Racial cross-currents within the Catholic and Anglican Churches

While Catholic liberals were devastated last year that the newly chosen pope, Benedict XVI, was not a liberal, Catholic Third-Worlders were bitterly disappointed that the new pope was not a dark-skinned, Third-World leftist. (Sorry—the two stories linked above are no longer at the Yahoo site.) In the profound civilizational and racial differences between the West and the Third World, we perhaps see the outlines of a 21st century version of the Avignon papacy (1305-1377), followed by a 22nd century version of the Great Schism (1378-1415).

Meanwhile, within the Anglican Communion, it is non-Westerners who are upholding Christian moral teaching against the depredations of the non-even-Christian-any-more Episcopal Church of the United States. Another U.S. Episcopal parish, St. John’s Church in Fallbrook, California, has disassociated itself from the ECUSA and the San Diego Diocese, and placed itself under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Luweero in the Anglican Province of Uganda. St. John’s is the third church to split from the San Diego Diocese; I don’t have the figures on the total number of U.S. churches that have joined the Province of Angola. For an American church to join an African diocese because only in Africa can one find Anglican bishops who reject the mainstreaming of homosexuality is obviously not an an ideal or permanent solution. But, for the time being, given that the ECUSA has practically ceased to be a Christian body, what choice is there?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 24, 2006 08:16 AM | Send