BBC Radio 4’s “Sunday” sees Edward Stourton asking Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill about the Anglican Covenant – if it’s primarily about discipline or something else. She responds,
You can’t get ’round the fact that it does apply a potentially disciplinary procedure to provinces that step out of line and it probably will create a two-tier Communion and America probably will be relegated to the outer tier, so [the Covenant’s] critics feel that this is imposing a centralized disciplinary structure which is very un-Anglican.
That whole conversation begins at around the six-minute mark. The interview itself – with some interesting run-up about General Synod – starts at 4:26.
And it comes on a day that Gledhill writes,
If the covenant unity document championed by the Archbishop of Canterbury goes through, with its punishing semi-exclusion clause for provinces that step out of line, Bishop Gene Robinson’s church will almost certainly find itself relegated to the second tier of a two-tier Anglican Communion….
What a shocking waste of a Church, and what a disgraceful response to a glorious ministry….
It is illogical to proceed with women bishops while denying homosexuals full participation. Who are we to say that all are not made in God’s image? As the traditionalist Anglicans are proving, any who want an authority rooted in a more Apostolic structure have the choice of Rome…. The Episcopal Church must be allowed to respond to its own context. It should be praised for its courage in elevating Bishop Gene, not buried.
Then, it’s on to other matters of Covenant recently noted, quoted, and captured by Susan Russell. Included:
“What I dislike about the Anglican Covenant is not just that it is institutionalised homophobia, but that it … is an attack on traditional Anglican pluralism. Its architects think it is pluralism that has got us into the mess we are in. If only we all thought roughly the same, they muse. What they do not see is that the cure is so much worse than the presenting problem.” — Giles Fraser
“Let me put it simply: We can’t even agree on what the Covenant means; so why should we imagine the Covenant will help us come to agreement on anything else?” — Tobias Haller
“We need to find new ways to be united without forcing ourselves to be what we’re not.” — Mr. Catolick