It's my football so it's my privilege to make the rules. If you don't play by my rules, you'll make me take my football and start my own game.

Lawful? Proper? Don't these ACI folks realize they are dissing the Instruments -- at least two of them?

This sums up the vanity of the whole agenda: to give authority to those whom even the givers distrust to implement the very authority they desire.

So the same ACI whose former executive director Don Armstrong, late of Grace Church, Colorado Springs, claimed at T19 in April 20th, 2007 that his church had funded ACI to the tune of $170,000 in the four years since 2003 ("lasting questions", "improper"?), is now thundering from high moral ground at ACC, like a Bishop of Rome ex-cathedra, to right the wrong done to them?

Did someone finally elect the "four guys with a website" dog-catcher?

Roger Mortimer

It is just one tantrum after another with these guys.

I agree that the resolution in question was handled ineptly, beginning with the ruling from the chair who seemed to think that a motion to refer Section 4 for further study was the same thing as a motion to drop section 4 entirely. Overruling him was the right move. The problem with the resolution was compounded by the fact that the ACC seemed to have agreed to vote on it clause by clause, but then the vote to include the "refer to study" clauses in the final resolution was interpreted as a vote to approve those clauses. I don't doubt that the vote to approve would have been identiical to the vote to include, though, so I don't think the will of the body was distorted.

OK ... can we get a do-over on B033 based on +Frank's handling of the resolution in the House of Bishops?

Oops ... that was Susan Russell

One other thing, much of the commentary on these admittedly cockeyed procedings seems to have been written by people who have never seen a legislative body in session.

Great indignity is expressed about the fact that resolutions are amended, substitute amendments are offered and legislative advantage is sought.

It's as though they are at a hockey game getting all worked up because the other team's goalie is blocking their team's shots.

RE Tobias' point and Jim's last comment. One critic of the deliberations has written "...it does say something about how the ACC is regarded in much of the non-Western world. The churches here know what a bishop is; they know what an Archbishop is and even a chief Primate is; hence they can understand three of the so-called Instruments of Unity in the Anglican Communion. But they don’t understand what a consultative council is, why it is constituted as it is, and they don’t frankly take much care in preparing for its meeting."

Which brings to mind Churchill's dictum: "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
http://www.bartleby.com/73/417.html

Dictatorship of course isn't nearly as messy nor as costly nor as much work for the participants (prepare for a meeting?). Let's just clear up our ecclesial deficit and become a majesterium church.

RE Susan, while we're at it let's travel back in time and have a do-over of Lambeth 1998.