The Questioning Christian

The AAC Fisks Griswold

In its recent Debunking 815's Spin, the American Anglican Council's Web site offers a paragraph-by-paragraph response (known as "fisking") of a recent letter from Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold to Archbishop Robin Eames, chairman of the Eames Commission. I thought I'd return the favor here:

Fallibility

Today's WSJ ($) contains a letter to the editor by Ian Arnof of Carmel, California, with a quotation from a 1968 article by diplomat George F. Kennan (paragraphing supplemented for readability):

. . . it lies within the power as well as the duty of all of us to recognize not only the possibility that we might be wrong but the virtual certainty that on some occasions we are bound to be.

The fact that this is so does not absolve us from the duty of having views and putting them forward. But it does make it incumbent upon us to recognize the element of doubt that still surrounds the correctness of these views.

And if we do that, we will not be able to lose ourselves in the transports of moral indignation against those who are of opposite opinion and follow a different line, we will put our views forward only with a prayer for forgiveness for the event that we prove to be mistaken.