Exploring the Connections

Without gay priests Church would be lost claims Bishop Gene

by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The Times, July 27, 2007

The openly gay bishop whose ordination sparked the crisis in the Anglican Communion has claimed the Church of England would be close to shutting down if it was forced to manage without its gay clergy.

The Bishop of New Hampshire in the US, the Right Rev Gene Robinson, who is divorced and lives openly in partnership with a gay man, said he found it "mystifying" that the mother church of the Anglican Communion was unable to be honest about the number of gay clergy in its ranks.

He said many of the English church's clergy lived openly in their rectories with gay partners, with the full knowledge of their bishops. But he criticised the stance of bishops who threaten the clergy with emnity [sic] should their relationships become public.

Speaking in an interview in London, Bishop Gene said:

"I have met so many gay partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive but has also said if this ever becomes public then I’m your worst enemy.

"It’s a terrible way to live your life and I think it’s a terrible way to be a church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can’t even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own church? So I would feel better about the Church of England’s stance, its reluctance to support The Episcopal Church in what it has done if it would at least admit that this not an American problem and just an American challenge. If all the gay people stayed away from church on a given Sunday the Church of England would be close to shut down between its organists, its clergy, its wardens.....it just seems less than humble not to admit that."

Read the complete article here

Archbishop warns Anglican Conservatives

by Jonathan Petre
The Daily Telegraph, July 23, 2007

The Archbishop of York has warned conservative Anglican leaders that they will effectively expel themselves from the worldwide Church if they boycott next year's Lambeth Conference.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Dr John Sentamu pleaded with them to attend the conference despite their war with liberals over homosexuality.

But he told them that if they "voted with their feet" they risked severing their links with the Archbishop of Canterbury and with historic Anglicanism, a breach that could take centuries to heal.

"Anglicanism has its roots through Canterbury," he said. "If you sever that link you are severing yourself from the Communion. There is no doubt about it."

The archbishop's outspoken comments will dismay conservatives, who blame the liberals for bringing the Church to the brink of schism by consecrating Anglicanism's first openly gay bishop in 2003.

A handful of archbishops and hundreds of bishops from Africa and Asia, representing well over a third of the 70 million strong worldwide Church, are threatening to boycott the Lambeth Conference, the 10-yearly gathering of all Anglican bishops in Canterbury. They are angry that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has invited liberal American bishops.

Conservative leaders are now planning an alternative summit, which would destroy Dr Williams's efforts to hold the factions together.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Dr Sentamu told the conservatives that there could not be a meaningful alternative to the official conference.

He said that the primates - the archbishops and senior bishops who head the 38 self-governing provinces that make up the Anglican Communion - had always seen the Archbishop of Canterbury as "a primate among equals but nonetheless as primus inter pares [first among equals]".

"If that goes and they think they can then say they are Anglicans, that is very questionable," he said. "Whatever you set up, I don't think it could ever be called the Anglican Communion.

"So I am hoping that my brothers and sisters, whatever they are trying to set out, will come to the Lambeth Conference."

Dr Sentamu, a close ally of Dr Williams, said that as long as Anglican bishops did not deny the basic Christian doctrines they should all be able to remain within the same Church.

While liberal north Americans disagreed with conservatives over sexual ethics, these were not core issues, he said.

If the conservatives boycotted Lambeth "they would be the ones voting with their feet and saying, as far as we are concerned, we are the true Anglicans".

He added: "Whenever we break there is a lot of pain and the healing of it is very difficult. I want to warn people, don't spend the next century trying to find a way back."

But he also warned the American bishops that Dr Williams reserved the right to withdraw their invitations if they were not prepared to engage in the decision-making processes of the Communion in the future.

Read the complete article here

An inability to tolerate Islam contradicts western values

by Karen Armstrong
The Guardian, July 21, 2007

Free speech is now the rallying cry of escalating tensions, but we can also use it to expose double standards on both sides

In the 17th century, when some Iranian mullahs were trying to limit freedom of expression, Mulla Sadra, the great mystical philosopher of Isfahan, insisted that all Muslims were perfectly capable of thinking for themselves and that any religiosity based on intellectual repression and inquisitorial coercion was "polluted". Mulla Sadra exerted a profound influence on generations of Iranians, but it is ironic that his most famous disciple was probably Ayatollah Khomeini, author of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

This type of contradiction is becoming increasingly frequent in our polarised world, as I discovered last month, when I arrived in Kuala Lumpur to find that the Malaysian government had banned three of my books as "incompatible with peace and social harmony". This was surprising because the government had invited me to Malaysia, and sponsored two of my public lectures. Their position was absurd, because it is impossible to exert this type of censorship in the electronic age. In fact, my books seemed so popular in Malaysia that I found myself wondering if the veto was part of a Machiavellian plot to entice the public to read them.

