Two Churches, Both Taking A Battering
Obviously enough the Church has declared itself “Wounded” over the recent split. Meanwhile the Catholic Church has finally taken the long required step of apologising to the child victims of sexual abuse systematically protected by the Church.
Both of these crises provide potential to maim the institutions which they have engulfed. In addition to providing a severe drain upon the Church’s temporal resources (now with legal bills and compensation payments running into the billions) it has severely undermined any claim which the Church may have once been perceived to have over matters of morality. If this organisation is truly the epitome of ethical conduct then why were its own affairs so badly out of order? Doubtless this will weaken the Church’s clout (indeed it already has) and the potentially crippling loss of members joining the priesthood is doubtless at least in part caused by the fallout from the scandal.
Meanwhile the obvious problems caused to the two splintered fragments of the Church in terms of stretch of authority are perhaps matched by the issue of logistics. The results of a schism in terms of Church property alone are a legal nightmare and potential quagmire. Untangling the mess left by a sudden division could be a formidable feat for even the most skilled lawyer.
Consequentially it is likely that both of these Churches will suffer immensely over the coming years. Their recovery should be deemed unlikely to occur. At least in their present form both seem entirely unsustainable. This is a pleasing development as instutitionalised religion are an inevitable blocade against progress towards singularity.
Grim though their death throes may seem we must hope that internal divisions lead towards insignificance for all factions and sects in the Anglican Church (much as with the left) and the additional, fatal strain placed upon the already overstretched top-down structure of the Catholic one results in their collapse and pursuit by greater unity across the globe in the absence of divisive and irreconcilable interpretations of ancient tracts.
[...] James Grieves indulges in some churchly point-and-laugh at Scribo Ergo Sum. [...]