Watch Checks That Told More Than the Time

Few acts are more mundane that checking one’s watch.  I used to do that a lot.  Now I check my phone.  My, how technology advances.  But before I get distracted by my phone again, my point is that people checking their watches is hardly the stuff of history.  

Or is it?

No, I cannot think of a time when someone checking their watch changed the course of history . . . yet.  But I can think of watch checks that revealed a lot about history before it was history.

 

October 15^th, 1992

During the Second Presidential Debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, President George H. W. Bush checked his watch at the beginning of a question of how the recession affected him.  That told more about him and about his re-election campaign than about what time it was, namely:

1. His disinterest in debating and campaigning, that in contrast with Bill Clinton, who clearly enjoyed it.  The mercurial Ross Perot also enjoyed barnstorming on a good day.  Bush wanted it to be over with. He admitted as much:

Bush later suggested that his gesture may, in fact, have revealed something about his discomfort with the debate. "Was I glad when the damn thing was over?" he said to PBS Newshour anchor Jim Lehrer. "Yeah."

It would be very much over soon.  Bush’s disinterest while Clinton oozed empathy assisted in that.

2. His sense of superiority and overconfidence.  He was a Bush after all.  He was better than that blowhard Perot and that young playboy Governor of Arkansas, of all states.  

It was not just the President who felt that way.  His campaign was hampered by overconfidence that surely he would not lose to Bill Clinton of all people.  Heck, the only reason Clinton got the Democrat nomination was because bigger names did not want to run against Bush.  Adding to the misplaced confidence was that Republicans had won the last three presidential elections and four of the last five.

So it wasn’t just Bush who was ready to get the campaign done with and won.  And it wasn’t just this then Republican Precinct Chairman who did not see the result coming.

 

March 30/31^st, 2013

Elected earlier that month, Pope Francis was in the Vatican presiding over his first Easter Vigil as Pope.  For those unfamiliar with Easter Vigils, they are not services to be done with in less than an hour so one can rush home or to the pub.  The Easter Vigil on Easter Eve is the most solemn occasion of the church year for many traditional Christians.  At their best, they are evocative, glorious, and definitely not rushed.  One of the most memorable services I’ve ever attended was an Easter Vigil at St. Matthias Anglican Dallas in 2005; it lasted well over two hours, and I would not have it a minute shorter.

But Pope Francis apparently did not feel that way about his first Easter Vigil as Pope.  Bishop of Rome only for days, he had already acted to shorten the service.  But it wasn’t short enough apparently.  During the service, he checked his watch, just as he checked his watch during his installation service on March 19^th.

Twenty years older and somewhat wiser, I knew immediately there was something profoundly wrong with Francis long before many whom I respect caught on.

Why? Unless one is hinting to an overly loquacious preacher to wind his sermon up, a priest just does not look at his watch during a service.  It’s not in the rubrics; it doesn’t have to be.  It sends the wrong message to the congregation and to God as well.  For a pope to check his watch during one of the more solemn services of the year . . . .  It was unthinkable . . . before Francis.

Thus in the first month of his pontificate, those with eyes to see could already see Francis was a man of impious priorities who had little respect for the liturgy, for the need of solemn and traditional celebrations of even the Resurrection of our Lord.

The slow motion disaster of the pontificate of Francis should not have afterward surprised anyone, particularly his attempted vandalism of the Lord’s Prayer and his attacks on the traditional Latin Mass.  Early on, his watch check foretold his attacks on catholic worship.

 

Sunday August 29^th, 2021

Joe Biden stands at Dover Air Force Base to receive the bodies of 13 service people killed in the Kabul bombing, an attack enabled by the shambles of his withdrawal from Afghanistan.  As he ends a salute, he quickly checks his watch.  It was so quick that perhaps he caught himself, realizing how wrong that was.  But he checked his watch nonetheless.  (And some reports have him checking his watch additional times during the ceremony.)

At this point, it is unclear just what this watch check tells.  Perhaps it tells that Biden’s cognitive decline is worse than most think.  One system of dementia is socially inappropriate behavior.  But I am not his doctor, and it would be wrong for me to presume that is what is happening.  

Perhaps he did not want to be there at Dover AFB and thought he had better things to do.  He surely wants to move on from his Afghanistan disaster.  Perhaps he was so detached from reality, he did not realize the solemnity of his role.  

It is hard to think that his watch check revealed shear callousness toward the fallen soldiers and their families.  But he has already greatly endangered Americans and allied Afghans.  How much of that disaster is from incompetence and how much from callousness, we do not know. 

In any case, what Biden’s watch check this past Sunday reveals is not good.

----

So the trivial act of checking one’s watch revealed much about these three men and their times, although exactly what was revealed in Biden’s case is not yet clear.  Did the checks also have consequences?