Old habits die hard. In a pre-modern economy, insufficient resources meant freedom of speech was a luxury few governments could afford, since any project that required too much capital outlay was usually shelved. To encourage a critical habit of mind that habitually called existing institutions into question in the hope of reform could lead to a frustration that jeopardised social order. It is only 50 years since Malaysia achieved independence and, although the public and press campaign vigorously against censorship, in other circles the old caution is alive and well.

In the west, however, liberty of expression proved essential to the economy; it has become a sacred value in our secular world, regarded as so precious and crucial to our identity that it is non-negotiable. Modern society could not function without independent and innovative thought, which has come to symbolise the inviolable sanctity of the individual. But culture is always contested, and precisely because it is so central to modernity, free speech is embroiled in the bumpy process whereby groups at different stages of modernisation learn to accommodate one another.

It has also, as we have been reminded recently, become a rallying cry in the escalating tension between the Islamic world and the west. Muslim protests against Rushdie's knighthood have recalled the painful controversy of The Satanic Verses, and last week four British Muslims were sentenced to a total of 22 years in prison for inciting hatred while demonstrating against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

It would, however, be a mistake to imagine that Muslims are irretrievably opposed to free speech. Gallup conducted a poll in 10 Muslim countries (including Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) and found that the vast majority of respondents admired western "liberty and freedom and being open-minded with each other". They were particularly enthusiastic about our unrestricted press, liberty of worship and freedom of assembly. The only western achievement that they respected more than our political liberty was our modern technology.

Then why the book burnings and fatwas? In the past Islamic governments were as prone to intellectual coercion as any pre-modern rulers, but when Muslims were powerful and felt confident they were able to take criticism in their stride. But media and literary assaults have become more problematic at a time of extreme political vulnerability in the Islamic world, and to an alienated minority they seem inseparable from Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and the unfolding tragedy of Iraq.

On both sides, however, there are double standards and the kind of contradiction evident in Khomeini's violation of the essential principles of his mentor, Mulla Sadra. For Muslims to protest against the Danish cartoonists' depiction of the prophet as a terrorist, while carrying placards that threatened another 7/7 atrocity on London, represented a nihilistic failure of integrity.

But equally the cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others. Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as any other form of prejudice. When 255,000 members of the so-called "Christian community" signed a petition to prevent the building of a large mosque in Abbey Mills, east London, they sent a grim message to the Muslim world: western freedom of worship did not, apparently, apply to Islam. There were similar protests by some in the Jewish community, who, as Seth Freedman pointed out in his Commentisfree piece, should be the first to protest against discrimination.

Gallup found there was as yet no blind hatred of the west in Muslim countries; only 8% of respondents condoned the 9/11 atrocities. But this could change if the extremists persuade the young that the west is bent on the destruction of their religion. When Gallup asked what the west could do to improve relations, most Muslims replied unhesitatingly that western countries must show greater respect for Islam, placing this ahead of economic aid and non-interference in their domestic affairs. Our inability to tolerate Islam not only contradicts our western values; it could also become a major security risk.

· Karen Armstrong is the author of The Battle For God: A History of Fundamentalism

Seeing the world and ourselves right side up

Dominican Fr. Albert Nolan in his office in his office in Johannesburg, South Africa
National Catholic Reporter, July 20, 2007

The subtitle of your book is A Spirituality of Radical Freedom. Could you explain that?
What has always struck me about Jesus is his holistic spirituality. It was both individual and social. He looked at the needs of his society but also at the needs of individuals, and he didn’t separate the two. I see people separating these too much.

A component of the hunger for spirituality today is a hunger for healing. The opposite of healing is condemnation: making people feel guilty, imposing things on people, telling them what they must do and the terrible consequences if they don’t.

Jesus was not like that. Jesus saw people as certainly having faults and problems, but more as the wounded who are in need of a healer or doctor, but not condemnation.

