WILDLY FLAILING ABOUT

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

The Episcopal left really is thrown by the mild sanctions just applied to the Episcopal Organization by Lambeth Palace. To begin with, says Mark Harris, TEO didn’t violate any moratoria at all:

"Now just for the record, the General Convention adopted the following, drawn from resolution D025 at the 2009 Convention: “…Resolved, That the 76th General Convention … come to recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships “characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God” (2000-D039); and be it further

"Resolved, That the 76th General Convention recognize that gay and lesbian persons who are part of such relationships have responded to God’s call and have exercised various ministries in and on behalf of God’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and are currently doing so in our midst; and be it further

"Resolved, That the 76th General Convention affirm that God has called and may call such individuals, to any ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church, and that God’s call to the ordained ministry in The Episcopal Church is a mystery which the Church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes acting in accordance with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church; …”

"Dear friends, let’s be clear: There was nothing in D025 that “breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion.” D025 did change policy: from that point on it would be the policy of this church that the call to ordained office by any member would be treated in the same way - by exploration with them of their call, by examination of the level of their spiritual, moral and intellectual lives, and by submission to the ecclesiastical processes required for affirmation by the church that their call was met by the Church’s own call to ordain them in their vocation. More importantly the call of any person to ordained ministry would be understood as a matter of discernment, an engagement with a mystery.

"The change in policy was not intended to “breach any of the moratoria,” it was intended to affirm the dignity of the sense of call that is felt by faithful Christians when they are challenged by God working in them to vocation in holy orders."

Mark went on to say that he only discerned and engaged the mystery of his timekeeping needs, he didn’t actually steal your Rolex and no, you can’t have it back.

So if the recent election and consecration of lesbian minister Mary Glasspool, who, you may be interested to know, is a lesbian, as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles didn’t actually violate the moratorium on giving pointy hats to homosexuals, then how does one account for the mild sanctions applied to TEO?

Easy. Rowan Williams hates women.

Harris:

"What is it about? Maybe it is about women.

"Before the three moratoria there was the unwritten moratorium on splitting over the ordination of women. It was decided by non-decision (also thought of as a “reception” process) that women could be in one province ordained to all orders, in another to some and in others not at all. Since license was required for women to celebrate or practice in their orders, women would simply be frozen out of consideration in places where they were not accepted. This is known in the Anglican world has having your cake and eating it too - or keeping the women at home.

"That moratorium was only broken by making a bishop of The Episcopal Church the Primate of that Church. The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church is a woman, and that means that at some meetings of the world body SHE stands as equal with men in orders. Her election broke the reception process.

"And if only The Episcopal Church is being singled out for exclusion, and if the reason for that is some policy decision that actually results specifically in decision against a moratorium, then this is it. This is our real sin. We put a women in the highest councils of the Communion.

"Our policy of electing a Presiding Bishop from a pool of candidates that did not automatically exclude women from consideration or election, and the result - namely the end of the policy of keeping the women at home - must be in stirring around in the mix somewhere."

Hmmm. The Archbishop of Canterbury, about as good an Anglican leftist as there is, didn’t hit TEO with sanctions because of Mary Glasspool at all. It was all about Katharine Jefferts Schori. Right.

Is that really the best you could do? Because that’s just embarrassing, Mark. To paraphrase an old Monty Python bit, “That is not an argument for engaging. That is an argument for laying down and avoiding.”

Moving on, some woman in New Jersey [Elizabeth Kaeton] goes bat crap.

"Words fail to express my astonishment - and my anger - at the many ways and numerous time that man - Mr. Williams - has tried to screw us over."

Repeat after me. Anglican conservatives are obsessed with sex.

"+++Rowan has enacted the odious, punitive - and still widely controversial - measures of Section IV of the PROPOSED - not ADOPTED - Anglican Covenant."

What do you care, you guys won’t officially vote on it for five more years? And do you buy a car without test-driving it? Maybe that’s what Dr. Williams is doing here. Ever thought of that?

"Never mind that he has no authority to do any of this. Did I mention that the Anglican Covenant is not yet ADOPTED but PROPOSED??????"

