News Analysis
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
3/21/2009
126 active and retired members of the House of Bishops, meeting recently at the Kanuga Conference Center in North Carolina, managed to dodge serious communion breaking issues, focusing instead on the worsening financial crisis by condemning "unparalleled corporate greed and irresponsibility, predatory lending practices, rampant consumerism amplifying domestic and global economic injustice," that has put at risk the Millennium Development Goals agenda to cut in half world poverty by 2015.
In sermonic tomes, the bishops bewailed their manifold sins arguing that the crisis in the world is both economic and environmental, "causing us as a people to ignore the Gospel imperative of self-sacrifice and generosity, as we scramble for self-preservation in a culture of scarcity."
"In this season of Lent, God calls us to repentance. We have too often been preoccupied as a Church with internal affairs and a narrow focus that has absorbed both our energy and interest and that of our Communion - to the exclusion of concern for the crisis of suffering both at home and abroad. We have often failed to speak a compelling word of commitment to economic justice. We have often failed to speak truth to power, to name the greed and consumerism that has pervaded our culture, and we have too often allowed the culture to define us instead of being formed by Gospel values."
However, when pressed about besetting issues plaguing TEC, the bishops dodged and weaved and were decidedly less forthcoming.
Some 95% of all dioceses are in decline. Only one, South Carolina, is growing. Yet, these same bishops are drawing six figure salaries. Blaming "corporate greed" in the secular world is the height of hypocrisy. They are receiving growing salaries while whole parishes are fleeing their grip. Tens of thousands of Episcopalians are walking away from liberal parishes while lawyers are racking up millions of dollars in fees suing over property issues.
None of these bishops are offering to cut their own salaries. In "a culture of scarcity", they are displaying an unparalleled fiscal arrogance. At least three bishops draw salaries of over $220,000 annually and their dioceses are in decline. Where are the howls of outrage by unemployed Episcopalians who support liberal/revisionist bishops who have no gospel to proclaim?
The average diocesan bishops' salary approaches $150,000. Within five years, a number of dioceses will be forced to "juncture" with another diocese in order to survive. "We recognize in this crisis an invitation into a deeper simplicity, a tightening of the belt, an expanded Lenten fast, and a broader generosity," the bishops wrote. Really. If each of these bishops rolled back their salaries by just 10% to compensate for their failure to make their dioceses grow, they would "belt tighten" to the tune of $1.9 million, enough to rescue the MDG program of TEC.
Bishop Tom Shaw of Massachusetts, during a post-meeting telephone briefing with members of the media, said the meeting "showed a church that has moved beyond strife and (that is) getting ready for the next phase of our mission in the world and the country." What a fiction is this.
The unspoken elephant at Kanuga is ACNA - the newly formed orthodox Anglican province that is growing by leaps and bounds even as TEC goes into decline. Mrs. Jefferts Schori says the fleers represent only a small percentage of disgruntled Episcopalians. Not true. That figure is closer to 10% and rising. ACNA claims 700 parishes, fully 10% of what 7,000 TEC owns.
During March alone, two new Anglican dioceses were formed, one in Florida the other in the Pacific Northwest. Furthermore, Bishop Shaw's notion of mission has nothing to do with The Great Commission of evangelism, discipleship and saving souls. It is the same old plankton of MDG's whose million dollar budget got axed by General Convention over the financial meltdown.
As one blogger noted, The Episcopal Church has spent six million dollars on litigation against parish churches and departing clergy. This does not begin to tell the ecclesiastical carnage that has occurred since Mrs. Jefferts Schori assumed office in 2006. During her brief two-and-a-half-year occupancy at 815 Second Avenue, there have been more bishops and clergy deposed, or involuntarily removed from the ranks of the Church, than at any other time in its four-hundred-year history.
