Sacred Synod?

Archbishop Barry Morgan                                 Source: Daily Post

The newspapers in Wales have been full of it since the naming of the bishop elect. For example, the Western Telegraph has: "Sacred Synod to confirm election of new Bishop of St Davids".

In reality there is nothing sacred about it other than that the event takes place at Evensong in a place of worship, Archbishop Barry Morgan's trouble prone Cathedral in Llandaff.

On video [@1.19] and in the press, the bishop elect constantly advances the feminist cause telling her audience how she has broken new ground in the Deaconate and in the Episcopate being "one of the first women" despite the fact that according to Dr Morgan her 'election' had nothing to do with her being a woman. He said she was the best person to be a bishop, presumably based on his criteria written to fit her profile. Given her inexperience at a senior level it is difficult to believe that there is no person better qualified. Chosen from a secret shortlist we are expected to accept Dr Morgan's word despite years of deception to ensure that he gets his own way from the ordination of women to his LGBT agenda to his same sex marriage ambitions.

If so sure of his ground why the precedent of the Archbishop's promotional video produced to convince viewers that the process was not another stitch up? Some analysis is called for.

Sacred:
devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane)

Secular:
of or relating to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal

profane:
characterized by irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things; irreligious.

It is difficult to conceive that anyone other than a Morgan acolyte could consider the confirmation of the election of the new bishop of St Davids to be sacred. It has Barry Morgan's secular politics written all over it. Her name as the bishop elect had been circulating for months. She attended the Credo Cymru 'Conference to Preserve the Breadth of Anglicanism in Wales' when more deserving members were excluded. Interestingly the view from England after the event was that Anglo Catholicism in Wales is finished.

There were reports that the archbishop deferred entering hospital for essential surgery so that he could preside over the electoral college. A call for prayers in an ad clerum from the Bishop of St Asaph indicates that Dr Morgan has deferred treatment until December, thus enabling him to stage manage the synod as well as the 'election'. Nothing it seems is to be left to chance. No price is too high in ensuring that a woman bishop is in place before Dr Morgan retires, even the desolation of the Church in Wales. A relative minnow in the Anglican Communion and minute in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church but for the 1% or so of the population of Wales who still attend regularly it is still their church, nominally. The dwindling few have responded to calls over many years to give sacrificially while receiving nothing but politics in return. How will they feel when left with nothing but the bill?

Whilst the whole process reeks of cronyism I would be surprised if there were any objection to the election at the synod. Dr Morgan has successfully crushed all opposition in his re-modelling of the Church in Wales as a career opportunity for sycophants and a refuge for sexual licence.

Based on fifteen year's experience covering Church of England politics and witnessing the death throes of the Episcopal Church in the United States,  George Conger has been talking on Anglican Unscripted about the decline of the Church of England into a church that is "already all but dead". What he says can be applied equally, and more so, to the Church in Wales. When a bishop is elected, he says, the candidate loses his backbone to a process called collegiality, a well used weapon in Dr Morgan's armoury along with 'canonical obedience' when the Church in Wales has been anything but obedient to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The installation of a woman bishop at Wales' most holy shrine is all about Women and the Church (WATCH). It is profane.

Postscript [30.11.2016]

BBC News: "First woman bishop appointment to be rubber-stamped". - Exactly!