Thursday, October 04, 2007

Rowan Williams: Full Assurances that stories were false

" As I said last week, these reports were very concerning and it is a great relief to have had full assurances that the stories were false and should never have appeared. I am grateful that the prospect of the severe offence that would have been caused has now abated".
-Rowan Williams on the blatantly false stories concerning an Anglican Diocesan bishop in Nigeria.


Does this not tell us that the Archbishop of Canterbury should pause before allowing his name to be used by the Anglican Communion Office and their strategic press releases? Even this press release came out during House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans and there was the communications director walking about newsroom and he never passed this press release out? Wonder why? Why didn't the ACO following journalistic standards before pulling the Archbishop of Canterbury's office into the unfortunate media story that turned out to be so false? Did they allow their own prejudices to block their judgment? We do wonder. Did they assume that since the bishop is Nigerian, it must be true? What does that tell us about those who are running the media ops in London? That we're all one big happy family?

2 comments:

Alice C. Linsley said...

This matter exemplifies (at least for me) the spiritual and intellectual poverty of TEC. These folks assume that all Nigerians are bigots. They have no understanding of what Nigerian or other African Christians believe (nor do they seem to care). They are ignorant of the facts concerning the Afro-Asiatic context of the Bible. The intentionally cause gender confusion, lying about the binary male-female worldview of the Bible. They advocate female priests because that serves their cause. They justify their gender confusion by pointing to "civil rights" and yet no constituional amendment has been passed granting equal status under law to homosexuals. I could go on and on, but does anyone really care?

Unknown said...

Bingo - institutionalists care about the institution, not the people (or they make the tragic mistake of thinking they are the same thing). What is sad about Rowan Williams remarks is that he doesn't apologize!! He believed the worst about a fellow bishop, enough that he made a public statement about him to cast dispersions on this African bishop's character, and now all he can say is that he is relieved! Why couldn't he say he was sorry? Kearon & the Gang fingerprints are all over the Canterbury statement questioning this bishop's integrity. Where is the apology?

You see, it's implied that such a thing was possible. If we were talking about the Bishop of Liverpool - who holds orthodox beliefs and has a strong social conscience - Rowan Williams would not be issuing such press releases. First off, he would know that such statements are outrageous - which was true for this Nigerian bishop as well.

No, instead Rowan Williams - who either is living in Academia Bliss having never actually pastored his own parish by the way - says "it is a great relief to have had the full assurance that the stories were false." Then he's grateful - as if he were the one wronged!!

bb