We are on the eve of an “historic” moment. What is strange about this is the total absence of any comment from Dr Rowan Williams. Why?

He was quick enough to speak of the “confusion, brokenness and tension within our Anglican family” to some 130 archbishops, bishops, clergy and laity assembled recently in Singapore. About Glasspool he commented, “In all your minds there will be questions around the election and consecration of Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles. All of us share the concern that in this decision and action the Episcopal Church has deepened the divide between itself and the rest of the Anglican family. And as I speak to you now, I am in discussion with a number of people around the world about what consequences might follow from that decision, and how we express the sense that most Anglicans will want to express, that this decision cannot speak for our common mind.”

So what have these discussions with a “number of people” produced? And whom exactly did he talk to and what sort of discipline or punishment will he prescribe, if he prescribes any? What will he propose if the consecration goes ahead? He hasn’t said and we are only five days away from the event.

It was very disingenuous of Williams to recently say to the GSE4 leaders that the whole communion “shared” in the problems of the communion. He suggested we all need to repent and be willing to be renewed by the [Holy] Spirit. In short, he laid the blame for the communion’s ills on all of us. He also said there are no quick solutions!

So the first question is this, what exactly do the Global South leaders need to repent of? What specifically have they done? Are they ordaining homosexuals, are they preaching “another gospel”?

On the subject of “quick solutions”, what exactly is the ABC talking about? For more than a dozen years, the Anglican Communion’s primates have drifted around the world listening to Frank Griswold, and now Jefferts Schori, whine and push pansexuality onto the communion. Millions of dollars have been spent circumnavigating the globe, staying in one posh hotel after another with us all being told that a resolution was in sight for what ails the communion. We had the Windsor Report, The Tanzania and Dromantine Communiques. Now we have a Covenant with a Section 4 disciplinary note. What have we gotten with all these fine reports? The answer is nothing.

Naturally, we seek to minimize the damage, to heal the hurts, to strengthen our mission, to make sure that it goes forward with integrity and conviction, writes Williams.

How exactly does one “minimize the damage” when, within a week, major league damage will be caused by the consecration of an avowed lesbian! And whose “hurts” are we talking about? The alleged “hurt” of celebrity bishop Gene Robinson who gets invited by a president to pray publicly while Franklin Graham is denied the same right! What about the hurts of Global South leaders who have been snubbed and called all sorts of names by revisionist American bishops like Tom Shaw, John Chane and Robinson himself. Oh and don’t forget Charles Bennison’s famous phrase likening the growth of the church in Africa to the growth of the Nazi Party!

Then there is the famous lie of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold who told the primates in 2003 that he would never lay hands on Gene Robinson, that such an act would tear the fabric of the communion. “The actions in New Westminster and in the Episcopal Church (USA) do not express the mind of our Communion as a whole, and these decisions jeopardize our sacramental fellowship with each other,” said the Primates, and what does Griswold do? Acting like he is an independent potentate from another planet, he goes right ahead and consecrates Robinson, completely unfazed by his actions and pleading that he could not go against the actions of the Diocese of New Hampshire in selecting him and the will of the HOB for affirming him. My hands are tied, he said.

It was all a pack of lies, and still the lies continue. PB Jefferts Schori is saying much the same thing, how can I go against decisions made by the Diocese of Los Angeles and the HOB? She could of course, as she did with Bishop Bob Duncan, but she won’t. Mary Glasspool will have hands laid on her and the Communion’s “cup of salvation” will shatter and break one more time.

The truth is, it is all a giant con game of high-sounding words and resolutions without actions and no punishment.

And Rowan Williams’ silence is complicit in letting it happen.

When Glasspool is consecrated, will he say something like this: “I deeply regret the actions of the Episcopal Church in the consecration of Mary Glasspool. Such actions only hurt our already frail relationships in the communion at this time. I believe that a covenant will draw us all together, binding us closer to the heart of Jesus and to one another. I urge the communion not to rush to judgment and for all of us to continue together as we journey into an unknown future moving towards wholeness in the fullness of time.”

Rowan is fiddling while Lambeth burns.

The majority of the Anglican Communion voted with one voice at Lambeth 1998 to uphold the traditional interpretation of Scripture on human sexuality. Only a small minority dissented, but it is that minority that has stolen the headlines, shrilled and screamed the loudest and whose voices have been heard in the corridors of Lambeth Palace and the ACC, not those of the orthodox.

Griswold lied when he said at his installation, “my door is open to all”. It would appear that Rowan Williams, the alleged protector of that majority within the Communion, has closed his door to all but the faux “listening process” and Western pan-Anglican post-modern sexual practices.

He wants, hopes and believes he can still hold it together. He can’t, his day is done.

Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen put it succinctly when he said in Singapore recently that the crisis is over.

“The crisis moment has now passed. Many of the Global South provinces have given up on the official North American Anglicans (TEC and the Canadian Church) and regard themselves as being out of communion with them. They renew the call for repentance but can see that, failing something like the Great Awakening, it will not occur.

“The positive side to this is that they are committed to achieving self-sufficiency so that they will cease to rely on the Western churches for aid. That is something the Global South has been working on for some time, with success.

“The Anglican Communion has quietly, and politely split apart. There will still be Communion meetings, attended by varying numbers of member provinces, but the Global South will set up its own structures and seek financial independence.”

The other truth is that Rowan Williams has run out of cards to play.

The Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England want out of his church, as he is unable to protect them from women bishops; the Evangelicals in England no longer believe he speaks for them, if he ever did. They have lost all confidence in his ability to keep things together. The new North American Anglican Province (ACNA) is not bothering to even apply for membership in the Anglican Club. Why, when it is so badly broken? Archbishop Bob Duncan is way too smart to apply for membership in a club full of dead men’s bones.

Ironically, even the gays and lesbians in the UK and USA don’t trust Rowan anymore because he would not come out solidly for them. The truth is Rowan Williams is a man without a communion, lost in his own world of poetic devices and word games, parsing Arius and pansexualists into likeable characters. Only Dostoevsky comes out ahead of the game.

The Anglican Communion is fractured beyond repair and it is time to say so.

Leaderless and rudderless, the Anglican Communion will drift apart, not in formal schism, but like sheets of oil from a broken well head spreading in all directions, some of it dissipating in rough seas, the Anglican Communion provinces will go their own various ways.

END