"Gay" Bishop Prophesizes Collapse of Anglican Church in North America

New North American Anglican grouping won't last says gay bishop
By Chris Herlinger
New York, 29 June (ENI)--A new North American group claiming to embrace "traditional Anglican values" will not last long, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop has predicted.

V. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner, whose 2003 consecration as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire created a backlash among traditional believers within the U.S., church, told Ecumenical News International he does not believe the new Anglican grouping has long-term viability.

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that," Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

Comments

[brad evans]

And he's right-so long as there are divorced ex-catholics, upscale ex-baptists/gay pentecostals and mormons, the episcopal church's future in the USA is assured. It will never fall below 1 million members, it will always be over-represented among CEOs, Senators, and University faculty.
Deal with it. The idea that the Southern Baptists could ever, seriously, threaten their social and political and cultural influence is either delusional or a sign of very high THC levels in the bloodstream.
They will decline. They are never going to disappear.

[Bill R]

The "bishop" is, I take it, tone-deaf to irony.

[TimC]

Brad,

The bishop's comments were in regard to the viability of the new Anglican province, not to the influence of the Episcopal church. I don't seen any reference to the SBC, either. Are you responding to the same post that I'm reading?

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that," Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

#1. Why did he mention ordaining women in the same sentence as ordaining GLBT'ers? It would seem that he sees that there's a relationship between the two. What might that be?

#2. How ironic. His ordination is causing (actually accelerating) the collapse of not only TEc, but the Anglican Communion as well, and he has the gall and the nerve to declare that ACNA will collapse because it opposes the normalization and teaching of same-sex behavior as not being sin?

#3. What kind of church is First Presbyterian Church in New York City that they would have unrepentantly gay minister to preach from its pulpit?

[Kathy Hanneman]

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that"

Tell that to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

[Kamilla]

Well, Vicki Gene is right about one thing - the ACNA is inherently unstable and there is no real future for it. But he's wrong about why - they do ordain women. If parts do, the whole does, period. And that's the reason for the inherent instability.

Kamilla

[Christopher Hathaway]

TEC has a kind of stability: that of a corpse. All living energy is being driven out of it. ACNA's problem is that it has too much life and energy, but that it is not organized under a single coherent vision and theology on some crucial matters. Its vibrancy will threaten to rip it apart unless the grace of God works a miracle, which is always possible for people with a living faith.

[David Gray]

>Tell that to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

Or orthodox Protestant churches.

[The young fogey]

“A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that.”

Tell that to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

Thank you!

Here Bishop Robinson sounds conceited and ignorant.

He's wrong about Catholicism and ordaining the openly gay.

I'm all for ordaining openly gay men: those who are honest with themselves and whoever else's business it might be (probably not mine). Not the same as teaching that same-sex sex is objectively a good thing like he does.

That said of course he has a point about ACNA crumbling. Its Anglo-Catholics will find it as untenable as TEC and leave soon.

[Nicola]

“A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that.”
Tell that to the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

This is exactly what I came here to say. The Catholic Church has only been going for over 2000 years, nope, no future in that...

[An ACNA Delegate]

I think Christopher Hathaway has it mostly right. It is going to take a miracle, or something close, to get all the constituencies in the ACNA on the same page about women's ordination, and several other disputed issues of some importance. But we trust in God Who called all things into being by His Word, Who raises the dead, with Whom all things are possible. Please, good readers, pray for Archbishop Duncan (who is on the wrong side of the WO issue), the college of bishops (most of whom are on the right side) and the people of ACNA.

That said, I think Kamilla is somewhat more wrong than right in saying that if one part of ACNA ordains women, then all do. Most don't, and the canons were designed to prevent the supporters of women's ordination from forcing their view on the opponents, as has happened over the past few decades in the Episcopal Church. The opponents cannot be required to accept women clergy, and retain the right to withdraw unilaterally at any time. The compromise is unstable, but I fully expect the opponents of women's ordination to get out immediately if the proponents try to upset the compromise on that point. (Not the greatest of situations in terms of catholic ecclesiology, I admit, but an embodiment of the principle that an armed society is a polite society.)

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

But isn't part of being a "communion" to have major (at least) portions of doctrine in "common"? WO is a Big Thing theologically, as it not only affects ecclesiology but our vision of God's plan for creating two sexes in His image to reflect His nature. If a Christian who thinks headship is a commandment to men wanders into a church of his (or her) communion and finds "Father" Susan behind the altar, isn't that a bit of a deal-breaker? Or should be? S.M. Hutchens, where are you at this hour of our need?

