St Alban and St Sergius Fellowship Conference
28 May 2008 - 24 אייר 5768 by Huw
This conference At St Vladimir’s looks very interesting. I notice that while there are a lot of mainstream Orthodox, there is only two Episcopalians - and not very mainstream at that - both semi-Schismatic, I think.
It seems a curious melange of Orthodox, however: liberals and conservative.
Oddly for an OCA Seminary, clearly the institutional Orthodox are taking sides in the Anglican debate: even if individual Orthodox (as well as certain monks) are hanging out with different Episcopalians. I wonder to whom this conference is to be seen as pandering.
I don’t think the list of speakers is evidence that “institutional Orthodox” are taking sides in the Anglican debate. It is the nature of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius that it is the more traditionalist, Catholic-minded Anglicans who participate (I don’t recall John Stott or J.I. Packer being members of the Fellowship); and it is the more “ecumenical-minded” Orthodox who participate. I am not surprised that Fr Michael Azkoul is not on the list.
The Fellowship has never attracted “mainstream” Anglicans. It has always been an Anglo-Catholic affair. And it has to be said that the definition of “mainstream Anglican” has shifted considerably in the eighty years since the Fellowship was founded, but the sort of Anglican who is interested in the Fellowship has not changed at all. Bp Ackerman is the same sort of Anglican as men like A.M. Allchin and H.A. Hodges who participated in the Fellowship in the last century. If that sort of Anglo-Catholic seems farther from the mainstream than those men were, it is because the mainstream has shifted.
Ditto what Chris said. St. Alban and St. Sergius has not changed its spots since long before the changes of the 1970’s.
Interestingly enough, my tendency would have been to wonder if the reason that Bishops Kallistos and Hilarion were participating was to be able to say things in the context of a scholarly conference that could send quiet diplomatic messages to Rome on how some of the impasses between Orthodox and Roman Catholic could be ameliorated.
I could also see another intriguing possibility in the mixture of people involved from the Orthodox side. In fact, the Anglican side would have been my very last and least probable interpretation.
And, all that having been said, the USA has become a country of conspiracy theorists. The most likely interpretation is probably an innocent scholarly conference on a current topic of interest. “Sometimes a banana is just a banana.”
Mmm. I’m mixing up, I guess, the “regular ecumenical work” of ECUSA with this one org…
Certainly, eg, my own Bishop is involved in Ecumenical conversations w/ the Orthodox as are a number women clergy in ECUSA. I think it’s odd that only one priest ant one bishop - neither of whom welcome the ministry of over half their church - are involved.
As to Orthodoxy taking sides: certainly Mtr Philip did, already, back in the 80s when he said any ECUSA priest with x number of laity would be welcomed to “come home” with very few questions being asked. I know this stance was later modified after some trouble.
I don’t consider +Qunicy to be in the same ballpark as the Anglo-Catholics of the 19th Century (et al) - who were quite willing to hang tight with their low church and latitudarian brothers and sisters: usually with just an eye roll, although most such managed to achieve Geographic isolation.
Last time I checked the Eastern Orthodox Church maintained the all-male priesthood as a matter of (what they believe to be) faithfulness to the Apostolic Tradition. If they agree with those Episcopalians who believe as they do on this matter, that is not “taking sides” in an Anglican dispute; it is remaining true to who they are as Orthodox.
I don’t fault Metr Philip for welcoming anti-WO Episcopalians into Orthodoxy. It made sense, because the grounds on which they objected to WO showed that they honored Tradition in much the same way that Orthodoxy does. Why would he not welcome them?
Also, I do not know what you are referring to when you say “with very few questions asked.” Do you know of ECUSA clergy who became Orthodox who would have been disqualified on the basis of morals, doctrine, or pastoral temperament if more “questions had been asked”?
Word in ECUSA back in the 80s (and this could be only an underground-railroad sort of rumour) was that Mtr P would welcome you, give you a parish and re-ordain you, provided you came in with a certain number of folks. In fact, I was told by an anti-WO Episcopalian that should I become Orthodox, I should avoid that jurisdicition because everyone found the offer rather underhanded.
Most clergy would have to come in as laity and start over. These clergy got to (in words spoken in another context) simply change bishops - and rites - and keep going.
It’s true that Protestant clergy who bring their parish with them are likely to be re-ordained more quickly in the Antiochian Archdiocese than are pastors who come in “by themselves” as it were. How “underhanded” that is depends very much on your point of view.
There are several pastors of my current denomination (Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod) who have become Orthodox in recent years. They have had to wait different periods of time before being re-ordained, from a few months in one case to two years or more. And in each case, some who remained in the LCMS have accused the convert priests of “sheep-stealing” and accused the Antiochians of “conspiring” to steal both pastors and laity into the Archdiocese. But I don’t know that the Antiochians were doing any more than welcoming into their Church those (clergy or laity) who were sincerely interested in becoming Orthodox.
It is not necessarily “underhanded” if a priest is re-ordained more quickly if his whole parish converts at once. A priest who converts “by himself” may not be ordained until and unless there is a parish available for him to pastor; but when a parish comes over all at once, the Archdiocese may not have an existing priest available to serve as their pastor. Re-ordaining their existing pastor may be the best practical solution to the problem. Particularly if the parish is to be Western rite; there are not a lot of WR clergy in the seminary pipeline.
Ditto again with Chris.
I think you are making much too much of it. When the Evangelical Orthodox Church came in, there were mass ordinations. You can read blogs from back then jumping on the Antiochians for doing that in the case of those Evangelicals. So, it is not a purely Episcopal thing.
Metropolitan Philip years ago committed the ultimate sin of deciding that the American church could not be ethnic. He continues to pay for that decision since. He is, at least, in good company. Since the Quinisext Council which issued guidelines for receiving incoming heretical and schismatic priests and bishops, there have been those who complain about receptions/ordinations being too quick.
You can, even now, read blogs that insist that a Roman priest must be re-ordained because there is no way that a heretical ordination could be considered valid (contra the Quinisext). Behind those blogs there is often an anti-Roman bias that is very inappropriate. The bias, all too often, stretches to any convert.
Unfortunately, my impression of most of the complainers is that they would impose guidelines which would ensure that few, if any, would ever make it through the process. For instance, a Greek priest quietly encouraged me to go Antiochian precisely because, as he told me very directly, by the time I would be considered to have learned enough Greek to be ordained, years would have passed.
And, for pastoral reasons, are people ordained much more quickly if they bring a church with them? Absolutely, but that was the policy formulated from the time of the mass admittance of the Evangelical Orthodox Church, not from anything having to do with The Episcopal Church, per se.