In his spiritual writings Fr. Henri Nouwen pointed out that though we’re all wounded and hurt, perhaps in different ways, we can help one another toward healing. To present salvation in terms of healing would be a way postmodern people could understand it.

Jesus was an amazingly free person. Many see the church as constraining, preventing people from being free, as generally restrictive. I think that’s a mistake. Jesus was not like that.

That’s the reason why the word “freedom” is there in the subtitle of my new book. I also added “radical” because I wanted to point out that it wasn’t freedom in quite the same way many use that word.

We develop a superficial kind of freedom, which in the end is not freedom at all, because we just imprison ourselves more. It’s not the freedom to choose any brand of toothpaste you like. What people too often seek is freedom of the ego instead of freedom from the ego.

Freedom of the ego means that I can do whatever I like in relation to others. The more my will triumphs, the more free I am. That is nonsense, illusion.

The freedom Jesus was talking about and the freedom I write about is the freedom from the ego. In other words, I’m not tied down to my own selfishness. It’s the freedom to do God’s will, to love other people, to be one with them and with the whole universe. It’s the freedom to work for the common good and not just my selfish idea of what’s good for me.

I think our whole economic system is based upon selfishness, on profit-taking and private property ownership, to such an extent that someone can accumulate much more than they can ever use, while others starve.

When growth means growth for some and not for others, that growth becomes cancerous. It’s not an overall growth for the common good.

Thus, individualism is in crisis. It is being criticized from a Third World perspective. Other cultures look at ours and see it as selfish, self-centered. Of course, there are people around the world who imitate it, but psychologists are seeing individualism as a problem. People who get involved in a deeper spirituality are seeing it as a problem. The church, through its social teaching, is certainly beginning to see individualism as destructive.

In my book I discuss globalization as the growth in concern for justice and for peace. I explain in my book that globalization can be neutral, but so far globalization has been spread from above. It is the rich and powerful that promulgate a particular economic system and understanding of trade.

There is another kind of globalization that comes from below, a resistance to this top-down globalization. People come together when they want to struggle for justice. They have been able to demonstrate, for example, with people from all around the world and from many different organizations because of the Internet. That globalizes the struggle against imperialism and oppression.

Poor women and indigenous people are not just allowing someone else to speak on their behalf. They speak for themselves. They develop organizations and movements, and these come together in the world’s social forum now so that they have more of a voice in the world. There’s a good dynamic here between the individual and society.

We have to start with getting in touch with the reality about ourselves; we can then begin to see the truth of the world. We begin to see the world right side up by beginning to see ourselves right side up, beginning to see what’s really happening in all humility, understanding ourselves rightly.

We begin to recognize our motives. We recognize that we project our problems onto others, that we have a false image of ourselves and that we’re projecting that false image. We recognize that there are good things in ourselves too.

Until we see what’s happening within, we are, as Jesus would say, people with a huge logs in our eyes. We’re blinded by something we need to remove in order to see clearly, to see that we’re not the center of the world.

I don’t put the emphasis on sin and guilt because I believe Jesus didn’t do that. I’m not talking about the traditional examination of conscience, of what sins have I committed. That kind of discovery leads to guilt. Then you begin to reject part of yourself.

When you’re simply trying to get to know yourself without imputing guilt, you begin to see what’s actually happening. You see there are things that perhaps you aren’t proud of, that your motives are selfish, recognizing that’s part of who and what you are.

Again, Jesus did not go around blaming people, so we mustn’t blame ourselves all the time. We must rather just see what’s there, because that will lead to action.

Spirituality and the mystery of the universe

A 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula, where a maelstrom of star birth -- and death -- is taking place. The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away (photo: NASA/ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley)

You write in your book about the growth of interest in Catholic mysticism. What does that growth mean to you?
There has been an unprecedented interest in mysticism in the last 40 years. Previously the Catholic mystics would have been regarded as people who were weird or different, and they didn’t have any contribution to make to the development and progress of people. You had to be scientific [to make that kind of contribution] and they were not.

I think the reason they are appreciated today is precisely because they question the doctrinal rigidity of the institutional church. More important, they have come into their own today because they talk about religious experience. They are not imposing teachings from another time or people. The fact that they speak of real personal experience makes all the difference.

These direct experiences of God lead to certain personal characteristics. Mystics become happy, joyful, confident, humble, loving, free and secure. Today we look at these consequences of the direct religious experiences of God and we want those same fruits in our lives. People are not interested in proofs of the existence of God. People are interested in anyone who says he or she has experienced God.

