Rev. Dr. Philip Turner: It’s Time To Get Real

ACI
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Paul Bagshaw has published an essay entitled “End Game” that requires a response. Citing a report by George Conger, he agrees that we are at the “end of the Communion we once thought we knew;” and he has provided a very credible sketch of what Anglicanism will look like going forward. What he has not done is point out what a disaster this ending and this future are. Indeed, there is something almost surreal about his failure to make clear the true import of the likely course of events he presents. Hence the title of this response “It’s Time to Get Real.” The purpose behind this title is to present the full extent of the disaster and the bleak prospects for the future signaled by this end.

First, however, in what sense are we, as Bagshaw rightly says, at an end? Among other signs of the end Bagshaw lists these changes that follow from the Dublin meeting.

1. The Primates Meeting is to be a consultative body with no powers either of instruction or direction. In short, the Primates, in contradistinction to the request of the Lambeth Conference, are now powerful and influential in their own provinces but have no reach outside the locale in which they function.

2. According to Bagshaw, in the new arrangement extraordinary power has been concentrated in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The standing committee of the Primates is a “consultative council” to the Archbishop but has no “veto” over what he might decide to do. Indeed, neither the meeting of the Primates nor their standing committee has veto powers over the rulings of what appears of be an emergent monarchical Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop is now Primus but no longer inter pares. the rest

 If one thing the recent meeting in Dublin makes clear, it is that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates there assembled have abdicated the responsibility of Bishops to maintain catholic belief and practice not only within but also beyond the borders of their particular dioceses or provinces. I am troubled, in short, because Dublin spells the end of catholic order within the Anglican future he foresees.

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