No Free Press at Episcopal HoB meeting

The Episcopal House of Bishops is about to take an unprecedented action against the Bishop of Pittsburgh and they have, alas, shut the gates to the press. Fascinating.

Well, we can imagine that McCain and Obama would be pleased to do the same. Can quite imagine that they'd rather have their respective campaigns type up happy-releases and send them 'round and leave it at that. Who can blame them? The press often always asks such inconvenient questions. Blows the golf game.

Instead, 815 is issuing typed-up happy-talk releases from their hand-picked bishops. Why, there isn't even a mention of the day's unpleasantness on Wall Street, no not at Trinity Wall Street. The Other Place.

We do learn however that "Present were 128 bishops. Not present were 15 who could not attend for a variety of reasons ... Nine did not respond and were not present." We're talking nine active bishops - wonder which ones they are? Where are they? Did anyone even give them a ring and make sure they were okay?

We assume these are all 128 "active" bishops (those retired ones are such a bother, you know). So 24 didn't show up (which includes the Bishop of Pittsburgh - not even mentioned in today's happy-talk, but also including the bishops in Texas who are dealing with High Water). That leaves 128 bishops in the room to deal with High Water of Another Kind.

Of course, we do pick up some bits:

The bishops expressed gratitude for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s leadership, especially during the retreat.

NOTE: The retreat was the first week of the three-week Lambeth Conference. They do not seem so happy with Rowan William's leadership for the majority of the conference, especially that last week when things turned rather icky with all that moratorium-talk of a cease and desist of TEC's prophetic actions. That was not so happy.

Concerns expressed included the disjunction between the Lambeth Indaba Process and future decision-making. Many compared the deep and collegial conversation of the Indaba Process with the more contentious hearings held by the Windsor Continuation Group and the Covenant Design Group.

NOTE: Contentious? Fascinating once again. It's one thing to recognize that one might think that so-called "conversation" on the "moratorium" was "contentious." After all, we had the Gene Show outside the gates. But the Covenant? Contentious? Really. ACI and Drexel Gomez, please take note.

In the afternoon plenary, there was lively discussion as we looked forward to extending the Lambeth Conference experience. A wide range of topics was presented including: a cooperation on the environment; global warming; poverty reduction; and improved communication throughout the Communion.

NOTE: Lively discussion, eh? About global warming? Notice what topics are not even mentioned? Nope, not one. I wonder where the caucuses are meeting tonight? Are they still out playing a few rounds of golf like they did back in the day? "Pity about Bob - say, how's that nine-iron of yours?"

UPDATE: Word on the street is that Bishop Iker of Ft. Worth is one of the nine or fifteen.