Is there no honour this remarkable lady should be denied?
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2014 is to be awarded to Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori for her extraordinary efforts to strengthen the Anglican Communion and cooperation between those of differing theological viewpoints. The Committee has attached special importance to her vision of and work for a world without full church buildings.
Schori has as Presiding Bishop created a new climate in international Anglicanism. Pelagianism has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play, in particular her resolute support of the Millenium Goals.Dialogue and negotiations writs and subpoenas are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult diocesan conflicts. The vision of a world free from theological orthodoxy has powerfully stimulated evictions and lawyers’ incomes. Thanks to Schori’s initiative, TEC is now playing a more diminished role in census data or, as she so helpfully describes it, experiencing “greater fruitfulness”.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Schori captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. Her diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the denomination must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the Executive Council, once purged of those who disagree.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Schori is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Schori’s appeal that “the great Western heresy – is that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. And donations for the legal fund are gratefully accepted.”
Oslo, October 9, 2009
On learning of the this remarkable news we approached Lambeth Palace for a comment. A spokesman said,
I obviously want to say something here about reconciliation but I’m not sure I’d be believed anymore. Besides, even we know when not to touch something with a bargepole. There’s just some things you can’t spin.
It is not clear at the time of writing whether Archbishop Justin Welby officially approved this comment.
