The Devil Is In The Definitions

In her letter to Archbishop Peter Akinola urging him not to perform the installation of Martyn Minns as a bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America in the United States, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote,

...such action would not help the efforts of reconciliation that are taking place in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Communion as a whole.

Reconciliation. It is an action Katharine has urged us to consider and pursue again and again. My American Heritage College Dictionary (2002, p. 1163) defines reconciliation as

1. The act of reconciling. 2. The condition of being reconciled. 3. See penance 2.

Not particularly helpful, except for the third definition, which I will return to later. Looking at the definition of the root verb, [to] reconcile, the dictionary says

1. To reestablish a close relationship between. 2. To settle or resolve. 3. To bring (oneself) to accept: reconciled himself to the change in management. 4. To make compatible or consistent.

It appears to me that Katharine and others are urging some combination of the first two definitions. They want us to work at repairing and rebuilding our relationships within the Anglican Communion so that we can eventually resolve our differences--or at least learn to live together with our differences. The conservatives (I use the conservative/liberal terminology with reservations, but I find the reasserter/reappraiser language even more problematic), on the other hand, are pretty clear that their view of reconciliation involves penance, as in "The Reconciliation of a Penitent" found in our Book of Common Prayer.

For many of us, however, reconconciling the Episcopal Church with the more conservative elements within the Anglican Communion looks more like the definition of [to] reconcile found in the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (2001, p. 1612):

1. To cause (a person) to accept or be resigned to something not desired.

In the interest of staying in community as a Communion, perhaps we might want to find a different word, one with a definition on which we can all agree. Of course, we should probably work on a common definition of Communion as well...

Peace,
Jeffri