which would be invoking the State to force it to do which it is unable to effect by following its own statutory procedures. Who can take such an absurd situation seriously, who can take such an archbishop seriously (someone like Eusebius of Nicomedia seems to be Welby's ideal archbishop!) or take such an institution the leadership of which could take such action as a "church" in any meaningful sense? Even the Church of Sweden emerges more favorably than the Church of England; the appropriate parallel would be that state civil service religious bureaucracy which calls itself "The Danish Folkchurch."
I believe the vernacular is, "Meh". I'm of the opinion that this is really not relevant to the true Anglican Church (i.e. that which subsists in the Anglican Continuum).
ReplyDeleteSaying that, there is the potential for the Continuum here in the U.K. to rescue those who wish to be rescued from this disaster, and I humbly request the prayers of the readership here that those who are still hanging on for grim life to this sinking ship may find safe haven in the bevy of our little coracles.
ReplyDeleteMotion carried:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/006667.html
Serves'em right!