[Kamilla]

Delegate,

I don't believe I am wrong, and Dcn Harmon explains why, in part. As do your own words about the inherent instability in the compromise.

Kamilla

[William Tighe]

If you are in communion, you are in communion. If it is legitimate for a "portion" of a "church" to "ordain" women, and you are part of that "church," even if not that "portion," then you are in communion with ordainers of women, and by being in communion with them your very deed of communicating in that communion testifies against your purported opposition to WO, that you think it, ultimately, no big deal, or not sufficiently big a deal not to be in communion with those who do it. This seems pretty close to an enacted definition of the word "hypocrisy."

How great a contrast to the ecclesiology of the Fathers, one of whom, the great Pope Gelasius (d. 496), when the Patriarch of Constantinople, Acacius, protested against Gelasius's excommunicating him for being in communion with those who rejected the Council of Chalcedon, in accordance with the Eastern Emperor's "Henotikon" (which forbade those who accepted the council to condemn its opponents, and those who rejected it to condemn those who accepted it), saying that he "personally" accepted Chalcedon, dismissed Acacius' protestation with the reply "In consortio damnatorum damnatus est Acacius" or "By communicating with condemned heterodox, Acacaius himself incurs condemnation." Mutatis mutandis, the same applies to a greater degree to those who know WO to be an heretical conceit, and yet hold communion with those that practice it.

[William Tighe]

On the other hand, some Episcopalian individuals and groups may have their own reasons for joining ACNA, despite their opposition to WO, as this comment that I found on the Midwest Conservative Journal appears to suggest:

Invicta Veritas
June 25, 2009

Let us imagine a group of Episcopalians who think of themselves as “Catholics:” let us say, the folk of the Diocese of Fort Leavenworth, under their godly bishop, +Pikerfieldman. Caught as they have been since 1976 in a “church” that has added heresy to heresy from WO onwards, and realizing that the jig is up for them, that TE”C” is irreformable in its apostasy, that the AbC, whatever his sympathies, and he seems to have contradictory ones, is going to be of no help to them whatsoever (for he is in the pocket of Flaminica Jadis, and his various appearances to utter obscurely sympathetic remarks are merely the rote utterances of an automaton, or a jack-in-the-box), that many of those self-conceitedly “orthodox Anglicans” in TE”C” and abroad, who are now making a great stir in the world about Sanctified Sodomy favor the “originating heresy” of WO, what are they to do?

To become Catholic or Orthodox would divide the diocese. True, it is mostly Anglo-Catholic in its complexion, but there are exceptions, such as the wealthy parish of St. John Jewel that uses the 39 Articles as a “test act” for its curates, and many of those who think of themselves as “Catholics” would like to find an Anglican way forward, and need to be brought to a “higher level of despair” before realizing that there is none — and besides, as things stand at present its most forward Orthodox suitor makes no provision for a Western Rite (while another Orthodox jurisdiction that does make such provision seems about to see its Caliph’s throne totter, and is in any case rather distracted by the problem of translating Damascene Arabic edicts into coherent and non-self-contradictory English), while its Roman mother seems gravid with a not-yet-born “further provision” for distressed Anglicans. There are the “Continuing Anglicans,” but they are such a picture of interniecene squabbling, rival orthodoxies and arbitrary ones, knavish episcopal entrepreneurs, that they seem rather a discredit to the possibility of a “Catholic Anglicanism” than otherwise; and, besides, to move in their direction would be tantamount to admitting that they should have bailed out of TE”C” in 1977, not nearly 33 years later.

But there is another possibility: ACNA. It has generated a lot of enthusiasm among the semi-orthodox and semi-desperate “mere conservatives,” and has embraced to the full that Anglican penchant for trying to subsume contradictions under flowery language and political structures and deals. In particular, it offers local option on the subject of WO, plus the guarantee, at least for the time being, of no woman bishops. It has a charismatic new archbishop, Archbishop Polydox, who has both an Evangelical face and a Catholic face and hands that practice WO, which amounts almost to enough “to deceive the Elect,” were that possible.

