March 29, 2004
Overseers
“Oversight” is a curious and ambiguous word. It can mean “to miss the point entirely,” or it can mean “to supervise,” actually to get with it and exercise some responsibility and leadership.
It’s unlikely that the world doesn’t know by now, but our church has bishops, overseers, as it were, and they are currently in a twit that their oversight might be overlooked. They’re concerned whether it means “to control” or just “to care.” They prefer the former if it’s their diocese, the latter, if it’s somebody else’s. After all, we are an “oversight,” not a “caring… ” (ooops) church. That doesn’t cure the ambiguity, but it can sometimes explain why we so often brush off stuff like peace and justice for the sake of our obsession with sex.
The bishops, and their impressive presence on the payroll, are meant to imply, sometimes even to provide, unity. After all, they’re not just bishops, they’re symbols, and they wear the royal purple somehow to make that clear lest we forget. Kermit, the frog, would probably agree in his own way that it’s not easy being purple, especially if all you can agree on is that you worship the same God (and privately, you’re not even sure about that).
Nobody ever asks much anymore why we need bishops. We just soldier on as if we do. Leaving that aside may have made things even more complicated, though, with the additional assumption that we also have to agree with them or even to like them before they can practice their peculiar liturgical specialties in our congregations.
Whatever, the current problem is that if you don’t much like the overseer you’ve got and want another one, then how do you go about fulfilling your dreams?
The bishops all met recently to consider that major conundrum in our salvific two-step through life and came up with a long list of what-ifs and how to solve them. Their plan didn’t please the AAC’s and FiFi’s or whatever. In fact, it just got them even more riled up and talking what they call “theology” again.
It’s comforting to know, however, that we — and the episcopacy, especially the episcopacy — are the objects of such affection. But it might be so much simpler and save a lot of travel time — and money — if we’d just get on with what it is Jesus thought was so special and take the advice of the old country song that says, “If you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with.” He’d probably like that.
Curiously, one of the unpleased said that the definition of “oversight (episcope)” included “jurisdiction”, and since the plan didn’t provide for jurisdiction, blah, blah, blah, the bishops weren’t being faithful to the definition. So I tried to find a definition of “episcope” that might talk about jurisdiction. What I found didn’t: I did find one that gave “a projector for images of opaque objects”. ROFL
Comment by Paul — April 1, 2004 @ 9:47 am