++Rowan, Don’t Even Try to Indaba ++Venables

This past week, I expressed the prayerful hope that the Primates would just say “no” to ++Rowan Williams’ plans to indaba them. It appears that the Primate of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables is of a mind to do just that. And he’s not alone.

Bishop Venables said he and several other primates’ council members have additional concerns about the format of the primates’ meeting as proposed by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his post-Lambeth pastoral letter to bishops. The proposal to include indaba small-group discussion was a particular concern, Bishop Venables added.

“I think it is up to the primates to decide how they are going to do things,” he said. “I don’t think we can be told ahead of time what type of meeting we are going to have, or how we are going to talk.”

Uh, Dr. Williams, if you thought you were going to turn the Primates’ Meeting into a big indaba, you might want to think again.

Obama Disses Small Towns . . . Again.

The people in the Obama campaign must have taken some stupid pills before issuing this response to McCain picking Sarah Palin as his running mate:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies — that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same.

Leaving aside that Palin has actually taken on big oil companies as Governor of Alaska, to once again diss small towns is just stupid. Have they forgotten the grief Obama got over this?

Straight Talk from the GAFCON Primates’ Council

There wasn’t much attention paid to it, but the GAFCON Primates’ Council met in London earlier this month. Now, a communiqué from said council is out.

The straight talk of the communiqué is refreshing. And the Primates exhibit a great degree of clarity in evaluating the current situation:

We maintain that three new facts of the Anglican Communion must be faced. We are past the time when they can be reversed.

First, some Anglicans have sanctified sinful practices and will continue to do so whatever others may think. Second, churches and even dioceses affected by this disobedience have rightly withdrawn fellowship while wishing to remain authentic Anglicans. So-called 'border-crossing' is another way of describing the provision of recognition and care for those who have been faithful to the teachings of Holy Scripture. Third, there is widespread impaired and broken sacramental communion amongst Anglicans with far-reaching global implications. The hope that we may somehow return to the state of affairs before 2003 is an illusion.

Any sound strategy must accommodate itself to these facts.

They see the urgency of providing for faithful distressed Anglicans in North America:

. . . the Council and its Advisory Board will seek to deal with the problems of those who have confessed the biblical faith in the face of hostility and found the need on grounds of conscience and in matters of great significance to break the normal bonds of fellowship in the name of the gospel. For the sake of the Anglican Communion this is an effort to bring order out of the chaos of the present time and to make sure as far as possible that some of the most faithful Anglican Christians are not lost to the Communion. It is expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North America for the Common Cause Partnership.

The contrast with the current Archbishop of Canterbury is striking. He seems to care little that Anglicanism is losing orthodox faithful by the droves. And instead of providing for the orthodox, he strings them along. The Primates themselves recognize this policy of delay (though they, being more polite than me, don’t directly accuse ++Rowan of it):

Indeed, delay itself seems to be a strategy employed by some in order to resolve the issue through weariness.

Thanks be to God that the GAFCON Primates have the backbone to be done with such delay and to move forward.

English Anglo-Catholics, Beware of Crossing the Tiber

Recently, I’ve lamented that the default option for many Anglo-Catholics is Rome. Those who are so minded, particularly in England, had best take a closer look at the Roman Catholic Church in England.

To say that the English RC Church is inhospitable to traditionalists would be an understatement. Its bishops willfully undermine Pope Benedict’s bringing back the Latin Mass. Sordid liberals have been running the show for decades and likely will for years to come. Even worse, as Damian Thompson has been documenting, if a bishop doesn’t like your parish because you’re too traditionalist for his tastes, he just may shut you down. And he may be so underhanded in how he goes about that, it would make even an Episcopalian blush.

If the bishop chooses not to go quite that far but doesn’t like the way you say mass, he can just tell you to stop.

Combine these abuses of episcopal power with the fact that some English RC bishops are not at all well disposed toward Anglo-Catholics . . . . Well, cross the Tiber at your own risk. Who’s to say your traditional parish won’t be arbitrarily closed or your priest muzzled?

A Post-DNC Prediction

It’s late, and I need to get to bed. But, having watched Obama’s acceptance speech, I’ll say this: Don’t be shocked if he gets very little of the usual post-convention bump in the next polls.

I may say more in the morning.

The “Mainstream” News Media is a Joke.

Last night, I did what I rarely do. I watched the NBC Nightly News. I was curious to see what they would say about the Democrat convention.

That is, I watched it until the middle of an oh-so-soft interview of Michelle Obama. I had to turn it off, it was so vomitous.

You have a 30 minute national newscast and you spend a big chunk of it with a puff interview with a candidate’s wife? What inexcusably bad news judgement.

No wonder blogs have become so important in conveying news. There was a BIG vacuum to fill.

Obama’s Friends (and Free Speech) UPDATED

This week at the Democrat Convention, Barack Obama will surely be portrayed as a mainstream All-American.

And it will be utter cow manure.

It’s not for nothing that I have persistently called him out for the Leftist he is. If there are any doubts in your mind about that, then I kindly suggest you read up on the sordid company he has kept. Here, here and here would be a good start.


MORE: Word is getting out on Obama’s relationship with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. The Obama campaign’s response? To try to muzzle free speech, particularly this ad.

The Obama campaign’s rejoinder is three-pronged: The first shot was an Obama response ad, which fails to offer any substantive explanation of why Obama maintains ties to Ayers. Obama’s second move was to launch a heavy-handed effort to pressure television stations into rejecting the ad by promising financial retaliation against the stations and their advertisers — which effort has apparently succeeded in intimidating Fox and CNN. The capper is a desperate call for the Justice Department to muzzle political speech through the prospect of a criminal investigation — a demand that provides a disturbing sneak peak into what life would be like under an Obama Justice Department.

Said actions of the Obama campaign beg the question: do we really want a Leftist Gulag U.S.?


STILL MORE: Michelle Malkin, among many other bloggers, is following the Obama-Ayers matter closely, particularly Obama’s attack on free speech .

The target of his attack, the American Issues Project, is fighting back. Good on them!