Originally, mysticism and prophecy or work for justice were all one. They were not separated from one another. That separation came with modernity, with the age of reason and enlightenment, where you split secular concerns from religious ones. That’s a long story of its own, but people do not want to divide things up this way any more.

This hunger for spirituality, for direct experience of God, is one of the significant signs of our times. Modernity placed all the emphasis on science and the possibility that scientists can know everything, saying that the material world is all that exists or matters. People now look for something beyond the material, beyond science and technology for answers.

Also, we have a whole new understanding of the universe and, therefore, of ourselves, of who we are and how we fit in that has great potential for the future and potential as well for moving us far beyond selfishness.

We are living on the edge of chaos, but because of a giant leap forward in our knowledge and evolution, there seems also to be a possibility of real advances. The principal thing I have in mind here is the new science, the science of Einstein, where we understand the universe as unfolding, starting with the Big Bang and moving forward. We are trying to understand this mystery of the universe around us.

As a result, we’re going to have a different scientific outlook in the future. It will make a big difference to faith and religion. There will be an important place for faith and religion, and a hunger for a new way of looking at them.

This whole new way of understanding the universe is a tremendous opportunity because it’s also a new way of understanding ourselves, of how we fit in, and of how the individual relates to society.

The certainties of the past

Muslim women at a rally in
Jordan show a copy of the Quran.

You mention a return to the past and fundamentalism. We see that in the Catholic church. We see that among Protestant fundamentalists. We see it among Jews and certainly among Muslims. There is this need to hold on and to become rigid somehow.
Yes ... because in a world that is very insecure, and where all certainties, dogmas and doctrines are being questioned, inevitably there will be some people who seek this security in trying to go back to the absolute certainties that might have been there in the past.

Those certainties weren’t necessarily there, but some people feel there were absolute certainties in the past, so they want to go back. It’s perfectly understandable that, in a development like this into the postmodern world, there will be some people who want to go backward.

For the Birds

FOR THE BIRDS

It’s not, I know, the greatest
cosmic riddle, but why
do robins, pro builders of nests
and chanteurs extraordinaires,
bathe in their drinking water? And
when leaves fall into the basin,
why don’t they lift a beak
to remove the clutter?

Maybe it’s all just for the birds,
but one person I know would be
a little more constructive,
and sing more mellowly,
if he’d put up with a decent bit
of clutter, and even have a drink
in the bathroom tub,
though not from it.

-- Fr. Walter Bado, S.J.
   Lexington, Ky

National Catholic Reporter, July 20, 2007

Have you ever been curious about …

… what kind of a preacher the Right Reverend Gene Robinson might be? Maybe, as you sat in church this past Sunday, you were struck by the thought: "How would the Bishop of New Hampshire have handled today's Gospel reading?  I mean, is there anything new to say about the story of  'the good Samaritan?'"

O.K. … so you didn't have questions within a million miles of those just posed but, now that I've suggested them, aren't you just a teeny-weeny bit intrigued? No? O.K. …  I guess you're the winner of this little contest.

Oh … just one thing before you go. What if I told you that you'll hear the best story you've ever heard illustrating the meaning of the 'good Samaritan'—one that you'll never forget? Just go here and find out.

Sahar Hussein al-Haideri

[Though it was published two weeks ago, I somehow missed this obituary for Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, an Iraqi journalist gunned down recently by gunmen in Mosul. She exemplified all the qualities that Iraq needs now, and in the future. A wife, and mother of four children, yesterday would have been her 45th birthday - MT]

Anthony Borden
Saturday June 30, 2007
The Guardian

Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, who has been gunned down in the Iraqi city of Mosul aged 44, was an exemplar of the new generation of journalists in Iraq. While the violence has made it difficult for international media to cover the war, this has provided opportunities for Iraqi reporters to write about the conflict. But the risk is enormous. Of 108 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003, 86 have been Iraqis.

A print and radio journalist, Sahar had written for the Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq) news agency and local press as well as contributing pieces to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). Writing about the increasing attacks on women, on the fears and trauma of the "lost generation" of Iraqi youth, and on the escalating bloodshed, she was forthright in her coverage of those whom she saw contributing to the crisis and chaos, including the local Iraqi administration and US forces. But her fiercest criticism was for Islamist extremists seeking to turn Mosul, where she had lived since 1997, into the capital of a so-called "emirate" of northern Iraq.

