Liberals show their colours and engage in Cyber-War
Just in from the Virtue website:
The Episcopal Church has engaged in a cyber war resulting in the disappearance of the website of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin. Seekers are redirected to the diocesan website of the reconstituted TEC Diocese of San Joaquin.
The website just disappeared, an irate searcher told VirtueOnline. Visitors to www.sanjoaquin.anglican.org – the website of the (Southern Cone) Diocese of San Joaquin – are magically redirected to the new website for the reconstituted TEC diocese, at www.diosanjoaquin.org. The Society of Archbishop Justus is the custodian of www.anglican.org, of which www.sanjoaquin.anglican.org is a sub-domain. While the Anglican Domain web site is not official in any way, it is produced and sponsored by the Society of Archbishop Justus as a global resource, the website states.
Bill Gandenberger, Canon to the Ordinary to Bishop John-David Schofield, in an interview with VOL, attributed the problem to an improperly "published" website, making it vulnerable to attack. "We had an address under an anglican.org isp, which came under the control of the Episcopal Church. Our site is safe at present, but people may not be able to find us." It can be found here: http://www.sjoaquin.net/
Let me explain this to you in laymen’s terms.
The internet uses a "domain" system which is a way of giving websites pretty names rather than long lines of code. For example, this site is peter-ould.net, but it actually sits on a server at the IP address of 62.233.105.153 (try typing http://62.233.105.153/ into your browser and see what comes up). Domain names are a handy way to do internet navigation.
Domains can also have "sub-domains". A subdomain is simply another way of making internet navigation even easier. For example, if I had a forum or a chatroom I could setup the sud-domains forum.peter-ould.net and chatroom.peter-ould.net. I would then point those subdomains to wherever I wanted.
That’s exactly how the anglican.org domain works. It is owned by the Society of Archbishop Justus (SoAJ) and was setup to provide a unique and easily identifiable domain system for the Anglican Communion. Individual dioceses and provinces simply tell SoAJ where they have their website and SoAJ points the relevant subdomain to that location. So even if the Diocese of LittleBigdom hosts it website with company X at www.companyx.com/hosts/littlebigdom, SoAJ sets up littlebigdom.anglican.org to point to that location.
So, what have the SoAJ done today? Very simply, they have repointed sanjoaquin.anglican.org from the website of Bishop Schofield’s diocese to the website of the newly constituted diocese. The website of Bishop Schofield’s diocese hasn’t been wiped, it’s just that whenever anybody types in sanjoaquin.anglican.org they will no longer go to it.
Here’s an email that I just sent to Simon Sarmiento, one of the founders of SoAJ, which outlines the issue.
Simon,
I’m sure that you are aware that the SoAJ, of which you are a founder member, has changed the redirection of sanjoaquin.anglican.org from the website of the diocese that has followed David Schofield into the Southern Cone to the newly formed diocese.
I would like to know if you are prepared to reveal the decision making process behind this. Such a move will be seen by many to be taking a specific line on the current debate over whether the new diocese is the legitimate heir to the Anglican ecclesiastical jurisdiction of San Joaquin or not, especially as there is some controversy over the validity of not just the expulsion of Bishop Schofield but also the constitution of the Standing Committee.
I believe that a lack of clarity on this issue, or an attempt to engage in any obfuscation, may be taken by many in senior positions as an indication that the trustworthiness of the anglican.org domain system is in doubt.
Sincerely Peter Ould
That though isn’t the end of the story. Looking at the official ACO website it seems that the powers that be have repeated their actions of two months ago and removed any trace of Bishop Schofield from the Communion website.
At exactly the same time that the SoAJ made its changes.
Make no mistake about this – the two acts are co-ordinated and reveal two clear things
- The ACO is prepared to take the official line of TEC on it’s "legal" actions, even when they are hotly in dispute
- The Society of Archbishop Justus which controls the entire anglican.org infrastructure is not a neutral body as it claims but rather is a liberal revisionist organisation that is quite prepared to use it’s position to engage in "cyber-war" against conservatives
If I was an orthodox Bishop or Primate, I would be having a very hard think tonight whether I wanted SoAJ to have any further influence over whether people could easily access my website. Today San Joaquin, tomorrow Fort Worth, Dallas, Pittsburgh or any Anglican Diocese anywhere in the world that didn’t fit the revisionist heretical agenda of 815 and their allies.
This is not the first time this has happened – see Recife in Brazil for example where the new diocese has usurped the existing site forcing it to move. Perhaps there should be a formal complaint from Bishop John or even Archbishop Greg. The matter is not closed, San Joaquin exists and is a member of the Anglican communion through its membership of the Southern Cone.
Sounds more like the Society of InJustus to me!
There has to be consideration given to the fact that decisions about who and what and where have to be made. Doing nothing is also making a decision – as in the ACO continuing to designate +JDS as the “See of DoSJ” or what website the domain name points to. The formal structures of decision making, as they are currently constituted within the Communion (and not as some would like them to be or are striving to make them be), are making decisions about who and what and where according to the current decision making structure.
This is a problem for those wishing to reconstitute the Anglican presence in North America. The official structures in the Communion, as they are currently defined, say that TEC is the Anglican Communion Church in the U.S. and if the official structures declare the See vacant, then it is vacant. That may not be the end of it and they may subsequently have to change the designation once again pending lawsuits or whatever else may happen. The Society and the ACO rightly abide by those decisions, else they would be taking sides – the side of those who wish to reconstitute Anglicanism in North America.
If the official organs decide that the Southern Cone diocese is not the “official” Anglican Communion diocese or ecclesiastical authority of that geographic area, then it won’t be and all the weeping and gnashing of teeth or accusation of unfairness (or even accusations of deliberate and nefarious actions described as “cyber-war”) will not change that fact. At present, nothing has changed the official status of TEC, despite what certain other primates declare or want to be. It may in time, but not yet. I fear that too many people are not living in “reality” but within what they want to be – conservative or liberal.
It has disappeared because it is no longer the Diocese of San Joaquin by its own actions.