Bishop Pikerfieldman is not deceived, but he has to act carefully. He realizes that ACNA’s “compromise” on WO is incoherent in itself, and simply absurd from the perspective of those who hold to Catholic orthodoxy on the subject of Holy Orders. But TE”C” has experienced its own Red October, and its Bolsheviks are busy mopping up their last opponents and ready to open their Growing Understanding Lately Accorded by Grace (GULAG for short) reeducation facilities, so the time to leave is now, and ACNA is the only train out before the station closes for good. So he gets on board, with his diocese. Soon, though, he will begin to press for a “deeper engagement with orthodoxy,” in particular, with how to arrive with a justification for WO that accords with the Vincentian Canon, for how can they be of one mind in a house otherwise, when they are in the absurd position of being "in communion" and "not in communion" at one and the same time? It is, of course, a forlorn hope, for those who practice WO can never come up with a justification that rises to the level of the Vincentian Canon, and their darling heresy is too dear to them to be spurned under any circumstances -- not to mention the wrath of "women scorned" -- but the attempt itself will be a useful exercise, since the defenders of WO will have to recycle once again their bizarre and comical neo-Montanist and neo-Marcionite impositions on Scripture and rejection of Catholic Tradition, and in the end the Catholic-minded Anglicans of Fort Leavenworth will reach that “higher level of despair” mentioned above with the realization that ACNA is little more than a diminutive rerun of the ECUSA of John Maury Allin, and so that there is no “Catholic solution” outside Catholicism or Orthodoxy. And so in the end they make the hard, but necessary, choice …

[Puck]

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that"

I'd say that there's no future in a church that no longer has children - and obviously doesn't seem to care about them.

[jilo]

the gay bishop i think is not in his right sense.
the church of God will never fall

[Albion]

I didn't quite believe my eyeses
when I saw the verb 'prophesizes'.
Surely the correct form 'prophesies' is -
so says this pedant prof, he sighses.

[Matthias]

"while another Orthodox jurisdiction that does make such provision seems about to see its Caliph’s throne totter, and is in any case rather distracted by the problem of translating Damascene Arabic edicts into coherent and non-self-contradictory English"

ROTFL. Should be weeping, but ROTFL.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

William Tighe: "If you are in communion, you are in communion."

Definitive and clear.

If anyone is in The Episcopal Church, then they are in communion with Bishop V. Gene Robinson. (Among other assorted heresies).

What about other provinces of the Anglican Communion? If they are in communion with TEc, whether full communion or otherwise, are the members in those provinces in communion with +VGR?

[An ACNA Delegate]

A couple of thoughts in response: I certainly agree that WO is a large issue that needs to be resolved (and by resolved, I mean eliminated and repented of, for reasons that would be familiar to most readers here) sooner rather than later. I am not optimistic, as it will take something very like a miracle, but I am hopeful. If that near-miracle does not occur, then I think ACNA's destruction is inevitable, although it may take a few decades. As for what the constituent bodies do after the crack-up, your guess is as good as mine, and Invicta Veritas's doesn't sound too unlikely to me.

As for "communion," the argument strikes me as really a Catholic/Orthodox vs. Protestant one. I fully agree that, in terms of catholic ecclesiology, as a Pope Gelasius might have understood it or as modern-day Catholics and Orthodox might understand it, ACNA's ecclesiology is incoherent. The Anglican Communion isn't a communion in the way that the Roman Catholic Church is a communion or the Orthodox Churches are a communion. The degree of communion between, say, the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Diocese of Fort Worth under ACNA is probably about comparable to that among the two of them, the Southern Baptist congregation across the street, and the Methodists next door. That's not a knock on any of the four, merely a recognition that each group has some things in common with each of the others, certain have more in common with some than with others, and there are issues large and small dividing each from the other three. The name notwithstanding, the ACNA, like the Anglican Communion, is really more of a federation than a church (or, to put it in Vatican II terms, an ecclesial community). It's unfortunate that our communion isn't (for now) any more perfect, but that's life among Protestants. We either have to make the best of it or else put on our swimsuits and head for the Tiber or the Bosporous.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

"I am not optimistic, as it will take something very like a miracle, but I am hopeful."

Well, it doesn't help matters much when the first archbishop of ACNA is a pro-WO supporter like Robert Duncan.

Furthermore, the incoherency of WO is not just limited to the ecclesiology of ACNA. WO is also permitted in GAFCON.