She had written about how, according to the extremists' edicts, the heads of female manikins in shop windows had to be covered, and how tomatoes and cucumbers - supposedly of different genders - had to be served on separate plates. One particularly poignant feature was about the chief of the Mosul morgue, thought to be inured to death until a newly-arrived corpse, which turned up on his investigation table, turned out to be the charred body of his son, recognisable only by the graduation ring he himself had bought.

She was born in Baghdad into a professional family and educated at Baghdad University in business administration. Her real career began after the fall of Saddam in 2003, when international journalism training programmes by the Reuters Foundation, IWPR and others offered a new opportunity. She was one of the first students in IWPR's journalism training and reporting projects.

She contributed regular reports from Mosul, but as the violence grew, her personal dilemma became severe. At one point, she was only saved from a kidnapping when a US patrol happened by. At another, she was wounded in the stomach during cross-fire. A group linked to al-Qaida published her name as number four on a "hit list" of infidels.

In 2006, she moved her husband and four daughters, aged 11 to 17, to Damascus. A head-strong personality, deeply committed both to her country and her profession, she kept returning to Iraq. "Our psychological state is unbalanced because we live and think in fear and worry," she told the UK Press Gazette earlier this year. "But I never thought about quitting, as journalism is my life." Writing recently on an Iraqi Kurdish website, she published a photograph of herself and declared authorship of articles criticising extremists which had originally been printed under a pseudonym.

Both of her main publications, the IWPR and Voices of Iraq, instructed her to stay in Syria. Her editors spent three hours with her the day before her death, begging her not to return.

But the next morning she was in Mosul, chasing stories. As she left her house, she was confronted by gunmen from the Ansar al-Sunna extremist group. A statement claiming responsibility said she was killed because she had published "falsehoods" and supported the authorities. In fact, she published the truth and supported Iraqi people. IWPR is establishing a journalists' assistance fund in her name.

A Shia, she married Haithem al-Naqib, a Sunni teacher from Mosul. He survives her, as do their four daughters.

· Sahar Hussein al-Haideri, journalist, born July 15 1962; died June 7 2007

Talk about life, not church politics

by Giles Fraser
Church Times, July 13, 2007

 Reading Alastair Campbell’s diaries on the train back from another depressing General Synod made me wake up to the similarity between old Labour and the leadership of the Church of England: both are more concerned to please their own activists than to reach out to the country as a whole.

The reason why people like Messrs Campbell, Blair, and Mandelson will always be my political heroes is that they took a basket-case of a party, with zero chance of government, and turned it into an outfit that wrestled with the real problems that ordinary people thought important.

The New Labour project began by challenging the self-righteousness of its own party activists that kept them wedded to outdated statements of belief, such as clause four. We, too, are held back by self-righteous party activists, who are more concerned to transform church polity than to transform our mission.

The reality is that millions of people couldn’t care less what we say or think. They don’t care about covenants or gay vicars: they want the Church to speak about life and death, about love and grace, about justice and hope. And because we are not speaking about it, they will go elsewhere. Tragically, General Synod is as mission-shaped as a chocolate teapot.

My friend Stephen Bates, the religious-affairs correspondent of The Guardian is leaving his religious watch to be assigned new tasks on the paper. It was his last Synod, and he left with an overwhelming sense of relief. Steve Doughty of the Daily Mail used to go to Synod. He doesn’t see the point any more. Increasingly, the news desks of national newspapers don’t care what we say or do.

What would be funny — if it was not so sad — is that many Synod types act as though it is the centre of the universe, as if changing things at Synod actually changed anything real at all. But the truth is that people are increasingly no longer interested. In these circumstances, the only news stories that are going to make the headlines are those generated by the Bishop of Carlisle’s fascination with the weather, and such like.

I can no longer stand to stay on campus during Synod. The “Church” on the York campus feels like a sealed box, impervious to the outside world. It lacks the oxygen of reality. This is why it will not be long before we are no longer the national Church. We circulate reports that nobody reads, and pass resolutions that nobody cares about. Jesus came to bring us life in all its fullness. He certainly did not come to bring us this.

he Revd Dr Giles Fraser is Team Rector of Putney.

