MCJ: SMALL BLIND

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As the backup in the site title indicates this is a temporary place until MCJ has a new domain. ed.

Posted by Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal:


The Anglican poker game continues. This may not sit too well with Mrs. Schori and her sock puppets:

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and [not legally] deposed Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop Bob Duncan met privately in London last week.

The Lambeth Palace press office confirmed that the meeting took place on October 15, but would not disclose details of the conversation between Williams and Duncan, saying it was "one of many private meetings" the archbishop hosts at his London residence.

Duncan was [not legally] deposed on September 19 by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori with the consent of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops.

Addressing the media on October 17 at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, Duncan said he maintains regular contact with the Archbishop of Canterbury but stopped short of revealing that a meeting had taken place. "I have tried in the last five years never to surprise him," he said. "He is certainly aware of my presence here in the United Kingdom. He is informed about our situation. He is attempting to lead in what are clearly uncharted times."

Duncan said that the "institutions of the Anglican Communion are in a season of real re-evaluation," adding that he thinks the Archbishop of Canterbury "has not found it possible, in terms of what he believes the limitation of his office are, to have done the things that actually would have secured the role of his office over the long haul of the 21st century. This is not an office which, in terms of the life of the Anglican Communion for the future, is going to look anything like it did for the previous century."

And Dr. Williams might not like that last part much.

What does this mean? No doubt, 815 will claim that it means nothing. His Grace meets with private individuals all the time, they will say. And they will quite correctly point out that my gracious lord of Canterbury did not directly confer any sort of status upon Duncan at all.

Conservatives, on the other hand, can claim that in meeting with an individual as high-profile as Duncan as soon after Duncan's illegal "deposition" as he did, Dr. Williams has just implicitly recognized Duncan as a legitimate Anglican bishop, for whatever that's still worth, and that he has also implicitly rebuked TEO for its uncanonical actions.

It would have been nice if Dr. Williams had grown a pair, invited the cameras in, proclaimed to all the world that he and Duncan were meeting and publicly declared that as far as he was concerned, Bob Duncan was still an Anglican bishop no matter what Mrs. Schori thought about it. But this is, after all, Rowan Williams that we're talking about so we must not expect too much.

Assuming there is one, the next Primates Meeting should be interesting.