There were announcements, and motions passed, and reports given, and wonderful meetings with brothers and sisters engaged in ministry all across the world —these and many other things contributed to making the 2023 ACNA Provincial Council wonderful and encouraging. Most encouraging, however, for this priest was the way in which I witnessed the Gospel proclaimed by the college of Bishops.
During the two days preceding the council the college of Bishops met. There was much to be covered in those meetings, not a few of these things were very grave and pressing. Chief among these was the knot of things surrounding the painful situation surrounding the Diocese of the Upper Midwest. In the days leading up to the bishops’ meeting actions had been taken, letters had been written, and responses published. The situation seemed, at least for me (trying to track the proverbial weather while on sabbatical), ripe for division and impasse.
By the grace of God the bishops emerged in solidarity and the province unified. This does not mean that “everything is fine” nor does this mean that everyone in the college left just bubbling-over with mutual delight. That, I think it is safe to say, was not the situation on Wednesday night. Nor are such circumstances the stuff of unity. Unity is in fact often proven in the absence of those things because unity is the gift of the Spirit which remains in the absence of such sentiments.
Issues that were grave before the meeting are still grave; tensions that existed prior to the meeting probably still exist. I am not now, nor am I ever encouraged by shallow pollyanna. I am encouraged by a group of men who, trusted with the apostolic office to guard the faith once and for all entrusted to the saints, love one another and our communion enough to be willing to walk together through two days of intensely difficult, likely painful, days of discussion and debate.
Such “brutal unity” (to borrow a phrase from Ephraim Radner) was crowned by Archbishop Foley’s address in which, towards the end, he stood before the assembled body and asked forgiveness for the way in which his actions had added pain to that hard-won unity and called into question, really or perceptually, the moral probity of certain members within the college of bishops. In doing so He chose the lower road, the road of grave humility. And he chose it when it wasn’t necessary. Things could have continued without the apology. But things were better for it. It was costly and bold.
For true Gospel boldness is just as evangelistically bold as it is penitentially bold, as Craig Hovey notes.
Now, this is not an encomuim for the archbishop. It is rather, I hope, an example of the general mettle of our college of bishops. They are men who disagree variously and vigorously and who have, amidst those disagreements, for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, chosen the way of costly love and unity —not false unity which erases difference and mollifies pain, but true unity with acknowledges difference and responds to pain.
Brothers and sisters, be encouraged, we have good bishops.