With three clerical ladies. I don’t know who in Anglican PR land came up with this pithy epithet but, whoever you are, please stop. You are making my job much harder.
The heads of North American Anglican and Lutheran churches are combining their efforts when issuing things like pastoral letters in cases of continental calamities.
The issuing of natural disaster pastoral letters is of such import that their combining will undoubtedly send transcendent ripples of well-being wafting through the entire eco-system. Future generations will declare that this was moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. Really.
From here:
The heads of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have agreed to co-ordinate their responses to “events that transcend” their borders, such as natural disasters.
They could, for instance, issue a joint pastoral letter in response to a natural calamity
[….]
Leaders of the four churches reached this agreement when they met for a day and a half of informal talks last December in Winnipeg. Since 2010, the heads of these four churches have met for informal talks, “becoming colloquially known as the Four-Way“, said Myers.
I do not think I will contradicted on this observation, which proves how far things really have sunk.
One can imagine these four, sitting together in a room – it would be comfortable and tastefully decorated since high-level diplomatic talks cannot be held in common quarters – mumbling together with all the earnestness and seriousness of heads of state discussing post-war reconstruction efforts.
The sad thing is – on some level – they probably really do think of themselves as national leaders of some kind, doing something of earth-shaking importance like issuing memorandums and statements after national catastrophes. As “leaders” they would view their input as every bit as valuable as that of, say, the President of the United States or even the Prime Minister of Nauru.
The leadership of a denomination these days is like a “presidency-lite”; it’s the consolation prize for aging liberals who missed the political cruise-liner. It still bears all the trappings of political power, minus the potency.
They still get to issue foreign policies and deep ruminations on the social issues of the day (each with a wearingly predictable sanctimony) and they still occupy plush offices in the central castle, watching from ornamented parapets as the secular peasants draw ever closer, gobbling up increasing chunks of real estate and territory.
Hello Jason,
I think that you are correct on point of “…they probably really do think of themselves as national leaders of some kind, doing something of earth-shaking importance…”. And as you point out, actions speak louder than words! These churches today do little more than talk and hollow gestures, and if you will notice the talk is almost always about how someone else should be doing something.
For my own part I am still attending a ACoC parish as there is no ACNA parish in my area. In the meantime I have decided to no longer give cash donations to the ACoC but will instead send my “offerings” to other organizations such as the local Bible for Missions store.
3 of them women. Hate to ask, but has here ever been a good woman bishop? Anywhere?
It is just four folks all with delusions of grandeur desperately grasping at straws to find some way to appear relevant to me in the 21st century. They even get a little bit of self-aggrandizement throw in.
It didn’t work.
Government aid (my tax dollars) to natural disasters around the world is so large why would these four donkeys even consider involving themselves in the global misery racket? In times of disaster, great and small, people need something else and that is what the church threw away. In a previous era the priesthood could approach the spiritually halt, crippled and sick with the words of St Peter, “Silver and gold have I none but what I have is yours.” That’s what the people need.