Schori Excommunicates the Episcopal Church

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9001

[VirtueOnline] 15 Sep 2008--Here's a cartoon I either culled from memory or else fabricated out of borrowed images and stored as memory. I'm picturing Road Runner, Warner Brothers cartoon superhero, sitting alone on the branch of a great oak tree. Up climbs the stealthy Wylie Coyote with a carpenter's saw. Crouched against the trunk of the tree he proceeds to cut through the limb upon which sits Road Runner, unperturbed and aloof. Finally Wylie Coyote cuts the branch through.

Here logic takes the usual Road Runner shift. Rather than the branch dropping to the ground in obedience to the laws of gravity, it remains perfectly stationary. Meanwhile the huge trunk gradually tips to one side and plunges to the ground. As always, the haughty Road Runner gets away unscathed, while the bungling Coyote is foiled again.

I don't expect this Thursday's deposition of Bishop Robert Duncan will be anything to laugh about. I don't expect that there will be an eleventh hour reprieve or any cavalry riding to the rescue. No heroics, real or imagined, and certainly nothing funny. Still, I sense a similar irony to be at play.

Katharine Jefferts Schori is emerging as a tragic-comic character, though perhaps a bit more like Darth Vader than Wylie Coyote. Remember the menacing ridicule by Princess Leia: "The more you tighten your grip, Darth, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!"