There’s been a lot going on in Anglican circles these days that I haven’t felt up to reporting. But I do feel the need now to put three points of data in relation to one another.
- Fr. Dan Martin who is on the executive committee of the Diocese of San Joaquin says that something big is going down this week involving 5 dioceses.
- Archbishop Peter Akinola is visiting Virginia to install +Minns as bishop in Virginia.
- The “Windsor bishops steering committee” have sent a letter to the ABC affirming their embrace of the Windsor process and of their desire to participate fully within it.
First, notice who is not on the steering committee. No +Duncan…no +Iker…no +Schofield…no +Beckwith…
Now, notice who is on it. As Brad Drell rightly points out, all of the people who signed the “Windsor” letter ordain women.
What does this mean? It’s too soon to tell. The way I connect the dots, though, it would seem the FiF dioceses may be trying to leave, aligning themselves with Nigeria. But something smells fishy here; ++Akinola is a protestant…
I have always contended that the groups aligned against the current Episcopal leadership are only aligned in what they are against–not in what they are for–and that this does not bode well for their continuation as an organized structure. I would not be surprised if this latest bit of news does not herald the end of the Network as we know it.
Will FIF provinces submit to CANA discipline? They–or at least their leadership–might prefer to jump to the RCC. But that still sounds like mere phantasy.
It might be that Akinola is calling their bluff–he really does want them in CANA, and in going full-steam ahead, he forces them to choose, in effect, for him or against him.
After all, their not joining CANA weakens the realingment effort *for everyone* at least in the short term. That is, CANA has pre-empted any other plausible parallel organization that the others, who presumably do not wish to add to the alphabet soup, might have preferred to set up themselves.
There has been talk about absorption of the dioceses into the Anglican Use. But I simply can’t see that happening. No matter how gung-ho Anglo-Catholics the bishops and many of the clergy may be, I cannot see the people in the pews being willing to move en masse to Rome, especially given the Calvinism afoot in much of the realignment movement.