++Rowan's Letter to +Howe

In our world of insta-crisis, it's got Anglican blogdom whipped into a frenzy:

I would repeat what I've said several times before - that any Diocese compliant with Windsor remains clearly in communion with Canterbury and the mainstream of the Communion, whatever may be the longer-term result for others in The Episcopal Church. The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such. Those who are rushing into separatist solutions are, I think, weakening that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing - which is why I continue to hope and pray for the strengthening of the bonds of mutual support among those Episcopal Church Bishops who want to be clearly loyal to Windsor. Action that fragments their Dioceses will not help the consolidation of that all-important critical mass of ordinary faithful Anglicans in The Episcopal Church for whose nurture I am so much concerned. Breaking this up in favour of taking refuge in foreign jurisdictions complicates and embitters the future for this vision.

Do feel free to pass on these observations to your priests. I should feel a great deal happier, I must say, if those who are most eloquent for a traditionalist view in the United States showed a fuller understanding of the need to regard the Bishop and the Diocese as the primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the 'national church'. I think that if more thought in these terms there might be more understanding of why priests in a diocese such as yours ought to maintain their loyalty to their sacramental communion with you as Bishop. But at the emotional level I can understand something of the frustration they doubtless experience, just as you must.

The significance of this is that it is the first read word I've read or heard from ++Rowan that, as far as he is concerned, TEC's status in the Communion is genuinely at risk. While he says he serves and will uphold the will of the Communion, especially as spoken through the Primates, I am not sure I've really thought he'd ever let it come to point where there would be a parting of ways the national leadership of TEC.

Of course, none of that could materialize. Of course, he could be simply making a theoretical point that sticking with your bishop, come hell or high water, is essential, while in practice give TEC a pass. And so on, and so forth.

In the end, I’d be careful about reading too much good news for traditionalists into ++Rowan’s letter. While he ‘disses’ TEC, and promises safe harbor to Windsor Compliant dioceses--both pieces of good news--there is little in his track record to date to suggest that he will act, even on behalf of the primates, to distance himself and the organs of the Communion from TEC. ++Rowan is a deft wordsmith, and so what is not said in this letter is probably just as important as what was said. It remains theoretically, logically possible to diss TEC verbally as His Grace just did without doing anything at all to alter TEC's status vis-à-vis the Communion. And frankly, ++Rowan's past actions should create in the critical observer just such an expectation.

Read it all carefully. More later. . .