[Fr. Tony Clavier] GLOOMY THOUGHTS

[Fr. Tony Clavier]

I spent over twenty-five years of my life in extra-mural Anglicanism in America. During that time I sought to influence the preservation of a positive, evangelical-catholic pastoral Anglicanism and to resist the anger and destructiveness of reactive religion. I failed rather spectacularly although my former jurisdiction at the moment despite defections is holding the line from throwing its lot into Common Cause and the Gafcon solution.

I came into TEC in 1999, and vowed to seek to be a faithful pastor and to do what I could to uphold communion evangelical-catholicism and to promote reconciliation. While I am now happily in a parish which wants to grow into a positive Anglicanism and in a diocese led by a holy and pastoral, orthodox bishop, I feel more and more on the larger scene that I have once again failed. That will teach me not to adopt highfalutin ambitions!

I watch with grief the nastiness which possesses the Episcopalian soul from left and right, the political expedience of the Establishment and the sheer bloody mindedness of the opposition and wonder “How many anyone be saved when the Son of Man comes?”

The leadership of TEC is narrow-minded and sectarian, safe in belief in its “particularism” and obsessed with sexualism. The opposition has been inoculated with the virus of intolerance and is equally sectarian in a world-wide ambition.

How may we remain faithful to the belief that the Church is visible, is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic in such a context? How may one evangelize and propose the truth which is in Christ Jesus to a watching world which is not unaware of the brutality of our struggles?

Is Bishop Duncan a martyr? The Early Church taught that those who sought martyrdom were not martyrs. I believe that Bishop Duncan has deliberately sought martyrdom to prove his point. That he has indeed proved his point is neither here nor there. From the very beginnings of this conflict in the 60s the opposition has adopted political tactics, some of them as bad as those we witness in the present election, and has spectacularly failed. The Establishment has been much better at the game.

But who needs a church which merely replicates the strife, alarums and excursions of “Main Street” without providing the solutions offered by the Gospel? Who needs a schism which provides nothing but a fortress for like-minded politically conservative people who interpret the Gospel through the lens of right-wing Republicanism? Who needs a Christian Community which is so captured by cultural particularism and invests its hope in the myths of the American legend without subjecting that legend to the teachings of the Faith?

Damn it, I am more gloomy than George Bush.

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Posted By Fr. Tony Clavier to Fr. Tony Clavier at 9/26/2008 11:27:00 AM

[Father Frank]

Dear Tony,
I have never known you to be in such a state. I understand that the
condition of gloom made be an under statement by some, but not by you.
As followers of Christ we must never give up the good fight in the
name of the Gospel, We know that at the end of the tunnel is not
darkness but rather the light of Christ. No matter where you stand in
this condition we call Anglianism, to the right or to the left and
even in the middle, adverse reaction seems to be the norm. Some where
along the way we collectivelly seem to have lost are way. Somehow many
of us have stood in the way. Until we return to the true Gospel of
Christ and get back down on our kness, I believe that the Lord will
withhold His blessings on our efforts.
I pray that you are on the mend physically, Also may our Lord continue
to bless Mark and his family.
Fr. Frank

On Sep 26, 9:30 am, "Fr. Tony Clavier" <anthony.clav...@gmail.com>
wrote: