Wednesday, June 24, 2009

A couple of quick notes...

First tomorrow morning at 1130 Eastern (0830 Pacific) Metropolitan +Jonah will address the inaugural convention of the Anglican Church in North America. The address can be watched here.

Secondly, as many of you already know (and if you didn't, consider yourself fortunate) there has been something of tempest brewing in the Antiochian Archdiocese. The issue being a canonically dicey decree from their Holy Synod over in Damascus that purported to reduce the N. American Antiochian bishops to the status of auxiliary bishops in service to Metropolitan +Philip. After quite a blow up over the whole thing their Holy Synod reconsidered the issue last week and appeared to have substantially "clarified" their earlier decree in a manner effectvely nullifying it. (Roman Catholics aren't the only ones who know how to fix a mistake without admitting to having made one.)

This should have been the end of the matter, right?

Unfortunately what was essentially a heated debate over church canons and ecclesiology may be in the process of becoming a full blown scandal. Owen the Ochlophobist (a critic of the earlier decree) has written about the new and potentially much more serious issues here. Please leave any comments on the matter at his blog.

Having spent the last couple of years living through a scandal that at times seemed on the verge of tearing the OCA apart, I have great sympathy for our brothers and sisters in the Antiochian Archdiocese. I ask for everyone's prayers that this is resolved as quickly as possible, comencerate with truth and justice.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This one got alot weirder this morning.