Why Good People do Bad Things and Not Know It

I note this week, same as a few weeks ago, that I didn't think the horse pills prescribed by a priest, formerly held to be reliably conservative by his comrades, could cure our critical, if not terminal, Church illness. I was none the less taken aback by reactions from his side of the aisle. This priest's tentative plan, a faint hope at best, was scourged as traitorous and equivalent to surrender. Revisionists, as we're named, me included I reckon, if they were aware of me, are called too untrustworthy even to negotiate with, and the string of outraged posts slid downhill from there.

On Easter Sunday, in contrast, I worshipped alongside the beloved of my home parish who've been displaced by Anglicans. There's no anger, bittnerness, no name calling. There's naught but a benevolent sweet God, to Whom prayers were lifted, for the good health and welfare of the congregation that forced them out by forcing an issue that need not have been forced. The outpouring of generosity that has sustained them in an otherwise abandoned building, fitted out so gaily in holiday dress, awakened a familial ancient grace, and beckoned to a reassuring Holy Spirit, Who I've always found amongst this gentle flock.

Are the ricocheting bullets of the cyber wars, just a click away on the web, known by the Anglican recipients of those generous prayers? They claim there's no place for conservatives in TEC. Do Anglicans ever access reviled 'revisionist' sites, as I view traditionalist ones, and perhaps stumble upon and discover that progressives and traditionalists are both welcome in TEC parishes, where local dna will naturally create expressions that are most evident to one, without excluding the other?

Have Anglicans ever read Jefferson, who wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." Can they accept that those who strive for reasonable discourse have learned to stand firm against those who would undermine the acceptance of a unifying plulrality from within, thereby destroying the parish in order to save it? One bon mot from the activist's playbook not lost from the Sixties, while much else was forgotten: "in order to rebel against something, you must stay a member."

Are American Anglcians aware that Roman Catholic bishops, at risk of their lives, are openly protesting the cruel dictatorship of Mugabe, while the Anglican Church of Zimbabwe remains silent, or even worse, is complicit? A reader posted an earlier comment stating that quiet work behind the scenes, as 'anonymous,' claimed on behalf of Archbishop Williams for scuttling proposed legislation in Nigeria to jail gays, is more effective than 'screaming,' which only leads to a sore throat. Upon further reflection, I can't accept that - whether Christian martyrs in the Roman arena, the burning of Cranmer, the execution of Bonhoeffer, the assasinations of Romero, Jean Donovan, Dr. King - are sacrificial acts that screamed bloody murder at the top of their lungs so all the world could hear, and thus, they changed the world.

Are Virginian's who've seceeded from TEC to join the Church of Uganda aware of Olivia Nabulwala who's seeking asylum in the U.S.? Her family held her down so a stranger could rape her and 'cure,' her of her lesibianism. Are church members worried their association, prestige and wealth might be used to lend validation to these kinds of human rights violations? Can they consider that the promulgation of American fundamentalist doctrine that gays can be cured, and statements by Archbishop Orombi that primates "can not sit together with Presiding Bishop Schori, the only woman amongst them, might contribute to a dehumanization of gays and females in that region? I hear much about a need for Africans to counter missionize America. There's much we can learn, indeed, for example, from works such as former Archbishop Tutu's South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission, which helped secure the peace after apartheid. Yet, there's also much that goes on in that part of the world that is anathema to the Western democratic values that are enshrined in the hearts of most Americans.

It would be totally out of character for dear friends in the new old Anglican parish to think in these terms and then ignore the possible universe of consequences. (When I told someone I worshipped at St. Margaret's for Easter, he asked, "did you go to the new old parish or the old new parish?) When I've puzzled about comments from Anglicans that nothing has changed, denoting that there are no wider consequences of their vote to leave TEC, a common response is that they must not research the issues deeply, or not at all, and are content to accept and vote upon matters as presented by clergy and vestry.

If that is so, I commend to them a man, a hero, from Iraq, name of Saad Eskander. He's the Director of the National Library, which along with the National Museum, was burned and looted after Saddam fell in 2003. He's repaired and reopened in the middle of a war zone. He and his staff perform public service at risk of their lives; five have been killed, others kidnapped and wounded. Patrons also dodge bullets and bombs; some days there are 90 brave souls, some days, none. Oh, what treasures we take for granted in America. Andrew Carnegie wrote, "There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the Earth as the Free Public Library - the republic of letters, where neither rank, office, or wealth, receives the slightest consideration."

Connie and I were resting in the study last week. I pointed to the bookshelves and said, "the mysteries of life revealed." I can read Scripture in ten translations, with a hundred commentaries, from dozens of perspectives, to unpack it for me. I can trace time; the myths of pagans, the sayings of the Desert Fathers, and I can watch civilizations rise and fall, and witness the birth of America. I can ponder whether the poor were better off before the Reformation when their parish gave alms, or worse afterwards, when they joined the welfare roles of a distant State bureaucracy. I can wonder alongside Plato. Aristotle, St.'s Augustine and Aquinas, Kant, Newman, and Lewis, as they grappled with what people can know, and not know, by reason or revelation, and from there, most vitally, upon what ethics arise so that we can live good, happy, just lives. All this, no farther than the reach from my easy chair to a shelf.

The writers of Future Shock, twenty-seven years ago, envisioned a world where experts no longer had all the power; where you and I could log on and practice medicine and law upon ourselves, and discover all the wisdom revealed since humanity began to record thought, and to think beyond, to centuries from now. All things, at work, in church, at home, are interconnected. What you choose to do, or not do, decisions great and small, has broad consequences. There has been no other time where so much knowledge has been available to so many, yet so many ignore it, supress it, or are unwilling to share it. We can achieve accord if we interdependently rely on each other to bring truth, reason, faith, tradition, and trust, to the negotiating table. As stubborn as I'm constantly told I am, I'm always willing to try again. Are you?