October 23, 2006
Coup d’Eglise
I have a confession to make.
I edit and publish a kind of a journal which a lot of people call a newsletter. That they do so unnerves me for we never advertise coverdish suppers featuring tunafish casseroles or vestry meetings or the like. I’ve not got anything against newsletters. Kipplinger did very well with his. But the name’s not for me or for my colleagues on The Covenant Journal, our “newsletter.”
Its subtitle is “a commentary on the church.” Its purpose is to tell the truth as however we can uncover or, if not, spin it. It came along about ten years ago when a new bishop we’d just elected began to show his colors as being at halfmast most of the time. (That’s a distress signal for those of you who never were in the navy or the like.) As he didn’t seem to know this, it behooved some of us to find a way to tell him (and others equally in denial), hence the birth of TCJ.
One thing led to another, however, as the church all over the place and not just in our diocese began to fly its colors at halfmast. Again, a lot of people didn’t seem to know it which fact gave us even more incentive, so we began to take on the whole establishment.
One of our church’s national leaders who does know about flags and masts calls TCJ the best kept secret in ECUSA. He also calls it a samizdat, Russian for “underground press.”
Our diocese is about as dysfunctional as any other codependent institution can be, a state of affairs which has come about coincidentally with the current episcopal tenure. You can make out of that whatever you’d like taking into account that it’s about the same span of time TCJ has been around. As a matter of fact, the bishop told us face to face not long ago that all our current coup d’eglise is entirely the result of TCJ’s saying “mean” things about what has now come to pass here and which we’ve probably known only the half of.
Anyhow, the bishop and others like him who more or less inspired TCJ is about to retire and some think we’ve got to elect another one. Trouble is we can’t seem to, having tried in three sessions for over thirty ballots. Some folk say we can’t seem to elect because of our somewhat troglodytic polity which requires a simultaneous 2/3s majority in both orders rather than the usual and more modern simple majority. It is clumsy. I’ll agree. But in fact and in my opinion, it’s saved our life and protected us from electing some of the clones that seemed to be the only nominees our also-cloned search committee could discover. Deployment around here over the past decade has turned up some doozies who are set on making Anglicanism what it’s never been and hopefully isn’t likely to be any time soon. Right soon on October 28th, we’ll have another go at an election. From the looks of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t — again. But then, what do I know?