Why I was wrong

Church of England Newspaper

By Andrew Carey

November 16, 2007

I had high hopes for Katharine Jefferts Schori when she was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the USA. Although she appeared to be on the extreme ‘left’ of the Anglican spectrum in many of her actions and statements, it was clear that here was a person of great depth, and a hinterland beyond church politics. There was a possibility at one stage that she might even attempt to lead the Episcopal Church into a process of reconciliation internally and with the Anglican Communion, at least temporarily stalling the lemming-like dash of her Church into heterodox oblivion.

It seems I was mistaken. So far she has shown the same adaptability of her predecessor. Like Bishop Frank Griswold she’s signed statements at Primates’ Meetings and then gone on to reject them in every particular. It always struck me as the height of absurdity that Bishop Griswold could sign the Primates’ Communiqué from the October 2003 meeting of the Primates, warning his own Church that to consecrate Gene Robinson would result in the ‘tearing of the fabric’ of the Communion and then to preside at the consecration of Robinson himself only a month or two later. His adaptability owed itself to his oft-expressed belief in ‘pluriform truths’. Consequently, he could enter into the opposing truths of the Primates, and the Episcopal Church, simultaneously. Most people would call this duplicity, his defenders would probably call it ‘postmodernism’.

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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ...CS Lewis