Liz! Inside voice. Anyway, you guys didn’t have the authority to change 2,000 years of Christian teaching and blow the Communion apart back in 2003. You and I both know that in the Anglican world, “authority” is a fluid concept.

"It’s British open heart surgery, performed under the glaring light of arrogance, with the razor sharp blade of certainty, under the dull anesthetic of politeness."

Can’t wait to read the overwrought metaphors Liz’ll come up with if Dr. Williams asks Mrs. Schori to skip the next Primates Meeting.

"An effective and efficient way to remove a piece of the heart of the Anglican Communion whilst causing maximum pain to the Body."

My gracious lord of Canterbury is going Aztec on your asses? Well, Mrs. Schori does enjoy the occasional Native American allusion from time to time.

"I have rarely been in favor of the “dollar referendum” method, but I think if ever there were a solid reason and just cause to employ this form of protest, this is it."

Go for it. The sooner the Communion gets clear of American jack, the better.

"It’s well past time to dump our ecclesiastical tea in the baptismal font."

Be sure to dress up like Indians when you do.

"Look, it’s like this: We are who we are. We did what we did. We are not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ nor the risks we feel we must take for it. Neither are we unwilling to take responsibility for our actions and suffer the consequences."

Which you’re undergoing right now, such as they are.

"I mean, we’ve been at this for more than 50 years. We’ve not been flying by our ecclesiastic pants. We are not rebellious children, “doing a new thing” just to piss off our parents."

Then here’s a thought. Quit whining.

"We have entered into this deliberately and intentionally, after decades of study and prayer and obedience to the Spirit."

Just because you came to the conclusion you wanted to come to and slapped on some bad “theology” to justify it claim to have spent “decades of prayer and study” on this issue doesn’t mean that anyone is obligated to agree with you. Being wrong for a long time doesn’t somehow make you right.

Let me bottom-line it for you, L. The bulk of the Anglican and Christian world, the part that still matters, has weighed your “arguments” in the balances and found them wanting. You can chalk that up to “bigotry” if you want but that sort of brain-dead name-callling is not going to change anyone’s mind.

If the Episcopal Organization had had any integrity at all, Frank Griswold would have announced to the primates in the 2003 meeting something along the lines of, “Consecrating Gene Robinson is something we feel we must do, something the spirit is leading us to do.”

“Since the rest of the Anglican world has not yet come to that conclusion, we will, for the sake of peace, absent ourselves from Communion affairs until some point, as yet undetermined, down the road. We value our Anglican heritage too much to stay in and cause turmoil.”

Had TEO done that, many of us would have disagreed with the Robinson consecration but at least would have respected the Episcopalians in the morning. But it didn’t. And the reason that it didn’t is that TEO needs the Anglican Communion.

In terms of the homosexual agenda, what does it profit a church if it gains the whole United Church of the Zeitgeist but loses its own soul? In order to effectively advance the notion that homosexual sex is no longer a sin and to advance it everywhere, TEO needs to be part of a large, international, “apostolic” Christian body.

But Rome, of course, is permanently closed to them. TEO can throw out its prayer books, start rocking Orthodox vestments and perform Divine Liturgies of St. John Chrysostom until it is blue in the face but it will still be considered an American Protestant church that rocks Orthodox vestments and performs Divine Liturgies of St. John Chrysostom for some reason.

Which leaves the Anglicans. They’re old, they’re international, they claim an “apostolic” pedigree and they haven’t been all that strict about Christian doctrine for quite some time. Nobody said a word about John Shelby Spong all those years and he didn’t then and doesn’t now even believe in God.

But now the Americans have a problem. They are being asked to provide a theological justification for teaching something their own church doesn’t teach that is a good deal more intellectually strenuous than, “Because we said so, that’s why. And by any chance, do you bigots and savages know how much money we have?”

And the Americans don’t like it one bit. Because these actions of Dr. Williams, while not much in and of themselves, suggest that the possibility exists that the Episcopalians might one day no longer be a part of the Anglican Communion at all.

Inside the Communion, the Episcopal Organization can claim to be a church that is following the spirit’s lead about this or that issue and innovate away what Christian doctrine they have left while claiming to be part of an “apostolic” Christian tradition. Without the Canterbury connection, TEO is just another American Protestant denomination, no different than any other.