Commentary
By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu
www.virtueonline.org
5/16/2007
His Grace, The Most Rev. Drexel Wellington Gomez, Lord Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of the Church of the West Indies & Bishop of the Diocese Of Nassau & The Bahamas (Including the Turks & Caicos Islands), did not come to Central Florida on a bash TEC tour. He doesn't fit the stereotype of a political rabble rouser. He describes himself as a lifelong Anglican, and one who has remained an Anglican by conviction.
Archbishop Gomez had been invited by the Bishop of Central Florida, the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, and the Clergy Events Committee of the Diocese "to do some teaching and to discuss the shaping of the Covenant and its anticipated role in the Communion." This he did in great detail, exceeding the expectations of participants.
One moment in the morning session brought the house to a standstill. In a long series of illustrations of the principle that "Covenant is making promises and keeping promises", Archbishop Gomez related how TEC has earned the distrust of the rest of the Communion. He recalled how former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold had agreed that proceeding with the consecration of Gene Robinson would "tear the fabric of the Communion at the deepest level," then thirty minutes later told a press conference that the American Church had no intention of canceling its plans to proceed with the consecration a month later.
His next illustration was the real shock. He explained that at the recent Primates' Meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the Archbishop of Canterbury had broken the usual precedent of decision by consensus and required each of the Primates to stand and declare whether or not he (or she) agreed to the text of a Communique that contained the Primates' shared commitments for the future. Each of the 38 Primates said "yes" to the Communique. The American Primate, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, said "Yes, but I'll have trouble selling it" to her fellow American bishops.
The point is, as Archbishop Gomez stressed, she said "Yes." She could have, but did not, issue a minority report. When she returned, and when the House of Bishops Convened in March, Jefferts Schori claimed she had only consented to present the text of the Communique to her bishops. She took no responsibility for agreeing to it. One of the conference participants recalled she had claimed that "she never signed it." Archbishop Gomez cut in: "None of the Primates signed it." The Primates' Communiques are never signed. Their verbal responses are taken at face value. The Presiding Bishop's public statement that she hadn't signed it would appear to be a deliberate misrepresentation of the process.
One of the diocesan clergy stood in stunned amazement, and fluttering with emotion said he didn't realize the extent to which we had been lied to. Bishop Howe stood, and with equal emotion insisted that the Presiding Bishop may very well have believed that she was agreeing to deliver the message and not that she was agreeing to the content itself, and that we should be very careful not to infer that she was lying.
Archbishop Gomez interrupted the Bishop: "Sir, that was not the question she was asked by the Archbishop."
This tiny detail made the prior accounts of the Meeting seem like hearsay. A fog had lifted. The Archbishop's message about a breakdown of trust was not simply a political tactic, used to weaken the position of an adversary. It was shockingly real. It was not a "tasty morsel", the kind which titillates gossipers. The response was shock and grief.
The Archbishop had brought a clarity to Central Florida and to the American church that was shocking in that those who heard him had forgotten how long it had been since they had heard simple truth. Facts, even when they are sobering, can be inspiring and bracing. Hope at a way forward, even amongst unimaginable odds, seemed tangible and real. We realized that we have been awash in conflicting whirlpools of spin. Not everyone has been out to deceive us. But those who would help us parse out the truth have themselves been deceived - and have not known it.
The presence of one humble man, whose commitments are clear, whose assumptions about the truth are stated up front, whose love for something greater than himself or his own cause or faction, had an electrifying effect on a bewildered and discouraged clergy - many of whom shared his particular theological commitments at the outset.
(To read the whole article, which I commend, click here.)
The URL for that excerpt is:
http://prayersthatmatter.blogspot.com/2007/05/very-important-read.html
The original article comes from VirtueOnline
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal
The URL for that story is:
http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6009
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