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

As someone living on the AMiA side of this, I really do hope we can manage to maintain unity long enough for the two camps to learn from each other. I do think that AMiA is right to stand firm against WO, especially when we think about getting closer to the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics. I think the charismatic enthusiasm of AMiA can do much to reinvigorate some of the other churches. And yet the Anglo-Catholic side has much to teach us in AMiA about the depth of liturgy, of the richness of sacramental life, and that there are ways besides Calvinism to be intellectually robust and faithful to scripture and our heritage.

What I'm saying is that, yeah, the union might be short lived and futile, but it could also be really REALLY good. Let's pray for the latter. Please, please don't settle for rooting for our failure to confirm your own uncompromising integrity - please, instead, pray for us!

[Kamilla]

But Wonders, they are most definitely NOT standing firm against women's "ordination". Just a couple of months ago Canon Doc Loomis, one of the new Bishops-elect, was listed as representing AMiA at the ordination of a new priestess at St. Barnabas of ACiC. The parish is cross-listed as an AMiA parish and I believe Sandy Greene is their bishop.

This is why I find myself outside of AMiA and, for the time being, outside of Anglicanism.

Kamilla

[Mikes Sumondong]

I cannot predict what happens to a specific church or not. One thing I know, if it's not a Church of God, it will never last but a church with Jesus Christ as the head will endure forever!

[Christopher Hathaway]

While I am resolutely opposed to WO in every form and see it as fragmenting true communion, still, I am hopeful for ACNA because I have every reason to believe that the vast majority of its leadership know the Lord and want to be faithful to his Word. Such could not be said of TEC at any time in my life. Victory over WO was never really possible in such a church where a substantial, and now dominant portion of the church doesn't know God or his Truth or give a damn about it.

Free from the crushing grip of their apostacy I believe that it may be possible to get some proWo leaders to see the error of their ways. And even if few of them do, I think it far more likely that the next generation of leadership will be more inclined to critique bad decisions made by their predecessors while in an apostate church.

It may not be a true communion now with a sound ecclesiology, but with the guidance of the Spirit it may in time evolve into one. TEC cannot evolve because it is dead. It will only decompose.

[R.C.]

The Church of Jesus Christ experiences His life flowing through it. It will appear to collapse many times, but will always suddenly spring to life again: That is the way of resurrection power.

The Episcopal Church, since it has cut itself off from Christ by unrepentant serious sins against the Truth (that is, against Christ) and grieved the Holy Spirit by resisting correction, conviction, and repentance, will go on for several hundred years, as a decaying corpse of the spiritually undead. It will experience no great collapse because it lacks enough life to conspicuously die.

The conservative splinter-groups departing the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have, at least, a spiritual seeker's receptivity to the Holy Spirit and a desire to be orthodox, even if it's sometimes only "more orthodox than thou." As such, they participate, however imperfectly, in the flow of life which comes from Jesus Christ. They remain in the vine.

And that means that they will thrive...until they collapse suddenly...only to revive and thrive again in altered form. Resurrectional events will percolate as new pastors and writers and theologians and evangelists suddenly grasp a glimpse of the Beatific Vision and, thus empowered, leap into ministry with entrepreneurial fervor.

But does anyone expect revival? vigor? entrepreneurial? fervor from the Episcopals any time soon?

(Please, restrain your derisive laughter. It's really not funny, how funny it is.)

[smh]

Women's ordination is only one of the fruits of a much deeper problem.

Of course, I believe that Deacon Harmon is right; this is a big issue because it is customarily the creature of anthropological egalitarianism, which of necessity is rooted in a trinitarian theology I believe unorthodox. This is the field, in fact, is where the battle is presently being fought with major theological figures who are re-presenting the history of western orthodox trinitarianism to our generation as non-subordinationist with regard not only to the divine essence, but the relationship of the divine Persons.

But what struck me in my reading on the new denomination's website was the remarkable confidence of Archbishop Duncan and others that the favor of the Lord rested upon it, that it was a new work of the risen Christ, that it was new wine in new wineskins, and so forth. This from a group that not only has reason to understand the historically and theologically radical character of ordination of women to the presbyterial office, but which can claim fewer members internationally than the Southern Baptists can in the typical Texas county. Just who do these people imagine themselves to be? On what basis do they seem to think themselves such a valuable addition to the serried ranks of orthodox Christendom? One can understand and sympathize with a certain feeling of relief--but these presentments go beyond that.

