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Dialogue or domination?

August 20th, 2010 Jill Posted in Children/Family, TEC Comments Off

By Chris Sugden, Evangelicals Now, September 2010

From July 30th to August 3rd the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion met in London.  The Archbishops of Egypt, West Africa and Ghana were absent as they had resigned because of the Anglican Communion’s failure to exercise any discipline on the flagrant disregard by The Episcopal Church of biblical teaching and decisions of the Communion on admitting those in active same-sex relationships to senior leadership in the church. 
 
At the meeting, a senior lawyer from Malaysia, Dato ( = Sir) Stanley Isaacs proposed that “ The Episcopal Church be separated from the Communion.”  This was rejected because it was believed, “Separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces.”
 
Dr Philip Turner sees this as more of the same ” TEC’s recent history reveals that it now has a standard way of doing business—one that exposes its pleas for dialogue as disingenuous.  What is that way?  One makes changes in disputed aspects of the life and order of the church by breaking the rules and then calling for conversation rather than “consequences.” This standard way of doing business carries with it its own very idiosyncratic notion of dialogue–one that, by laying claim to the prophet’s mantle, will not allow the possibility that one could be wrong and one’s opponent right.  When TEC acts, TEC acts (according to TEC) in the power of the Holy Spirit; and when TEC speaks, TEC speaks (according to TEC) in the power of the Holy Spirit. To be in opposition, therefore, is to oppose both the Holy Spirit and the justice it is God’s purpose to bring to the world. (Read here)
 
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Catholic parish to host Episcopal Church ordination of gay rights proponent

August 14th, 2010 Jill Posted in Gay Activism, TEC Comments Off

From Catholic Culture

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will ordain an Episcopal cleric from New York State as the Episcopal bishop of Alaska on September 4. The ceremony will take place at a Catholic parish in Anchorage.

Until recently, Lattime was a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester’s Committee for Gay and Lesbian Ministry, which “seeks to further the cause of recognition and legitimization of lesbian and gay relationships within the church and in civil society.” Lattime is married and has three children.

“Catholic churches are consecrated or blessed buildings which have an important theological and liturgical significance for the Catholic community,” the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity notes in its 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism. “They are therefore generally reserved for Catholic worship. However, if priests, ministers or communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church do not have a place or the liturgical objects necessary for celebrating worthily their religious ceremonies, the diocesan Bishop may allow them the use of a church or a Catholic building and also lend them what may be necessary for their services.”

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The Via Media Movement: No Orthodoxy — We’re Episcopalian!

August 12th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

Bishop Mark LawrenceBy A S Haley

In February, after Bishop Mark Lawrence published the correspondence between his Chancellor and Mr. Thomas Tisdale, who called himself "South Carolina counsel for the Episcopal Church", I put up a post entitled "What in the World Is Going on in South Carolina?" I asked how it could be that the Presiding Bishop and her Chancellor had hired their own attorney to investigate Bishop Lawrence's actions, unless there were some kind of a move afoot to lay charges of "abandonment of Communion" against the good Bishop. Such a move, if taken before there was any action by the diocesan convention toward leaving the Church, would have eerie parallels to what the Presiding Bishop and her Chancellor had done in the case of then-Bishop Robert Duncan, of the Diocese of Pittsburgh

Let it never be said that Episcopalians are ones to let a good title go to waste. For the Episcopal Forum of South Carolina, a group first organized in 2003 as a counterweight to reaction in the Diocese to the confirmation of the election of the Bishop of New Hampshire, soon announced a series of forums across the State in April and May of this year, entitled "What in the World Is Going on in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina"?

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A message from Bishop David Anderson

August 12th, 2010 Jill Posted in American Anglican Council, Anglican Church in North America, TEC Comments Off

From AAC

There is much positive progress to report in the Anglican realignment, with the orthodox Anglicans coming together and becoming stronger. The maturing of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is proceeding apace and showing that it has real staying power. At our recent meeting in Amesbury, Massachusetts, the ACNA gathering took part in the installation of Bishop Bill Murdoch as the diocesan in his new pro-cathedral. The feeling as the service progressed was "this is us"-this is the ACNA growing and expanding, and now the New England area has a cathedral and a settled bishop.

