Thursday, October 27, 2011

Not That We Work for the Guy

When I go to the church website, I almost never look at what's on the front page, because 99% of the time my next act is to click on "A-Z Directory" on the way to the "Research and Statistics" subsection. So it failed to catch my eye that this was prominently displayed:



The cadence is that familiar prayer book style, but if you will turn in your 1979 BCP to page 821, you will see that the standard "you/who/do/through" form as shown on the website is missing the last part, for the prayer continues: "through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Not surprisingly, though, the Forces of Ridicule at StandFirm noticed it. And while I think the "He Who Must Not Be Named" dig is overmuch, one does have to wonder what possessed someone to leave that bit behind when they laid the text on the front page of the website.

Meanwhile, various people can, I suppose, sleep a little more easily, knowing that the Executive Council has rejected the Anglican Covenant and is putting it before General Convention next year, expecting the same rejection. I suppose someone felt that they had to go through the motions, but everyone knew several years back that the the church establishment was never going to submit to any sort of outside discipline, especially since the cause and nature of said discipline has been known since 2003. I don't need to spell out the hypocrisy of it all over again, but it seems to me that there's another wrinkle to it that may not have caught everyone's notice.

At the moment the anti-Lawrence effort is still in some early stage of bureaucratic digestion. I think it would be a very bad thing for Lawrence to be deposed through this process, but if the expulsion were to succeed, and GC specifically denounces the covenant, then the way would be open for deposing every bishop and seizing control of every diocese which signed on to it.

I really do not recall the part where Jesus said to act like this, and I do remember the part where he said not to.

UPDATE: Word came late yesterday that the prayer has been fixed. I still wonder how it was put up wrong, but there is only so much malice one is entitled to presume.

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