Chuck Collins nails it.
In his commentary on Rowan William’s Advent letter, Christ Church San Antonio rector Chuck Collins nails it:
The Archbishop told the Primates at Dar es Salaam that he would consult them on invitations to Lambeth, which he did not do. He could have upheld the Windsor Report by inviting those who uphold the traditional values endorsed in the Windsor Report, but he did not. He could have revised the invitation list in the Advent Letter to support Windsor, but he chose not to do so. And the end result is the Windsor Report is rendered virtually meaningless, and the Windsor process has been exposed as a ploy to buy time. There could be very detrimental results from this Letter, including the disintegration of one of the Instruments of Unity (Lambeth Conference) and the diminution of the authority of another Instrument, the Primates Meeting. It looks to me like the man behind the curtain has been exposed.
I, too, am convinced that the Windsor Report was a ploy for time that Rowan Williams is now casting aside (or interpreting beyond recognition) now that it no longer serves its deceptive purposes. Similarly, he’s practically ignoring the Primates’ Meetings. At the least, he has undermined the Primates’ Meetings time and again.
Now that Rowan is beginning to show his true colors, it’s becoming clear that he has been stringing along the Global South and orthodox North American Anglicans for four long years, only to sell them out.
The result will be an ugly 2008 for the Anglican Communion and perhaps the end of it as an effective orthodox body.
Collins is also right that Rowan Williams has missed an opportunity. In the past four years, when he still had credibility and esteem among most conservatives (including me), if he had really led, he could have strengthened the Anglican Communion. Any number of times in history, the church responded to unorthodoxy with a reassertion and strengthening of orthodoxy and of the church. Rowan had the opportunity to help bring that about again.
And he blew it.
1 comment:
I've felt for some time that Dr. Williams basically supports the Americans but finds himself in a situation where the growing, vibrant part of the Communion hold opinions he cannot accept. So the only play he had was to stall for time and hope that something turned up that would make all this go away.
I hope Anglican conservatives wherever they happen to find themselves realize this. I seriously doubt that Dr. Williams will uninvite the Americans and it would not surprise me in the slightest if he let Robbie in as a "guest." Conservative Anglican bishops had better wake up and had better be willing to walk away from Canterbury. Or a great many of us, myself included, will finally and forever walk away from them.
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