The hot rumor before Dar Es Salaam was that North American reasserters would get a new college of bishops. We got the Pastoral Scheme instead, and a lot of us were steamed. It never seemed like something TEC would actually do. What’s Plan B, we wondered. Well, it seems that the Pastoral Scheme was Plan B. TEC having decided to follow the “you’re not the boss of me” path, those Primates involved in US oversight are reverting to Plan A.

‘Course, this is difficult and uncertain work. Anyone who thinks that it’s just a matter of out with the old, in with the new” needs to read the chapter “Bad Bishops” in [Ephraim] Radner’s Hope among the Fragments. Dealing with corrupted parts of the Church has always been extremely difficult, and those of us who call ourselves traditionalists should be at least listening to older voices about this mess. We shouldn’t be doing whatever we want, because we want to. That’s the behavior that got us into this mess. On the other hand, I’m not sure that this situation isn’t wholly unprecedented. We’ve got an independently governed Christian unit that is fully in the hands of heretics who have rejected any outside calls to mend their ways, who are actively engaged in persecuting those who disagree with them, and who reject any interference.

So what will ++Rowan do after he writes his book on Dostoevsky? I dunno. His recent actions, or actions taken on his behalf, have fallen even deeper into a sort of chaotic inscrutability....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Analysis • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Primates • Primates Mtg Dar es Salaam, Feb 2007 • Anglican Provinces • Anglican Church of Kenya • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts

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