Not-So-Strange Bedfellows

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Well, Toads and Toadettes,

Today we ask the question of some “orthodox” Anglican groups whether there is no position that isn’t “negotiable” in the service of legitimization. You see, VirtueOnline reports that the “Network”, an amalgam of purportedly “orthodox” Anglicans had a little hoe-down this week St. Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford, a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. We are reasonably certain that St. Vincent of Lerins would have been firing up the brazier and getting out the tongs over the doings there.

You see, the delegates apparently voted to ratify something called the Federation Articles of the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) (as if Anglicanism needed more acronyms right now). The CCP is a coalition of ten Episcopal and Anglican groups in the U.S. and Canada including the American Anglican Council (AAC); the Anglican Communion Network (ACN); the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA); the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC); The Anglican Coalition in Canada (ACiC), the Anglican Province of America (APA); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); the Anglican Essentials Federation (AEF); Forward in Faith, North America (FIF/NA); and the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). Enough letters for you?

But, here’s the rub, boys and girls. In masterful Episcobabble, mid-Atlantic Network Dean and Bishop-elect John Guernsey (aren’t they all bishops-elect of late) said, this is a "a step forward for Common Cause that allows the constituent partners to retain their [current]identity and autonomy while forming a more coherent and accountable structure. None of the groups disappear and none of the groups stop their gospel mission... Yet we are forming a more coherent whole." Say what?

How is there “coherence” in a body committed to “making space” for different opinions about something as basic as women in "Holy Orders"? Sounds pretty darned Episcopalian to the Toad. But, wait, there's more.

How about, “Delegates of the ACN declined to remove the clause from its Charter which declares that the Network ‘shall operate in good faith within the Constitution of the Episcopal Church’”? Yowza! You REC and APA folks tracking on that, or, are you too busy trying to get yourselves back in the club? Be sure that you are operating within that Constitution-the one that undergirds the canons that prop up the regime that supports the heretics in the House of the Squid Woman. (You know, that would be the same sect that many of your people fought to get out of.)

The Toad is particularly taken by the notion that these groups can, “Propagate the truths of the Gospel as articulated and practiced in the historic Anglican way and speak with one voice and act in concert for the welfare and witness of all its Partners”, when they can’t even pin down that pesky ordination thing. It’s all a just a question of “making space”. Let's see how the spinmeisters at the REC/APA deal with this-they'll surely have to convene a meeting at the Waffle House.

Theological incontinence has risen to a new level. Rawk, rawk rawk!*

Yr. Obed. Serv.,


R. Toad, DD, LSMFT

*The sound of one Toad barking.