Thursday, November 9, 2017

A Quick Look At The ACA

I paid one of my occasional visits to the ACA web site and found the press release of the Anglican Joint Synods held in Atlanta last month. Of note,
The Anglican Joint Synods concordat establishes full communion among the Churches, known as “communio in sacris.” The signed Agreement states that each Church acknowledges the others to be orthodox and catholic Anglicans holding to the faith of the Undivided Catholic Church and the Seven Ecumenical Councils.
I don't understand. These fringe groups hold to "the faith of the Undivided Catholic Church", but they're divided from said undivided capital-C Catholic Church. I suppose if you asked Marsh or the others about this, you'd get some sort of mealy-mouthed evasions.

Now checking the ACA Diocese of the West, we find it's down to five parishes and missions in three states. The most recent loss is the Church of the Epiphany in Phoenix, which took place sometime over this past summer. St Columba Lancaster closed earlier in the year. Of the remainder, only the California parishes in Auburn and Fountain Valley have their own buildings.

This collapse is another installment of the story I published in this post, which showed the DOW shrinking from 21 parishes and missions in 2010 to 11 in 2012.

There are may reasons for this decline, and there have been losses in the Diocese of the Missouri Valley and the Diocese of the Eastern US, though not as precipitous. But the failure of leadership over St Mary of the Angels has been nothing short of catastrophic for the DOW, and it hasn't helped the ACA. Let's not forget the apparent effect on leadership of bringing Mrs Bush onto the Standing Committee.