I have seen it before, up close, back in my Episcopal Synod of America days, and I wondered (not having been born or raised Episcopalian) at it then. There was a strong feeling in that the group and what it was doing was very important, rather than simply the performance of a mournful duty, as so many Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists and Lutherans had been forced to do in their own time, withdrawing from a church that had liberalized itself into apostasy--which, as it turned out, the ESA just couldn't bring itself to do. (This inability to break communion with apostate bishops signaled my own break with "orthodox" Episcopalians.)

To my mind, this weakness and myopia points to the characteristic sin of Episcopalianism in this pilgrim land, as full as it is of crude and ignorant sects to which it is so easy and natural to feel superior. The transgressions of sexual confusion, the moral failings that have been the principal causes of separation are to this constitutional sin merely epiphenomena, the attitude engendered by Pride being the common heritage of both the liberals and conservatives of the tribe. Why should a group of "orthodox" Episcopalians not have priestesses? What church is it, however venerable, that it does not know better than? Compared to what church, however populous, are its minuscule numbers not testimony to a superior election rather than confusion, poor leadership, and lack of vision?

As far as its prospects are concerned, I should think they are as good as those of any sect. If the first several chapters of Revelation tell us something about the Lord's attitude toward "the churches," we must believe it is his decision whether they have his light, how long, and under what conditions. A church may bear the light of Christ, and yet he has something against it that must be corrected, or that light will in time be removed. During the probation, however, its status is necessarily ambiguous. We should not think that the removal of the lampstand means immediate institutional death, but that it is no longer, in God's eyes, an accredited congregation: Ichabod is written over its doors. I believe many churches are involved in--or through with--this repent-or-die process, each according to the character of its fault. While ordaining women to the presbyterate or episcopacy is contrary to the catholic faith, I do not think this ipso facto removes the light of the churches that do it, but surely this must put them on the endangered list. Other churches (the Assemblies of God and the Foursquare Gospel Church, for example), began with a fully egalitarian ideal of ordained ministry, and yet now their ruling and teaching elders are for the largest part male. Is this simply following the course nature must inevitably take for such institutions to survive, or evidence of following the promptings of the Holy Spirit? I don't know, for we aren't privy to the counsels where such things are known; we can only observe effects, and guess.

Although I am myself heartily tired of the antics of continuing Anglicanism, and tend to see the whole Anglican mess as King Henry's chickens finally coming home to roost (why should a church born in sexual transgression not die in it?)--I do wish the faithful the the Ecclesia Anglicana well, just as I myself hope to benefit from the patience of God.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

SMH: "Just who do these people imagine themselves to be? On what basis do they seem to think themselves such a valuable addition to the serried ranks of orthodox Christendom?"

Steve Hutchens, I think a large part of the answer to your question is contained in the following quote.

Invictas Veritas: "ACNA. It has generated a lot of enthusiasm among the semi-orthodox and semi-desperate “mere conservatives,” and has embraced to the full that Anglican penchant for trying to subsume contradictions under flowery language and political structures and deals."

This Anglican penchant is also fondly known as the defective chromosome "Via Media".

[Christopher Hathaway]

If you are in communion, you are in communion. If it is legitimate for a "portion" of a "church" to "ordain" women, and you are part of that "church," even if not that "portion," then you are in communion with ordainers of women, and by being in communion with them your very deed of communicating in that communion testifies against your purported opposition to WO, that you think it, ultimately, no big deal, or not sufficiently big a deal not to be in communion with those who do it. This seems pretty close to an enacted definition of the word "hypocrisy."

Since I was not born or raised in a church with an ecclesiology that allows or encourages individual laymen to break communion based upon what they agree with or disagree with regarding the faith, I think the charge of hypocrisy is a bit presumptuous. We all need to decide for ourselves how much association with heresy we are going to tolerate because we must each decide how much of our own church's tradition of misunderstanding of what constitutes "communion" we can no longer tolerate.

You chastize those who grew up Anglican for not acting as if they were Catholic or Orthodox bishops. This seems harsh and uncharitable. Why not simply stop at saying that you see no hope for a sound orthodox application of ecclesial communion while WO is tolerated at any level within the leadership? Leave it up to us to decide how much imperfection of communion, if any, we can tolerate. I think I would take perfectionist arguments better if it came from a Catholic/Orthodox church that had healed its millenium old rift. I see and am strongly drawn to the great strengths of Catholicism, butI find less attractive the penchant for using the language of damnation for those who don't maintain strict ecclesial hygene.

