impaired communion

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Feb 15, 2007

Anglican primates, each with one hand on the Browning in his holster, are holding a tense meeting in Tanzania.

The conservatives have also drawn up a blueprint for a new parallel "ecclesial body" to accommodate conservative American Anglicans who reject the leadership of their liberal Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. Seven conservative American bishops have so far indicated that they want to come under an alternative leader. About another dozen or so are expected to follow suit if Dr Williams gives the plan his blessing.

But the creation of a parallel Anglican structure within the Episcopal Church will be fiercely resisted by liberal Americans, who will see it as unwarranted interference. More alarmingly for Bishop Schori, it would result in the appointment of a rival Presiding Bishop -- called a "moderator" under the Global South plans -- who would wield authority within a significant part of her domain.

Government by div school apparatchik is beginning to totter. The reconciliation crew are running scared. For so many years they've had things their way: being able to rig the listening sessions ahead of time, write the minutes as they saw fit, announce the next step in their own campaign as the "compromise solution." Now they find the old incantations don't work the same magic. The partisans of diversity are in imminent danger of losing their monopoly. This wasn't the way it was supposed to end.