Episcopal Church (USA) -- the Spoiled Child of the Anglican Communion -- Wants It All
The current General Convention at Indianapolis is fast becoming like Dennis the Menace at Christmas-time: "I want it all!"
Consider: on Sunday, July 8, when everyone else was at worship, the huge majority of Episcopal Bishops attending GC77 voted in favor of preventing their parishes from refusing to hire any cross-dressers, or even people who refuse to identify as either male or female (because they reject being forced to come down on one side or the other), as (a) their priests, (b) their deacons, (c) their Senior or Junior Wardens, (d) their Sunday School teachers, (e) their Youth Group leaders, or (f) any other positions -- voluntary or paid -- in their parish. You name it, and they have to be hired if there is no other reason to refuse them the position. (At least, that is what theCanons of General Convention will now say.)
Having passed the House of Bishops with an overwhelming majority, these soon-to-be canonical amendments are certain to pass the House of Deputies, with nary a whisper of objection. So thanks to the Bishops whom you elected to uphold "the faith of Christ crucified," and whom you paid to attend General Convention, the Episcopal Church (USA) will soon be a haven for sex perverts and psychological basket cases, among others, who cannot even decide whether God intended to make them in any model, and who absolutely refuse to accept society's labels describing them as, "male or female."
Such people are really in a dilemma, if one thinks about it. They say that they cannot let God dictate what they are, by the outward form in which He clothed them at birth; but they also contend that God ordained that they should have equal opportunities for employment throughout the Episcopal Church (USA). In other words:they get to choose (or reserve a decision on) how society must regard them, but all the rest of us cannot choose whether we want them to work for us. The "choice", in their view, runs only in their favor: heads they win, and tails the rest of us lose.
I realize that is strong language. But -- dammit! This occasion calls for the strongest kind of condemnation of those in authority whom we trusted to know better. I feel completely betrayed by my Bishop, and by the deputies from my diocese who will choose "to follow their own consciences" in this matter, rather than the will of the vast majority of pew sitters who elected them, and who will be stuck with the bills for their lark. In so acting on their own, those deputies repudiate the naïve expectation that they could be counted on to represent, at least on these matters of substance, the overwhelming consensus of the diocese that sent them off to Indianapolis.
The same must hold true of other dioceses, as well, or else I no longer know my Episcopal Church (USA).
To those Episcopleft sympathizers and enablers of these abominable resolutions, I ask: who appointed less than one-half of one percent of the population to dictate to local parishes what they can and cannot do, in hiring people to work with their souls and with their children?
Why would you ever support such a minuscule minority in dictating what the rest of us must do, under your increasingly irrelevant Canons? (I say that the Canons are "irrelevant," because you will not apply them as written to all Church offenders whom they were intended to place under your control.)
I remind such persons that the word "canon" comes from the Greek word meaning "measure", or "rule." Well, if you take less than one-half of one percent of the population and apply them as the "measure" or "rule" by which all others are to be weighed, haven't you just turned things on their head? Since when did such a "measure" for the many ever, in any society, become the norm?
Have you no clue whatsoever as to the impact this idiotic stand will cost you back home, when you have to face the ordinary pewsters who make up the majority of your contributors? How are you ever going to defend -- except perhaps in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Newark -- such an imposition upon your constituents' common sense?
I am tempted, in my sheer curmudgeonly ire, to invoke the curses of Mark Twain upon you clueless Bishops. I paraphrase, but even in his original, Mark Twain had it right:
To sum up: On the one hand, you declared yourselves resolutely opposed to surrendering to the dictates of the majority of the Anglican Communion, should they decide that you were just wrong.
But on the other hand, you kowtow and make yourselves entirely subservient to the smallest minority of all those who claim membership in the Anglican Communion, regardless of whether that tiny minority is right or wrong about Holy Scripture.
The Protestant Episcopal Church, consisting of the people who pay for you to have your triennial fun and fantasies, hereby protests against you ignorant Bishops and deputies who voted to secure passage of such claptrap, with scarcely a peep of opposition.
A pox, we say, on both your benighted Houses.
P.S.: Think this curmudgeon has vented all his wrath? Wait until you read the forthcoming post about the whitewashing going on in the House of Bishops over the lawsuits against departed dioceses, in an attempt to make it seem as though All Is Well.™As Mark Twain says: "This was just for practice."
Consider: on Sunday, July 8, when everyone else was at worship, the huge majority of Episcopal Bishops attending GC77 voted in favor of preventing their parishes from refusing to hire any cross-dressers, or even people who refuse to identify as either male or female (because they reject being forced to come down on one side or the other), as (a) their priests, (b) their deacons, (c) their Senior or Junior Wardens, (d) their Sunday School teachers, (e) their Youth Group leaders, or (f) any other positions -- voluntary or paid -- in their parish. You name it, and they have to be hired if there is no other reason to refuse them the position. (At least, that is what theCanons of General Convention will now say.)