"The Presiding Bishop has brought before the House of Bishops resolutions to depose two active bishops, and one retired bishop (who was the oldest living bishop in the Church). She has declared that a further six bishops would be deprived of all ministry in the Church after they informed her that they were transferring to other churches in the Anglican Communion, and intended to retain their episcopal status. And following her leadership, the bishops of another two dozen dioceses have deposed or removed some ninety members of the clergy during the same period," he wrote.
The most hypocritical violation of the much bally-hoed Doctrine of Inclusion has been the snubbing of former Southern Virginia Bishop David C. Bane who got railroaded into stepping down because a minority of liberal priests wanted him gone so they could pursue THEIR understanding of inclusion.
Jefferts Schori said she expressed "great sadness" when asked about the March 11 letter by Bishop Bane. "I have not seen the letter yet," she said."We discussed it in a pastoral way." That's choice. It has been all over the Internet, including VOL's website where it was posted five days ago! She can't or won't comment because she has nothing to say in the face of this monstrous abandonment of a faithful bishop.
Bishop Ed Little, the moderately orthodox Bishop of Northern Indiana, said the bishops showed respectfulness in listening to one another. "We listened profoundly to one another and to God," he said.
Well, the Primates listened to each other in Egypt recently and concluded that the Anglican Communion was irretrievably broken and will never be restored because two understandings of the faith, and two religions now exist and that each side is now fully aware that there never will be communion again. What was so different at Kanuga? Was there clarity at last that two understandings of Anglicanism cannot walk or talk together unless they agree? Apparently not.
In the bishops' pastoral letter, they called the church to repentance for failure to address the sorry state of national and international economic and environmental crises. What about the sins of revisionist bishops who are tirelessly and endlessly suing parishes for their properties and deposing godly clergy who have the power and gospel to make churches grow, which they don't?
In a response to the Primates communiqué issued in Egypt recently, Nevada Bishop Dan Edwards described the dilemma of exercising "gracious restraint" in same-sex blessings while cross-jurisdiction interventions continue, including in his own state of Nevada. "There will probably be some move to repeal the 'restraint' resolution to comply with the moratoria at General Convention this summer," he wrote.
"What to do?" Jefferts Schori and other bishops at the media briefing said the issue was not discussed at any plenary session. "We had a brief conversation, about one-half hour total, about communion-wide issues that will be in the mix at General Convention," she said.
So, what this means is that a quid pro quo arrangement will be announced. If primates stop cross border "violations", the TEC HOB might, just might (but there is no guarantee), keep the moratorium on consecrating more homogenital bishops and nix same-sex blessings. This, too, is a fiction. There will be a full scale battle to dump B033 at GC2009. It will be Louie Crew's raison d'etre for living and dying. He wants to go out knowing that the entire sodomite agenda - everything from ordinations, consecrations and marriage rites are in place before he faces his maker. When he dies, he will be remembered as the House of Deputies Great Sexual Liberator.
Bishop-elect Kevin Thew Forrester of Northern Michigan, whose February 21 election sparked controversy after published reports that he had received a Buddhist lay ordination, got a pass. Bishop Little said there were some wide-ranging questions "but no pressure in the discussion" about his election. "I am not an ordained Buddhist priest," opined Forrester, but he is a recognized "lay ordained" Buddhist who sees no contradiction between the Dharma and the Creed. He is expected to be consecrated October 17 in Marquette, Michigan.
An outcry began with an Arkansas priest making it his mission to derail the wannabe Northern Michigan bishop. Recently, the Diocese of South Carolina jumped in and declared that their diocesan bishop and deputies would not give their consent to his election. The odds are that he will obtain consents and Jefferts Schori, who has already announced she will attend his consecration, will show up in full regalia.
With four Episcopal dioceses no longer in TEC, two new Anglican dioceses aborning and more Episcopalians running helter skelter out the door, taking their money with them and some 30 parishes across the country embroiled in legal fights over property, the HOB carries on as though all the folks to blame are in Washington DC and Wall Street.
The sad truth is the 126 bishops spent tens of thousands of dollars assembling in North Carolina looking for the beam in someone else's eye without seeing the mote in their own.
END
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