CRY ME A RIVER

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor:

According to the Guardian’s Andrew Brown, a great many people in the Church of England are angry about how the Pope humiliated Rowan Williams:

But in this country, the Anglo-Catholics have now got all they could possibly want from the pope except the recognition that they were right all along. On the other hand, the mood in the rest of the Church of England is hardening against them. There is a general resentment of the humiliating way in which this was sprung on the Archbishop of Canterbury (who will go to Rome later this month, and deliver a speech on the 23rd; it is not thought that the pope will be present, looking embarrassed, when he does so). The demands of the Anglo-Catholics that they be paid off and given their churches as well when they go are greeted with something between incredulity and anger. No one knows whether their congregations will follow them. It might just be that this tremendous edifice will be greeted with a rather embarrassed silence, like the competence of erection manifesting itself in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Let’s review. The current Anglican controversy erupted in 2003. Shortly after the election of homosexual Gene Robinson, who is a homosexual, as Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, Rowan Williams convened an emergency primates meeting to deal with the situation.

At that meeting, Williams allowed the spurious issue of boundary-crossing to be introduced into the statement which declared that if Robbie’s consecration went ahead, the Anglican Communion would be torn at the deepest level.

Frank Griswold, TEO’s Presiding Bishop at the time, signed that statement, went home and participated in Robbie’s consecration anyway. Dr. Williams’ response? To set in motion what a year or so later became the Windsor Report which TEO effectively ignored.

Two primates meetings followed in the intervening years, the communiqués of which were so much toilet paper as far as Canadian and American liberals were concerned. Those years also saw two GenCons which saw TEO at first evade and then plow under Anglican Communion requests.

Which brings us to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, the closest thing to a Magisterium an Archbishop of Canterbury has. But not only did Dr. Williams invite the Americans and Canadians to the Conference, he deliberately structured the meeting in such a way that the fundamental question ripping the Communion apart would never be addressed.

I’ve never worked as a shepherd. Since I don’t mind being alone for long periods, I used to think it would be fascinating to spend hour after hour just thinking or praying under what Mr. Spurgeon once called “the heavenly Father’s vast audience chamber.”

I guess that if you’re a shepherd, you’re good at your job and you come across sheep that aren’t being led by anyone, your first instinct would be to gather in as many as you could in order to protect them. And that’s precisely what Benedict XVI has done here.

Because wolves don’t wait until every I is dotted, every T crossed and every Anglican cavil is satisfied. If Rowan Williams was humiliated by the Pope’s action, he has only himself to blame.