The bigger question is why she was surprised at all? The Church of England does not have or allow women bishops, an issue that is to be debated in York later this year, so it would have violated their canons to recognize her as a bishop and to function as such. So she spoke only as a priest.

The invitation by Dean Colin Slee to the cathedral was a calculated snub to Rowan Williams, a source has told VOL. Permission for Jefferts Schori's visit was sought by Slee, subject to the standard rules applying to any minister ordained overseas to which the US Presiding Bishop is no exception.

It also appeared to be timed to coincide with preparations for the Church of England's own debate on women bishops in York.

An interesting footnote to this first humiliation is that the objections voiced by clergy in the Diocese of Southwark to Jefferts Schori's visit were based on her heretical views of Christian doctrine and Holy Scripture. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article7148346.ece

Jefferts Schori was further humiliated when she was told she had to provide evidence of her ordination to each order of ministry. "This is apparently a requirement of one of their canons about the ministry of clergy from overseas," she said. In fact it is actually a requirement based on a 1967 Act of Parliament.

What is truly galling is that the demands made of her, are the same kind that she makes on visiting Anglican Archbishops to the U.S.. At least two orthodox archbishops from Nigeria and Uganda and one bishop from Bolivia were denied the right to preach and celebrate Holy Communion in my parish in Paoli, PA. Why should she get better treatment in London?

She did the next best thing. She carried her miter in hand down the cathedral nave -- no doubt to make the point that she had been publicly humiliated and she would push the issue right to the edge of ecclesiastical correctness. You've heard of Watergate, this is Mrs. Jefferts Schori's Mitregate.

(An article by Ruth Gledhill of The London Times saying that Lambeth Palace is investigating a complaint from Jefferts Schori that she was not permitted to wear her mitre in Southwark Cathedral is inaccurate. The instruction about not wearing a mitre came from Lambeth Palace. NOTE: The Presiding Bishop confirmed at a press conference today that the ABC had asked her not to wear a mitre.)

The second humiliation she experienced was a public rebuke she got from the liberal Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Thabo Makgoba. It came when she spoke at the USPG Missions Conference in Swanwick, England.

Makgoba, who is also the Archbishop of Cape Town, accused her of not listening to views about homosexuality from the Global South. He also offered up the view that sexuality should be seen as a "second place" issue and that his province was an example of how Anglicans stay together amid their differences about human sexuality. "Listening" you will recall was the great mantra of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold. Clearly that has not caught on well with Jefferts Schori. What makes this particularly ironic is that Makgoba is THE most liberal Anglican Primate in Africa and not remotely on the same page as either the Nigerian or Ugandan archbishops who are solidly Evangelical. Jefferts Schori had no option but to take the slap, any rebuff might have been met with charges of racism.

A third humiliation occurred at the Swanwick (USPG) conference when she was asked by one leading woman cleric present, an archdeacon, why she was acting so divisively. The question, delivered at a private meeting, brought forth applause from many of those present.

The fourth humiliation came when she was asked to step down from her seat on the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, and also (apparently) to absent herself from the next Primates Meeting next January in London.

According to California attorney A.S. Haley, the Archbishop of Canterbury made a private request to the Presiding Bishop to step down. Haley reports that it was none other than David Booth Beers, Jefferts Schori's attorney who told a number of bishops at the Living Our Vows session at Lake Logan Center in North Carolina last month that the ABC had done so, and that Jefferts Schori had refused him.

The press officer to the Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council later confirmed to The Church of England Newspaper that Canon Kenneth Kearon hand delivered a letter from Dr. Williams to Bishop Jefferts Schori at the April 17 consecration ceremony of Bishop Douglas of Connecticut.

What will be the result of all this is anybody's guess but clearly this is stretching "gracious restraint" and "listening" to the breaking point and the Windsor Report has been put through a shredder. Clearly, the gulf between the Presiding Bishop and the Archbishop of Canterbury has widened, perhaps irretrievably. Don't look now, but you might see the Global South Primates privately smiling and saying, "We told you so Rowan, when are you going to wake up and smell the heresies and realize you won't be able to put TEC in reverse gear?"

Word has it that Dr. Williams is equally very angry with the Presiding Bishop. A showdown could see him denying her access to the next Primates Council (which comes at his personal invitation) when the rift between the two could be permanent. A picture of the uninvited Jefferts Schori hammering on the large wooden doors of Lambeth Palace seeking admission to the Primates meeting next January would be worth more than 1000 words.

If she is invited, will the orthodox primates of the Global South bother to show up?

Another beguiling question is: Is the Presiding Bishop building her own Anglican Communion? She travelled recently to Canada, England, Scotland and is now planning visits to New Zealand and Australia....all liberal provinces in the Anglican Communion. Is she schoring up her base for a coup d'etat against Dr. Rowan Williams for his refusal to approve the consecration of lesbian Mary Glasspool? Is she plotting an exit strategy with her 16 colonial dioceses?

Her one point of leverage is the liberal leaning Anglican Consultative Council, led by Secretary General Canon Kenneth Kearon. TEC pays 40% of the ACC budget and he is not anxious to lose that support. It is not surprising therefore that he should describe the actions of the ABC against TEC as "fairly minimal".

Williams has called for the removal from certain inter Anglican ecumenical commissions of representatives from those provinces in the Anglican Communion who have formally broken one of the three moratoria called for by the Windsor Report and the last Lambeth Conference since they no longer represent the mind of the Communion. This was a clear rebuff and humiliation to the Presiding Bishop.

The deeper question is this, is she trying to create a crisis and export her version of Anglicanism to a watching and waiting and now thoroughly post-modern world?

We should not forget that Frank Griswold at Nottingham ACC (2005) announced that The Episcopal Church had had a special revelation of the Holy Spirit comparable to the Council of Jerusalem at which the church decided to admit gentiles. The whole church would therefore have to do what the Americans were telling it to do, namely admit active homosexuals as a sign of God's pleasure.

The Archbishop's Pentecost letter publicly humiliated PB Jefferts Schori. Then she discovered that she is not permitted to function as a bishop in the Church of England. She got publicly whacked by the most liberal Archbishop on the African continent and by a woman archdeacon at Swanwick.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Mrs. Jefferts Schori has had that in spades.

"Make no mistake," wrote Midwest conservative blogger Christopher Johnson, "The Presiding Bishop was and still is steamed. So was this a message? A deliberate insult? An attempt to remind the Presiding Bishop of her place? All three? The fact that Mrs. Jefferts Schori went out of her way to go public with her miter story as well the language of her reaction to it suggests that that's exactly the way that she and her fawning sycophants are taking it."

The ball is back in Dr. Williams court, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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