Coming soon to a church near you

Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB
From Where I Stand: Vol. 5, No. 7
National Catholic Reporter, July 10, 2007

It used to be that if you asked a question about the Catholic church, you got very straightforward answers. No, we did not eat meat on Friday. Yes, we had to go to church every Sunday.

In fact, the answers are getting more confusing all the time. Consider the question of how the newly revised Roman Missal is better than the last, for instance.

They tell us now that Mass texts -- including even hymns -- may not include feminine references to God. And this in a church that has routinely addressed God as Key of David, Door of life, wind, fire, light and dove. God who is also, they tell us, "pure spirit" can never, ever, be seen as 'mother.' Are we to think, then, that even hinting at the notion that the image of God includes the image of women as well as the image of men, as God in Genesis says it does, is dangerous to the faith? Antithetical to the faith? Heresy?

Or, too, we learned that the words of the consecration itself would soon be edited to correct the notion that Jesus came to save "all" -- as we had been taught in the past -- to the idea that Jesus came to save "many." The theological implications of changing from "all" to "many" boggles the mind. Who is it that Jesus did not come to save?

Does such a statement imply again that "only Catholics go to heaven?" And, if read like that by others, is this some kind of subtle retraction of the whole ecumenical movement?

Now, this week, we got the word that the pope himself, contrary to the advice and concerns of the world's bishops, has restored the Tridentine Latin Rite. It is being done, the pope explains, to make reconciliation easier with conservative groups.

But it does not, at the same time, make reconciliation easier with women, who are now pointedly left out of the Eucharistic celebration entirely, certainly in its God-language, even in its pronouns. Nor does it seem to care about reconciliation with Jews who find themselves in the Tridentine Good Friday rite again as "blind" and objects of conversion. It's difficult not to wonder if reconciliation is really what it's all about.

What's more, where, in the intervening years, bishops had to give permission for the celebration of Tridentine masses in the local diocese, the new document requires only that the rite be provided at the request of the laity.

But why the concerns? If some people prefer a Latin mass to an English mass, why not have it?

The answer depends on what you think the Mass has to do with articulating the essence of the Christian faith.

The Latin Mass, for instance, in which the priest celebrates the Eucharist with his back to the people, in a foreign language -- much of it said silently or at best whispered -- makes the congregation, the laity, observers of the rite rather than participants in it.

The celebrant becomes the focal point of the process, the special human being, the one for whom God is a kind of private preserve.

The symbology of a lone celebrant, removed from and independent of the congregation, is clear: ordinary people have no access to God. They are entirely dependent on a special caste of males to contact God for them. They are "not worthy," to receive the host, or as the liturgy says now, even to have Jesus "come under my roof."

The Eucharist in such a setting is certainly not a celebration of the entire community. It is instead a priestly act, a private devotion of both priest and people, which requires for its integrity three "principal parts" alone -- the offertory, the consecration and the communion. The Liturgy of the Word -- the instruction in what it means to live a Gospel life -- is, in the Tridentine Rite, at best, a minor element.

In the Latin mass, the sense of mystery -- of mystique -- the incantation of "heavenly" rather than "vulgar" language in both prayer and music, underscores a theology of transcendence. It lifts a person out of the humdrum, the dusty, the noisy, the crowded chaos of normal life to some other world. It reminds us of the world to come -- beautiful, mystifying, hierarchical, perfumed -- and makes this one distant. It takes us beyond the present, enables us, if only for a while, to "slip the surly bonds of earth" for a world more mystical than mundane.

It privatizes the spiritual life. The Tridentine Mass is a God-and-I liturgy.

The Vatican II liturgy, on the other hand, steeps a person in community, in social concern, in the hard, cold, clear reality of the present. The people and priest pray the Mass together, in common language, with a common theme. They interact with one another. They sing "a new church into being,' non-sexist, inclusive, centered together in the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Galilee curing the sick, raising the dead, talking to women and inviting the Christian community to do the same.

The Vatican II liturgy grapples with life from the point of view of the distance between life as we know it and life as the gospel defines it for us. It plunges itself into the sanctifying challenges of dailiness.

The Vatican II liturgy carries within it a theology of transformation. It does not seek to create on earth a bit of heaven; it does set out to remind us all of the heaven we seek. It does not attempt to transcend the present. It does seek to transform it. It creates community out of isolates in an isolating society.

