15/11/2010

Reasons to vote for/against the Covenant - Monday

Vote for the Covenant - Monday
The Covenant will help reduce the chance of future conflicts, manage them when they do arise, and limit the damage they can do.
Vote against the Covenant - any day.
No. It won't: 
  1. The Covenant is meant to end the present conflict.  It was designed to do so by creating the formal capacity to expel The Episcopal Church in the US and the Anglican Church in Canada from the Communion altogether.  It was meant to end the war by building a bigger weapon.
  2. Therefore, if implemented, the Covenant can be used in the same way again against some other Church. It won't resolving a crisis or limit the damage. It will increase the chances of further splits.
  3. The Covenant mechanisms are actually likely to magnify disputes.  Because the ultimate decision will be made by the Standing Committee of the Communion (with advice from the ACC and the Primates' Meeting) the temptation for those convinced of someone else's error will be to take an issue to an international level as soon as possible.  If you make a weapon someone will use it.
  4. And, finally, fundamental disputes of the scale and depth of the one we are still going through will always overwhelm any structure that could be put in place.  
 Vote against the Covenant.

4 comments:

  1. Sounds good to me, Paul. I hope your fellow countrymen and countrywomen take your words to heart when they come together at General Synod.

    If the Covenant is implemented, it will be a proper School for Scandal, as Tobias Haller named it, aiding and abetting the tattlers and busybodies in the AC.

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  2. Well said! There is another factor. If the covenant is used as intended, and North America is no longer welcome (no we probably won't pay for the Anglican Communion while being in the "second tier" then there will be a competitor. And so anyone angry about anything will have a viable and better funded destination! Now there is a recipe for peace. NOT!

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  3. Anonymous16/11/10

    Vote against the Covenant! Should the Anglican Communion/The Episcopal Church be further driven into complete and utter schism? Tell me why? Our inability to no longer "agree to disagree" is what is driving people away from our Church, and Christianity itself.

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  4. Anonymous,

    Curiously I agree with you. But I don't think a covenant can achieve what people refuse to do.

    And, listening to the rhetoric over the last few years, it seems that it's always the other side (whichever side that is) that's at fault in not agreeing to disagree. Both parties believe they have truth with them.

    Time - and the damage caused on the way - will resolve it, but this Covenant will only make things worse.

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