I might also ask on another matter: How does one practice Paul's rule not to associate with the immoral Christians? Is there a clear rule on this that does not allow others to say we are being hypocrites? Must we literally shun and treat as dead in all circumstances and without delay all unrepentant sinners, or else face the charge that we don't consider their sin to be that big of a deal?

[William Tighe]

In response to the last, it seems that the debate may rapidly become moot, as the wheels seem already to be coming off this particular shiny new Edsel:

http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/23728/#comments

thanks to Bishop Wantland; and not a moment too soon.

"You chastize those who grew up Anglican for not acting as if they were Catholic or Orthodox bishops. This seems harsh and uncharitable."

I deny this. I am chastizing only those Anglicans who claim to be "Catholic" (a claim the reality and plausibility of which I reject), and especially those who claim to be "Catholic bishops," and then go on to act as though their Catholicism is a mere charade, or that it can mean anything they want it to mean, as with certain bishops who have brought their dioceses into ACNA. With "Evangelicals in chausubles" I have nothing to do (those whom 19th Century Victorian RCs termed "decorated Protestants"), but with those whose cry has been "Appello Patres" as well against the "papists" as against "lowchurchmen" I reply "Ibis ad Patres" -- and on what subject better than on WO and ecclesiastical communion, which is the perfect "touchstone" by which to assess their claims?

But, then, the "real Catholics" left ECUSA in the 1970s, didn't they?

[Christopher Hathaway]

I don't mean to sound snippy, but I do tire, when the only church that I have known is crumbling to pieces and the Communion itself now seems hallow, having our attempts to salvage some orthodoxy out of the wreakage being scorned from the outside as inadequate. It should be remembered, while people are sayinmg good ridance to Anglicanism because now its feet of clay are fully revelaed, that the Pope himself does not rejoice at the thought.

Nor do I mean to imply that I am willing to tolerate WO in ACNA as a feature rather than a bug. I am tolerating it for a time and trusting in God's grace to resolve the issue, much as I do in personal matters when I am at odds with a brother who is treating me unjustly but who will not recognize the fact. I do not simply wash my hands of him, nor accept his conduct, but I tolerate the injury and trust that God will speak to him, or me, because we both know the Lord.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Christopher Hathaway: "I might also ask on another matter: How does one practice Paul's rule not to associate with the immoral Christians?"

Timely question. I just saw this post on Mark Shea's blog today:

"When a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court of the U.S. are Catholic and we still can't overturn Roe vs. Wade, we have a problem. When our leading Catholic University gives awards to pro-abortion politicians, we have a problem. When a pro-abortion President appoints Catholics to important positions within his cabinet and the pro-abortion stampede continues, we have a problem. When two leading Catholic intellectuals feel the need to have a debate over whether or not it is ok to support a pro-abortion President, we have a problem."

See Mark's answer here which you may or may not agree with in terms of Christopher's question of "How does one practice Paul's rule not to associate with the immoral Christians?"

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

Thanks Christopher. These thoughts are my own, though my story is different. I've gone from evangelicalism to evangelical Anglicanism. Frankly, I'm encouraged by ACNA - it gives me hope that there is a conservative church forming that (unlike practically every mainline conservative break off group I can think of) has some semblance of an ecclesiology, such that it might possibly not splinter into a million little "I draw the line of orthodoxy HERE" groups. I'd like us to come to a consensus on a lot of the things Metropolitan Jonah mentioned. But how are the evangelicals in ACNA going to grow to appreciate deeper sacramentalism if they are simply told right this minute "sign off or ship out"? I do not want us to become like the OPC/PCA/EPC etc. - I actually would like us to be a church.

[Christopher Hathaway]

I am chastizing only those Anglicans who claim to be "Catholic" (a claim the reality and plausibility of which I reject), and especially those who claim to be "Catholic bishops," and then go on to act as though their Catholicism is a mere charade, or that it can mean anything they want it to mean, as with certain bishops who have brought their dioceses into ACNA.

I apologize for mischaracterizing your comments. But I still think you are being too harsh on these Anglocatholics. They are not, at least I know of none, former Roman Catholics who have traded the healthy and full catholicism of their birth for an inadequate bastard version. For Anglocatholics this bastard version of catholicism is all they have ever known or been taught. And, furthermore, it is all that is possible within Anglicanism.

