This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

What Hath Frank Wrought?

First, this editorial from the Church of England Newspaper:

Rome said to Canterbury that the consecration of an out and proud gay as a bishop affects fundamental matters of essential doctrine and ethics. The whole world heard this blunt warning. The Anglican Primates, gathered in Lambeth, expressed regret at New Hampshire’s plans, but decided to do nothing to ECUSA by way of distancing her from the Anglican Communion. The English House of Bishops must have failed to give the Archbishop a strong mandate to act honestly and decisively in this unprecedented crisis. The nettle was not grasped, the issue fudged, a commission set up. But not only did many Anglican Provinces indeed mean what they said, but the Pope did too, and has very logically decided to put ecumenical discussions with Anglicanism into the freezer for the moment – exactly what the Primates should have done to ECUSA. Griswold has been shamed into resigning from ARCIC, and all other ECUSA representatives on international ecumenical dialogues must similarly be weeded out quickly. We are now suffering an ecumenical disaster, thanks to moral cowardice on the part of too many bishops and officials. This was entirely foreseeable, given that the Pope did actually mean what he said.

Then, from an article from the same newspaper:

Years of talks between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches to achieve closer unity have collapsed following the consecration of the Anglican Communion’s first openly active gay bishop. . . .

ECUSA’s Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev Frank Griswold, stepped down as Co-Chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission so that a meeting in the New Year can go ahead. The Vatican had indicated that it was not prepared to meet with Bishop Griswold, who personally carried out Gene Robinson’s consecration.

Talks that began in the 1960s between Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey will be suspended after the next meeting, and hopes for a resumption remain bleak while the Anglican Church fails to deal with the homosexuality issue.

The Presiding Bishop's resignation comes ahead of the planned International Anglican/Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, but despite that, the future of ecumenical relations with other Churches looks uncertain. . . .

The American Church’s consecration of the homosexual bishop have also damaged relations between the Anglican Communion and Muslims and the Orthodox Churches.

Sometimes, words mean what they mean, and in an age of spin, sometimes people mean what they say. Words and actions engender action. Despite Griswold's much-vaunted "pluriform" truth, he must surely now be realizing, even his "truth" has consequences, potentially undoing more than thirty years of work between Rome and the Anglicans.