April 27, 2004
Grabbing power
Canon P D Quirk, onetime mentor and all-time friend, called out of nowhere (as it were) the other day. He wanted to comment on a couple of breakaway bishops he’d known ever since they “rode sacerdotally sidesaddle.”
He noted there’s a pattern to their power grabs and their distortions of the Anglican system that put them into office. “Once you recover from the irony and the two-by-four between your eyes, back off a bit, you can see what’s happening,” Quirk said. “Of course, it’s probably too late once they’re ordained. But it’s never too late for Standing Committees and Conventions, if only they’d get some backbone. And maybe seminaries?”
“These newbies always have to be the ‘bride’ at every wedding and the ‘corpse’ at every funeral,” Quirk said. “They are usually afraid of their own shadow, so it shouldn’t haven’t been all that difficult to see what they’d do if ever getting their hands on a diocese. They’d use the ‘honeymoon’ time systematically to abolish or ignore all those things that make them feel insecure.”
“First, shut down all opportunities for conversation and questions. Don’t make appointments with groups. Add a couple of staff linebackers, give them fancy titles, and let them run interference for you.”
I could think of a few places he might have had in mind, but interrupting him was out of the question. He took a breath and went on.
“Shorten the annual convention, create annoying space and time barriers to make resolutions there harder to present and discuss, load all the appointments with rubber stampers, most especially the Chancellor and the Commission on Ministry, publicly interrogate and threaten the others. Create small divisions in the diocese and call them convocations, thus making it much easier to micromanage.”
“Then,” really wound up, he said, “schedule — and attend — every meeting yourself, especially the Standing Committee and the parish search committees, whether or not you’re invited, welcomed, or allowed to by canon. Take charge of the association of presbyters (aka clericus) as soon as it has enough of your clones in place. Plan its programs. Choose its speakers. Pay its way. Shorten its meetings. Make them less frequent. Appoint its officers.
“Preemption’s not a new MO peculiar to the Bushies. It works just as well in the church so long as the laity are rewarded and remain indifferent and the presbyters are all intimidated. Remember the new PB’s call at his installation for ‘conversation’ and remember Lambeth’s urging us to get some face-to-face going on sex? Ignore both,” Quirk said, “and before long, you’ve got your own diocese.”
I thought he was surely finished, and that we might talk about a couple of other things, when, no way…
“And just think,” he suddenly added. “You can get your own private chapter of the AAC where you can learn to develop further and to justify your essential equivocation skills. And, of course, there’s the biggest plumola of all. When the time comes, you’ll be all set to elect your own successor and never, ever have to let go.”
Then he asked if I thought maybe this might make a good PowerPoint presentation for some diocese that had already got itself a couple of years down the pike before they found out what hit them? I wasn’t sure what to say. Actually, there didn’t seem to be a lot left.