In the elder Bush’s case, probably not.  Yes, it was part of his lackluster debate in his lackluster campaign.  But it was the campaign and the recession and perhaps Ross Perot that brought about his defeat, not a watch check.

In Pope Francis’ case, it had virtually no consequences whatsoever before men.  Just about everyone was too eager to think hopefully about the new Pope.  The consequences before God are another matter best left to Him.

I doubt it will have lasting consequences for Biden either.  But I see similarities with Bush’s watch check in that it reveals traits that will have political consequences.  Bush’s disdain for actual campaigning, partly revealed by his watch check, assisted his defeat.  Whatever the mix of incompetence and darkness revealed by Biden’s watch check, that mix may and should lead to the downfall of his presidency as well.

There is a significant difference with Biden’s watch check.  Bush’s check, though revealing undesirable traits, was not awful or disgusting.   Biden’s watch check is disgusting and adding to widespread disgust with him – as it should.

Why Women Bishops in Kenya Could Be Important in ACNA

As Anglican Unscripted has reported, a diocese in the Anglican Church of Kenya has elected a woman to be the Bishop of said diocese.  The culprit diocese has been something of a pain to the Archbishop of Kenya and to orthodox Anglicans there.  (Hmm, reminds me of a certain diocese in the Anglican Church in North America.)  It is not certain at this time that the Archbishop will recognize the new bishop.  I will defer to Kevin and George for further details.  It’s probably fair to say it’s a mess.

So why do I or anyone in ACNA care about this mess in Kenya?  Well, we place a high value on our relationship with GAFCON, a confederation of orthodox Anglicans mainly from the Global South that includes the Anglican Church of Kenya and ACNA as well.  And there is supposed to be a moratorium on women bishops in GAFCON.  In ACNA, women bishops are prohibited in our Constitution and Canons.  There has been two women bishops before in GAFCON that I am aware of.  But this is the first diocesan bishop.

To give an idea how important this breach in the moratorium could be to ACNA, I will give some condensed and oversimplified history.  After the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 – and long before for many of us traditional Anglicans – The Episcopal Church was a no-go jurisdiction due to her brazen apostasies.  But part of our catholicity is we know we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and we want our structures and formal relationships to reflect that.  Some thirty years ago, I saw a sign for an “Independent Episcopal Church” around Paris, Texas; we don’t want that although some have been compelled to do that for a short time.

After 2003, as a stop gap, many of us put ourselves under orthodox Anglican bishops from the Global South.  But several of these bishops eventually let it be known, mostly in private but quite clearly, that they soon wished to be in communion with one orthodox Anglican entity in the United States.  They did not desire to sort through an alphabet soup of jurisdictions.  I know bishops of my Reformed Episcopal Church were politely told that if we wished to continue our formal relationship with the Church of Nigeria, we would have to join a new orthodox Anglican province once it was formed.

This very understandable and even godly encouragement from Global South bishops (who soon formed GAFCON in 2008) was one factor behind us joining ACNA when it was formed in 2009.  We valued our global relationships with orthodox Anglicans and wished to retain them as much as possible.

However, there was an outstanding difficult issue in the formation of ACNA and of GAFCON as well – women’s ordination.  No, I am not going to explain why here, but us traditionalists do not recognize the Holy Orders of women.  For many of us, it is a communion-breaking innovation.  So both sides of this issue had to flex for ACNA to be formed.  The compromise was that it would be up to dioceses whether to ordain women as priests or not, and dioceses who did not ordain women were not obligated to recognize women priests. Further, and most relevant to the current situation, no diocese would ordain a woman as bishop.  This is important as us Anglicans see the office of bishop as a focus of unity in the church.  To not recognize the validity of a bishop is a communion breaker; it is practically the definition of breaking communion. 

Up to recently, GAFCON’s practices on women’s ordination were similar but less formal: different provinces had different policies but women were not to be made bishops until there was a consensus accepting that.

I’ve glossed over a lot of history here.  My erudite readers are welcome to add or correct in the comments.  But I think you see the problems with now three women bishops being in GAFCON.  A big reason many of us traditionalists compromised and joined ACNA was to retain our relationships with those who now form GAFCON.  But what if we can no longer be in communion in GAFCON due to a proliferation of women bishops?

That would be one less reason for us to remain in ACNA.  I don’t want this post to become of litany of grievances, but some of us, even people like me who were excited at the formation of ACNA, have very mixed feelings about ACNA today.  If our relationship with GAFCON is no longer a desirable or even feasible part of the ACNA package, that would make remaining in ACNA itself that much less desirable.

We traditionalists in ACNA do not expect perfect polity; we would not have joined ACNA if we did.  And I know of no one getting ready to leave over this matter.  But we do have our limits.  Many of us have already left churches and suffered loss when those limits were violated before.  And women bishops in GAFCON could become one more test of those already strained limits if this is not dealt with in a timely fashion.