ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY RETIRES/RETURNS TO ACADEMIA: Magdalene College, in the University of Cambridge, announces that the 35th Master of Magdalene will be The Most Reverend and Right Honorable Dr Rowan Williams/UPDATED!

Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, retirement announced

¨Well, you just nip out for lunch at the end of a working week and when you get back there's several sackfuls of emails bubbling with the excitement of the announcement of the retirement of the Archbishop of Canterbury HERE and his appointment as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge (the college's press release HERE, and the present incumbent).

Williams was, in my opinion, always an academic. I trust he will find the role congenial, and that he and Jane are looking forward to returning to Cambridge and, presumably, to a quieter life. They met while he was teaching there in the late 1970s...¨  and there is much, much, more, X Factor to choose new Archbishop please read it all, by Paul Bagshaw, HERE

UPDATE:  DON´T MISS THIS!

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Happy at Last

¨As Dr Rowan Williams announced his resignation from the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, church officials began their search for a replacement sufficiently detached from reality to accurately represent their interests.

Williams is due to take up a post as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he will be able to foist his medieval opinions on the impressionable minds of thousands of young people every year.

However, the void left by his considerable personality will need to be filled swiftly, lest the church accidentally find itself dragged into the 19th century.

As one Church official told us, “We face a homophobic vacuum unless we move swiftly. Without someone to take a stance against the gays we could find ourselves overrun within weeks – like a better dressed scene from The Walking Dead.”... there is more, HERE

·  Thanks to Not the same stream, sidebar
·  Thanks to News Thump

ARE YOU IN OR OUT OF THE ANGLICAN FAMILY? A covenant mandated ´house cleaning´ is in order and Bishops Drexel Gomez and Gregory K. Cameron intend for it to be so!



THE WORDS OF ARCHBISHOP DREXEL GOMEZ: The Anglican Covenant Design Group ¨family¨ knows who should stay in the Anglican ¨family¨and who ought go!! 

“...in many families, you remain in the family but you can’t stay in the house because your presence in the home is a bad example to other young people, and so you are forced to move out because what you are doing is an offense to the integrity of the family.”  Archbishop Drexel Gomez, co-Chairperson of the Covenant Design Group (along with Bishop Gegrory K. Cameron)

¨In the most recent St. Andrews Draft of the covenant, provinces would pledge to uphold historic Christian faith inherited by Anglicanism and to promote and proclaim the Biblically-based Gospel through mission.


Archbishop Drexel Gomez, Chairperson of the Anglican Covenant Design Group: ¨...constitutional autonomy of provinces exists within a larger framework of communion that sets limits on that autonomy.¨

Signers of the covenant, Gomez explained, are called on to pledge themselves to the understanding that the Anglican Communion requires mutual accountability among provinces and that the constitutional autonomy of provinces exists within a larger framework of communion that sets limits on that autonomy.

The covenant also would provide a mechanism or process by which provinces, once they have signed the covenant, could be determined to have violated the covenant and, thus, to be deemed to have removed themselves from the Communion...¨ please read it all,  HERE

UPDATE:

Archbishop, I beg to differ

The Archbishop of Canterbury is clearly anxious that the Covenant project is endangered in England. There is still a long way to go and neither side can be confident of victory for a few more weeks.

So, to shore up support, Rowan Williams has had to put out an appeal on YouTube HERE. He has also sent it to those Dioceses which have yet to vote on the Covenant and asked diocesan officers to circulate it.

What's the problem?
What sort of future?

The Archbishop is asking us to accept a vision of the future of the Anglican Communion that I, for one, simply and fundamentally disagree with. I disagree with the diagnosis of the problem that the Covenant is trying to resolve and I disagree with the medicine. I accept I can't offer an alternative blueprint but I also know there are much more creative and constructive alternatives to blueprints.


I think that the immediate problem the Covenant is seeking to resolve is the perceived arrogance and exceptionalism of The Episcopal Church (US) evinced in the decision to officially regard a same-sex relationship as not in itself a bar to ordination or preferment in the Church - and the choice of 'The Episcopal Church' as its official name as symbolically annoying - without consulting the rest of the Communion...¨ please read it all,  by Paul Bagshaw HERE

·  Thanks to Not the same stream, sidebar
·  Thanks to Paul Bagshaw
·  Thanks to The No Anglican Covenant -- Comprehensive Unity

CONSIDERING THE ANGLICAN COVENANT ON SATURDAY: ¨Please vote against the Covenant if you are unhappy with it, worried about its implications...¨

  

Reasons to vote for/against the Covenant, by Paul Bagshaw, ¨Not the same stream¨

The Anglican Communion Covenant:  ¨..the enemy within is more dangerous than the enemy without so any confessional statement is simultaneously intended to unite and divide¨

What is the Covenant supposed to solve?


It will hardly come as a surprise to anyone reading this that I really don't like the Covenant. More than that, I think it is profoundly misguided, a denial of so much that is precious in the Anglican tradition that we have inherited, and a pitiful response to the deep divisions of the Church. HERE

Vote for/against the Covenant  (a daily series of arguments) HERE
Argument for Saturday, November 20, 2010

Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Voting for the Covenant to support the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Oddly, this is the most frequently stated reason that I've heard for voting for the Covenant. It seems to be said most often by people who aren't very happy with the Covenant themselves but think they ought to vote for it.

It's a very difficult stance to argue against. I am all in favour of loyalty, respect, affection, regard. It is also true that the sustained judgement of leaders in any organization should weigh heavily in any corporate decision making. (Certainly more heavily than a bloggers'.)

But at the same time members of any governing body are there to exercise their own judgement, to weigh all the factors - evidence, judgement, loyalties, consequences - and to make a decision accordingly.

Vote against the Covenant

So - no arguments, just a request - please vote for the Covenant if you are convinced that, on the balance of probabilities, the Covenant will be good for the Communion.

Please vote against the Covenant if you are unhappy with it, worried about its implications or feel that there needs to be more time to consider it properly before it's brought to the Synod.

And, if you don't know, or if you are unhappy about the Covenant but do not wish to cast a vote against the Archbishop, please abstain.

Vote against the Covenant.HERE

 (cartoon and emphasis added by Leonardo Ricardo)

· Thanks to Paul Bagshaw, sidebar
· Thanks to Not the same stream, sidebar
· Thanks to No Anglican Covenant Coalition: Comprehensive Unity, sidebar