Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Principles of Canon Law: A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the bad Medicine Go Down?



Here is John Rees of the Anglican Communion Office (Kenneth Kearon's office) defending his Principles of Canon Law to the press. Watching this video reminds us of the song from Mary Poppins, A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down. Ah, but what kind of medicine is it? He approaches the press by attempting to disarm them - telling them what he thinks the document is not. It's quite clever, denoting a style that is quintessentially British - it's hard to imagine Americans talking like this. It's all so reasonable, so lovely, so delightful, but tell us please, if everything is so reasonable, so lovely, so delightful - why on earth what would we need this document in the first place?

Tip of the Tinfoil to Ruth Gledhill.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I work along with British companies, and 'what it isn't' seems to be a national past time when it comes to simply not saying, "I don't know" or "I know but will not tell you". The Brits get enough holidays and are not pressured to produce, so it all works fine over there, as Islam takes over.

Here in the Colonies, we wish to hear what it is.
"What it is, 'is' what it is".

Anonymous said...

When introducing a new legal to reporters---in the context of hot controversies---"what it isn't" is an excellent place to start. Press-savvy American lawyers might approach the subject much as Rees did here.

A Musing Anglican said...

Actually, he's being quite honest and accurate about "what it isn't".

People seem to think that this report is a proposed solution to the current crisis. It isn't.

The report was commissioned in 2002, I think as part of the first movements toward considering what a Covenant might be like. Certainly as an attempt to better articulate "what we have in common."

It was never intended to be proscriptive or legislative, merely descriptive about what general principles seemed to be common to all the different independent national Anglican jurisdictions IN THEIR EXISTING LAW CODES.

More HERE.