The Angliacn church has never held itself out to be the one true church with whom all Christians must be in full communion. Many have promoted it to be the best among many alternatives. But the kind of visible unity inherent in both the eastern orthodox churches and in the Roman church and clearly seen in the early church as a mark of the true church has never been possible for Anglicanism to claim. The Reformation has forced it to relinquish that part of catholicism, claiming that it isn't necessary.

Of course, from the Anglocatholic perspective such a mark isn't necessary...to be Anglican. But it is necessary to be catholic as this was understood from the beginning until the Protestant Reformation. Anglocatholics are essentially Protestants hewing as close to catholicism as is possible within a Protestant church. If they want a true and full catholicism they will have to join a church that at least claims to hold such a full and true catholicism: Rome or Constantinople. To the extant that Anglocatholics refuse to acknowledge this Protestant nature in their faith your criticism of them is well earned (but I would still plead for gentleness).

For me, the true form of catholicism that is possible in Rome or the east is something I greatly desire, much as I greatly desire a wife. But having never been married my lack of a wife I do not feel as keenly as if I had been married and lost her. So I do not feel the half catholicism possible in Anglicanism as a loss so much as a lack, a desire for something more. In the meantime, I can still go on as I have and do the ministry God has made possible for Protestants like myself. He does work through us, I believe.
(The analogy is inexact because singleness is actually greater for the Gospel than being married, but living in a dominant Protestant/evangelical culture being single is often seen as unfulfilled. We don't fit in well.)

[Christopher Hathaway]

Wonders, I also see myself as an Evangelical Anglican, and also as an Anglocatholic. I am hopeful that ACNA will be able to salvage the basic Biblical Anglican faith as well as give a home to what is left of the "catholics" within Anglicanism, and maybe draw in those of the diaspora who are more "catholic" than our present TEC refugees, because even these are not catholic as Rome or Constantinople would define it. You can't be a catholic churchall on your own.

There is no question of the Evangelicals being "told" anything, since they are the vast majority within ACNA. But they are not going to be able to dismiss or despise the arguments of anglocatholics as they did when they could aaly with the liberals. That alliance is gone and rightly seen as destructive. Repentance will not be full or immediate. It will take time. You can't just slap them in the face and tell them "This is what the Bible says" or "This is what it means to be catholic", not if you want to win them over. They will need space and time to rub up against these arguments and digest them inorder to come to see the truth for themselves.

I am hopeful that ACNA will be that venue. It will not be the final answer. It is an interrum. What will be on the other side, God knows. There may be many steps ahead we cannot see.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

While I sympathize with Christopher Hathaway and Wonders for Oyarsa (see Fr. Reardon's superb article about mourning for a beached whale (Anglicanism)), I still see Invictas Veritas's diagnosis as spot-on:

"ACNA. It has generated a lot of enthusiasm among the semi-orthodox and semi-desperate “mere conservatives,” and has embraced to the full that Anglican penchant for trying to subsume contradictions under flowery language and political structures and deals."

I know it's not the diagnosis that you want to hear, but I think an accurate diagnosis is a loving thing that one Christian can do for another.

[Christopher Hathaway]

It is not just Anglicanismasa idea that we are talking about. It is anglicanism as a church with people belonging to it. Ther are millions of faithful Anglicans throughout the world. How will they be realistically shepherded if their leaders just tell them that the church they grew up in and found Jesus through no longer has any validity? It would be nice to think that they all would follow to Rome or Constantinople, but such is hardly certain. For me, thinking like a simpleminded Protestant maybe,the care of souls is as important as theological precision, and this from a systematic theologian.

I want the Reformation to be over. I want the church to be one again, not for my sake but for the sake of all those who are in Christ, both Catholic and Protestant, and for the sake of the world which needs an undivided witness. If Anglicanism is dead it is because it was always doomed to die. But it did an awful lot of good while it seemed to live.

And it's not completely dead yet. There may be much more good it can do on its way to the grave.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Christopher Hathaway: If Anglicanism is dead it is because it was always doomed to die.

Agreed.

But it did an awful lot of good while it seemed to live.

Agreed.

And it's not completely dead yet.

Agreed.

There may be much more good it can do on its way to the grave.

Agreed.

I would love to see ACNA become the first ecclesial community (that I know of) to rescind WO after it's been introduced.

[An ACNA Delegate]

Amen and amen, Mr. Hathaway.