Tuesday 6 July 2010

More Shites

On the ACC Standing Committee:

Four Go Down to Dorset and Say What Should Be Done Now

Written by the Anglican Essayists:

Christopher Shites
Dr. Head Turner
A Frame Reader
Davina McCall, Esq.

We have written often about the Anglican Consultative Council and its Standing Committee endlessly as here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, to name but a few.

If you go back to Jamaica in May 2009 you'll see that no she volunteered to vote to remove Section 4 for revision when she didn't know what she was doing given the whole mess around the Tricks Amendment.

Now people are clueless regarding the Standing Committee, and if it is not in secret a Sitting Committee. As the Constitution has not been made public, no one knows that this is the new Leninist Committee of the Anglican Communion, into which all authority is invested, for running the New Church that is Anglicanism worldwide.

We welcome the New Church coming, but cannot understand why the new Committee has people on it who seek to undermine the Anglican Communion Covenant that high authorities as yet unidentified, except for the Archbishop of Anglicanism, are trying to force through in order to create the New Church.

1. Transparency

There isn't any, because on December 18, 2009 the Secretary General announced a new constitutional document to the world, and then quickly closed the envelope again so no one could see it. The Articles of Association must remain secret otsensibly to get approval in the UK legal system but actually for the purposes of confusing everyone and rushing through major worldwide changes that otherwise would be opposed if people knew what they were. Erroneous membership provisions, were removed for several days and finally replaced with a corrected version of the "old" constitution that does not actually apply.

All we know is that the Standing Committee has been transformed into the Leninist body. So far, so good, until we see who is on it.

No wonder that people who could be on it, and push through the Covenant, are resigning, especially when the Archbishop of Anglcianism acknowledges that maintaining "outward unity at a formal level" is no longer a "good thing" and wishes instead to have a formal level of chaos at the same time as an informal level of tight Leninist type control vested in one Committee.

2. Failure to Follow the Rules

The Archbishop's ability to say things and no one have a clue what he means was itself demonstrated at Jamaica in 2009 when she volunteered to do something that turned out to suit his purposes, to produce a Section 4 that he said was not punitive but is to everyone else but no one is sure anymore what is going on.

The Secretary General states that key discussions are "at a point of collapse" and talks are continuing as actions speak louder than words.

No one knows what the rules are, or who is to be on the Committee, but where there seem to be rules, members flout them but no one is sure.

The problem is who is sitting at the Standing Committee.

There was the messy business of appointing the Rev. Lotta Tricks of Southern Africa when a lay person had resigned. And this was attempted under the old rules which we could see. And she was the one we disagreed with, down at Jamaica, when, we repeat, she volunteered to employ the Archbishop into generating a fog bigger than the one on the Tyne.

So we get to who is on this Committee.

These are Bishop Kathy Jefferson Shoreline, Bishop Douglas Ian, Bishop Phillip Aveitall and Dr. Anthony Fidget. These people disagree with the ACI, meaning the few of us who have demonstrated our viewpoint beyond argument by extensive, repetitive essay writing - repeating points within essays and between them as well as offering surveys over and again as to how we arrived at where we are from the year dot.

On what basis, for example, is Bishop Mountaineer Anus's replacement, Bishop Paul Sarcastic arranged, when Bishop Anus has never ceased to be a Primate on its Standing Committee? Is Bishop Sarcastic being sarcastic when he is on one Committee without being on the other? The same questions arise with respect to Archbishop A Coffee Please, where you see a particular kind of Transfer of Episcopal Authority. Then you have Archbishop A Rombus who is surely out of shape in not resigning but not attending either, having his lines both ways.

3. Application of the Moratoria

Churches can fill in application forms regarding the Moratoria, but none have so far.

In the Pentecost Letter of 2010, the Archbishop of Anglicanism made it clear that The Episcopal Church does not share the same faith and order as the rest of the Anglican Communion, the forerunner of the New Church set under the new secretive Standing Committee.

Thus the problem is who is sitting at the Standing Committee. Because they contain people who, by his single declaration, and the actions of the Party Secretary General, do not share the same faith as the rest of us.

These are Bishop Kathy Jefferson Shoreline, Bishop Douglas Ian, Bishop Phillip Aveitall and Dr. Anthony Fidget. They come from the guilty party, as we have demonstrated in previous essays here and here and here and here and here.

The Joint Standing Committee has discussed this at length, including how other people failed to get on to the Committee. For this failure to secure someone we agree with, we must lay the blame at the Secretary General, who seems to have too much power.

Issues about excursions by the Southern Ice Cream Van are awaiting clarification for those who cannot see through the fog as on the Tyne. The movements of the Ice Cream Van are not in any way on the same level a departure from faith and order as it is to have the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Christians.

Yet The Episcopal Church regards those who cannot get on to the Committee thanks to the Secretary General as more important than the declaration by the Archbishop that they do not share the same faith and order as Anglicans and yet can get on the Committee.

So Douglas Ian can disappear from the Standing Committee as a Reverend and reappear as a Bishop at will, and the Secretary General does nothing, despite our own extensive essay writing already as to why this is wrong.

Plus Douglas Ian is one of those who is saying well done in church to couples of the same sex who have become hitched to one another. That surely is not the faith and order of Anglicans according to the Archbishop and Secretary General and the new supreme Standing Committee.

No wonder that we do not have confidence in this secretive Committee where the Secretary General is acting like some power crazed maniac in making the wrong decisions when at last we have some coherence of power at the centre in order to make the New Church.

4. Unrepresentative Nature of the ACC and Its Standing Committee

Er, we've indicated this already. Even our repetition has limits. Or perhaps not.

Well the point is that someone more 'progressive' like the Archbishop of Wales represents a culture and language that is tiny and can be squashed under a moth swatter compared to the representation of the conservative approach of Africa. Such a confederate arrangement might suit an Anglican Communion of some worldwide diversity, but not when you are trying to build a New Church with centralised coherence. Really, there needs to be voting reform so that the bishops and Primates run everything.

5. Can This Standing Committee Function as the "Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion"?

Don't know. Probably not as the Lambeth bishops don't vote, the Primates have a majority and the actually believers have a minority via various distancing methods of selection.

A Frame Reader stated that it was never understood by the Covenant Design Group that designed the Covenant that such a committee of the ACC would have primary responsibility for administering the Covenant. And he should decide what should happen, not the Secretary General and Archbishop that brings centralised coherence when we agree.

In any case, the "Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion" has never been approved in its present form by the Primates Meeting or the Lambeth Conference. It was made up by the Secretary General and Archbishop of Anglicanism and nothing was volunteered about that in Jamaica.

So what a mess, and with a member from the insignificant New Zealand Anthony Fidget questioning the Covenant and section 4. How dare he?

6. Conclusion

You should agree with us and then everything is fine.

Yes to centralisation, to a New Church, to what the Secretary General and Archbishop are doing, but no if it contains people not of Anglican faith and order who seem to be protected by what the Secretary General and Archbishop are doing to undermine the coming Covenant according to a secretive constitution that no one has seen.

Last year was more corrosive than rust. Surely we need wire wool and get the thing cleaned up and shiny and transparent so that we get the New Church in place that meets with our, the essayists, approval.

1 comment:

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG said...

I have a feeling that in Purgatory A Frame Reader shall be forced to write naught by haiku, and I shall be required to read them.