The Anglican Communion Institute on Border Crossing Goes into Verbal Overload.

The Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) has produced a massive analysis with the title, "What Is A Cross Border Intervention And When Is A Moratorium Indeed a Moratorium."

It is a case of verbal overload worthy of ACI's ongoing attempt to whack us all with words until we are beaten down. It is, unfortunately, unmoving and unconvincing.

At the core of ACI's argument is the contention that "it is possible, despite outstanding issues, to comment on the basis and appropriateness of the action taken by the Secretary General in respect to Bishop Zavala. In acting as he has, the Secretary General has failed to distinguish adequately between what the Southern Cone has done and other violations of the various moratoria requested by one or another of the Instruments of Communion. Further, he has assumed that the moratorium on border crossing has the same authority as the moratoria on blessing same sex unions and the consecration of persons who have entered such unions. He has not asked if these moratoria are of the same kind or of the same weight, and he has falsely assumed that border crossings have been proscribed by the Instruments of Communion in the same way as have the moratoria on blessings and consecrations."

So, away they go, commenting on this and that, concluding that "there has never been an unconditional moratorium on interventions in effect. And since TEC rejected the pastoral scheme in the Dar communiqué out of hand in 2007 the conditions applicable to this moratorium have not been satisfied and no operative moratorium has been in effect."

On the basis of that conclusion, ACI turns on the Secretary General and determines that he was wrong to exclude Bishop, (now Presiding Bishop) Zavala from participation on an ecumenical commission, since there is "no operative moratorium in effect." The problem is, of course, that the Secretary General was acting on a request from the Archbishop of Canterbury that referred to the initial moratoria in the Windsor Report. Those moratoria included the matter of border crossing. Essentially the Windsor Report said, "don't do it." 

The Southern Cone did do it, and did so as a matter of pastoral concern. That's it.

Contrary to all the words, that's it.

The authors, Mark McCall and Philip Turner are no doubt busy men and one wonders why this long argument.

If the issues is the removal of Bishop Zabala I think there is an easier criticism. One hopes he was put on the commission he served on because he had something to contribute to the dialogue. That is not dependent on the purity of his Province. Indeed it is not his Province that is "represented" on the commission, it is he as an Anglican theologian who is on the commission.  That was true also for the TEC persons removed from other commissions. The criticism of their removal is then fairly simple: They should not have been removed because it reduces their participation to that of representative, rather than individual participant.

The members of the various ecumenical conversations will we hope represent in a fairly broad way what they understand Anglican polity and theology to require as a "stance." But in no way do these appointed members "represent" the views of the whole Communion. When questions come up concerning the "mind of the communion" on various ecumenical issues one hopes they will refer to statements, reports, findings, etc., from a variety of sources indicating the general sense of the Communion. But it would be unfortunate if we expected our voices in those ecumenical conversations to tow a party line or make statements about the mind of the communion. 

The critique of the Archbishop of Canterbury's request and the Secretary General's actions is that it is a response unworthy of the quality of people chosen to be there to suggest that they could not, by being from a particular church, speak with appropriate clarity and voice on issues before them.

So, if that is the short critique, why does ACI have this longer one? Perhaps it is to carry on with their ongoing argument that what the Global South provinces have done is noble and what the wicked west provinces have done is sin. The point they are arguing is that the incursions were right, not wrong, and the moratoria against what they have done has long since been lifted.

Bully for them. I don't buy it.

They do what they do and so we have what we have: A proto-synod of bishops eager to make the claim that The Episcopal Church is apostate, wrongheaded, evil, the work of the devil, progressively anti-Christian, and the like, and that they are what Anglicanism is all about.

If that is not border crossing and disobeying the ol' canon on bishops being content to exercise episcopal authority in their own dioceses, I don't know what is.  Unless, of course, they have already concluded that TEC is a total fiction as an Anglican province and that their bishops aren't bishops and their dioceses aren't dioceses, and on and on.

Perhaps that is what ACI wants to argue. I am sure this will not come as welcome news to the Communion Partner bishops, or the rest of us for that matter.