Having passed the House of Bishops with an overwhelming majority, these soon-to-be canonical amendments are certain to pass the House of Deputies, with nary a whisper of objection. So thanks to the Bishops whom you elected to uphold "the faith of Christ crucified," and whom you paid to attend General Convention, the Episcopal Church (USA) will soon be a haven for sex perverts and psychological basket cases, among others, who cannot even decide whether God intended to make them in any model, and who absolutely refuse to accept society's labels describing them as, "male or female."
Such people are really in a dilemma, if one thinks about it. They say that they cannot let God dictate what they are, by the outward form in which He clothed them at birth; but they also contend that God ordained that they should have equal opportunities for employment throughout the Episcopal Church (USA). In other words:they get to choose (or reserve a decision on) how society must regard them, but all the rest of us cannot choose whether we want them to work for us. The "choice", in their view, runs only in their favor: heads they win, and tails the rest of us lose.
I realize that is strong language. But -- dammit! This occasion calls for the strongest kind of condemnation of those in authority whom we trusted to know better. I feel completely betrayed by my Bishop, and by the deputies from my diocese who will choose "to follow their own consciences" in this matter, rather than the will of the vast majority of pew sitters who elected them, and who will be stuck with the bills for their lark. In so acting on their own, those deputies repudiate the naïve expectation that they could be counted on to represent, at least on these matters of substance, the overwhelming consensus of the diocese that sent them off to Indianapolis.
The same must hold true of other dioceses, as well, or else I no longer know my Episcopal Church (USA).
To those Episcopleft sympathizers and enablers of these abominable resolutions, I ask: who appointed less than one-half of one percent of the population to dictate to local parishes what they can and cannot do, in hiring people to work with their souls and with their children?
Why would you ever support such a minuscule minority in dictating what the rest of us must do, under your increasingly irrelevant Canons? (I say that the Canons are "irrelevant," because you will not apply them as written to all Church offenders whom they were intended to place under your control.)
I remind such persons that the word "canon" comes from the Greek word meaning "measure", or "rule." Well, if you take less than one-half of one percent of the population and apply them as the "measure" or "rule" by which all others are to be weighed, haven't you just turned things on their head? Since when did such a "measure" for the many ever, in any society, become the norm?
Have you no clue whatsoever as to the impact this idiotic stand will cost you back home, when you have to face the ordinary pewsters who make up the majority of your contributors? How are you ever going to defend -- except perhaps in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Newark -- such an imposition upon your constituents' common sense?
I am tempted, in my sheer curmudgeonly ire, to invoke the curses of Mark Twain upon you clueless Bishops. I paraphrase, but even in his original, Mark Twain had it right:
First God made imbeciles. That was for practice. Then He made Episcopal Bishops and deputies to General Convention.What -- you still don't think I have made my case, and that I am simply indulging in curmudgeonly calumny and vituperation, for the sheer joy of it? Think again. Consider:
--Today, at General Convention in Indianapolis, you deputies rejected signing on to the Anglican Covenant, as presented. In effect, you decided to sign on to the nice-sounding platitudes in Articles I-III, but said you wanted no part with the provisions that could have held you accountable to the rest of the Communion for your waywardness and pig-headed insistence on your own autonomy from the rest of the Communion.
--And today, also, as just noted, your Bishops decided to surrender their local authority to the self-judgment (nonexistent, of course, and that is precisely the joke) of individuals who cannot, and do not want to be told, to make up their minds.
--Finally, you expect the rest of us pew-sitters to go along with your idiotic resolutions, just because you supposedly speak for "the Episcopal Church in the United States of America." Well, you don't -- and now you are going to find that out.
To sum up: On the one hand, you declared yourselves resolutely opposed to surrendering to the dictates of the majority of the Anglican Communion, should they decide that you were just wrong.
But on the other hand, you kowtow and make yourselves entirely subservient to the smallest minority of all those who claim membership in the Anglican Communion, regardless of whether that tiny minority is right or wrong about Holy Scripture.
The Protestant Episcopal Church, consisting of the people who pay for you to have your triennial fun and fantasies, hereby protests against you ignorant Bishops and deputies who voted to secure passage of such claptrap, with scarcely a peep of opposition.
A pox, we say, on both your benighted Houses.
P.S.: Think this curmudgeon has vented all his wrath? Wait until you read the forthcoming post about the whitewashing going on in the House of Bishops over the lawsuits against departed dioceses, in an attempt to make it seem as though All Is Well.™As Mark Twain says: "This was just for practice."
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