Howard Anderson offers "An Equivalent"

This reflection, posted to the HoB/D listserve by the Rev. Canon Howard Anderson, President and Warden of the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral, is shared with Howard's gracious permission.

I was just thinking. The Primates, presuming to demand action by ECUSA has a parallel. Imagine how most Americans would react if the Security Council of the United Nations, much respected by many of us, made this demand:

To the House of Representative of the USA,

Cease and desist your legislative action on matter X (it really doesn't matter what legislation but let's say it is on immigration) or we will refuse to accept your money which keeps the UN afloat, because it is tainted. If you fail to stop legislating on this issue, we will shun you and kick you out of the UN. Further, we at the UN Security Council have decided that despite the issue of national sovereignty (read that our church equivalent Provincial and Diocesan autonomy) we will ask the Senate of the United States to tell you members of the House of Representatives that you cannot continue to legislate on immigration matters because we say so, and we are the UN Security Council.

I could take this further. And if I spent the time could find an even more parallel example. But imagine the response of the House of Deputies...errr...Representatives if this foreign group, whom we respect and with whom we have worked for decades in important work, made this demand.

As many ... have said, most of the Communion simply doesn't understand our polity. And only fools would give up their franchise and authority to a group, whose loudest leader would criminalize gay and lesbian people, and who is encroaching on our churches in contra valence of the Windsor Report, while demanding more compliance by ECUSA despite the report from the Primates that ECUSA HAS seriously tried to comply.

Has anyone heard even one rebuke of the encroaching bishops from the so called "Windsor Compliant" bishops or dioceses? They too are fiddling while Rome burns.

We really have fallen through the rabbit hole. Has anyone seen Alice? I just saw the Mad Hatter....tea? Why yes, thank you.