There is a power and a beauty in both liturgical traditions, of course. No doubt they both need a bit of the other. Eucharist after all is meant to be both transcendent and transformative. But make no mistake: In their fundamental messages, they present us with more than two different styles of music or two different languages or two different sets of liturgical norms. They present us with two different churches.

The choice between these two different liturgies bring the church to a new crossroads, one more open, more ecumenical, more communal, more earthbound than the other. The question is which one of them is more likely to create the world Jesus models and of which we dream.

There are many more questions ahead of us as a result of this new turn in the liturgical road than simply the effect of such a decree on parish architecture, seminary education, music styles, language acquisition and multiple Mass schedules.

The theological questions that lurk under the incense and are obscured by the language are far more serious than that. They're about what's really good for the church -- ecumenism or ecclesiastical ghettoism, altars and altar rails, mystique or mystery, incarnation as well as divinity, community or private spirituality?

From where I stand, it seems obvious that the Fathers of Vatican Council II knew the implications of the two different Eucharistic styles then and bishops around the world know it still. But their concerns have been ignored. They don't have much to do with it anymore. Now it's up to the laity to decide which church they really want -- and why. Which we choose may well determine the very nature of the church for years to come.

Covenant proposals and extra-Provincial Bishops

Press realease
Inclusive Church, July 5, 2007

Covenant as proposed and creation of extra-Provincial bishops at variance from spirit of Anglican engagement

The growing number of bishops created by African provinces for "pastoral oversight” in North America (and potentially in other provinces), the attempts to create a Covenant that defines Anglican doctrine and ethics, and the apparent intention to organise an alternative to the Lambeth Conference in London next year all point towards one thing. The strategy to destabilise the Anglican Communion is moving into another phase.

The creation by the provinces of Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria of extra-provincial Bishops is against the expressed wish of the Windsor Report and the post Lambeth '98 process of listening and reconciliation. It is more evidence that the Primates of those provinces and their supporters in the US and Britain profoundly misunderstand the nature of the Communion. We very much regret that the Chair of the Covenant Design Group, the Archbishop of the West Indies, has welcomed these appointments.

Inclusive Church's aim is to support and celebrate the traditional breadth and generosity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it has been received and passed on through Anglican history and lived out in the Communion. This creates challenges when there are fundamental disagreements. But the way to respond to disagreements is not to walk apart, nor to create separate structures, nor to seek to impose one particular point of view on the Communion. It is to engage, to communicate, to speak, to listen and to learn.

Clearly there are outstanding issues over how the Communion should respond to the reality that many Provinces include lesbian and gay Christians who live with partners in loving, faithful relationships. But the extraordinary way in which this issue has been allowed to dominate the life of the Communion over the past ten years is not coincidence.

There can be little doubt that the issue is being used by some, mainly conservative, Christians as a lever to try to change the Communion into something it is not; from a conciliar church into a confessional one. From a praxis-based Communion where the bonds between us are the bonds of fellowship and love to a codified Communion where exclusions are legally determined and legally enforced, and where the Communion defines itself not by who it includes but by who it excludes.

The Covenant process has been moved, by this group, away from its original intention which was to affirm the bonds of fellowship which exist. The way in which the draft was received by some at the Primates meeting in Tanzania is indication that, whatever the intention, it will be used to enforce a particular interpretation of the Scriptures to the detriment of the life of the Communion. We do not need a Curia, and the process of drafting a Covenant is already giving more power to the Primates than is justified by our history, by our life and by some of their actions to date.

Hard cases make bad laws. We wish to see, urgently, greater understanding between provinces, and we can see the value of a Covenant which enables this to happen . But the proposed draft before us is likely to be an instrument of further division, not unification. Some of our structures may need reform - but it is already clear that this Covenant process is unlikely to help.

The suggestion of an alternative "not the Lambeth Conference” is, simply, sad. Those who suggest it are walking away from the possibility of dialogue. The suggestion has little to do with dealing with our post-imperial past, and little to do with ensuring that particular voices are heard. It has a great deal to do with power; and with the location of power in the Communion.

We call on those supporting these actions to recognise that there is more than one answer to the questions which face us. Resolution will be achieved only through mutual respect and communication, and an acknowledgement that different views are sincerely held by faithful and loyal members of the Communion.

Inclusive Church is deeply committed to continuing the debate over these questions.

The Anglican Communion has faced problems before and moved through them. With God's help, we will again.

Giles Goddard

Chair, Inclusve Church