Additionally the ACNA approved and welcomed two applicant dioceses, the Anglican Diocese of the Great Lakes (ADGL) and the Anglican Diocese of the South (ADOTS). These dioceses have the potential of having some churches fully seated as members, and other churches maintaining ties to another ACNA judicatory for the time being-having dual citizenship if you will. In ADOTS, some of the churches that I have covered as a CANA bishop are maintaining ties to CANA, but are also partner parishes with the new diocese. This allows a transition time that avoids abrupt endings of established relationships.

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Diogenes’ Quiz

August 7th, 2010 Jill Posted in Roman Catholicism, TEC, sex Comments Off

By Diogenes, Catholic Culture

An Episcopalian bishop has been restored to authority in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, despite an earlier suspension for his gross mishandling of sex-abuse complaints. An ecclesiastical tribunal found that the bishop could not be deposed for his misconduct, because it occurred 35 years ago and the statute of limitations had tolled. The decision came down on Wednesday. What do you suppose happened on Thursday?
  • The major television networks led their morning news coverage with the story?
  • The New York Times launched a 5-part series of front-page reports on sexual abuse in the Episcopal Church?
  • SNAP held a press conference demanding that the Diocese of Pennsylvania turn over files on all clerics accused of abuse?
  • Time questioned whether the whole mess would forever mar the legacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury?
  •                    or
  • Nothing. These are Episcopalians. Sexual abuse by non-Catholics is a non-story.

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TEC Bishops Supporting Proposition 8 Ruling

August 7th, 2010 Jill Posted in Gay Marriage, Marriage, TEC Comments Off

Hat Tip: AAC

"Justice is advancing thanks to today's ruling affirming Californians' constitutional right to marriage in faithful, same-gender relationships." – Bishop Jon Bruno, Diocese of Los Angeles (Episcopal Life Online)

Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real in central California said in a statement that she was 'celebrating the overruling of Prop. 8 along with other supporters affirming that same-sex couples have the constitutional right to marriage. Our policy of blessings in the diocese for same-sex couples has been in effect for years and will continue.'" (Episcopal Life Online)

Addressing those gathered at a rally at San Francisco's City Hall, Bishop Marc Andrus said:  "So, today Jesus says to you, 'Congratulations, you who have been mourning! You are being comforted! Congratulations all of you who have been hungering and thirsting for righteousness! Aren't you feeling filled and nourished now?' . . . All these congratulations and blessings are so that we can keep on moving, to extend congratulations to LGBT people in places where persecution is still intense, to use our great energies to help children get food and education, to give strength and support to women everywhere, to fight world-class diseases like HIV/AIDS, to heal the wounded planet. We rejoice today, and tomorrow we continue the fight, lending our strength, the blessing of God, to those who need it." (Diocese of California)

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The Way TEC Does Business: Let The Buyer Beware!

August 7th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

By Philip Turner, ACI

The meeting of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (hereafter the Standing Committee) has just finished its deliberations. It was reported in The Standing Committee Daily Bulletin that Dato’ Stanley Isaacs had proposed, “The Episcopal Church (hereafter TEC) be separated from the Communion.”  This proposal was rejected because it was believed, “Separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces.”
 
This brief notice is yet another signal that the Anglican Communion stands in unparalleled danger. The way in which TEC does business poses a serious threat to the evangelical and catholic identity of our Communion.  I write to point out the nature of that threat and to call upon those responsible for its future health to take vigorous steps to halt an increasingly obvious attempt by TEC to remake the Anglican Communion over in its own image.
 
For the sake of clarity, I wish to make several things clear.  First, I write as a person who has not left the Episcopal Church and does not intend to do so.  Second, I write as one who has for more than 30 years opposed the theological and ethical directions TEC has taken.  Third, I do not write to convince either group that they have taken a wrong direction.  I wish it were possible to do so. Sadly, it is not.  The progressives within TEC have already proclaimed that history is on their side and that they are acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Those who have left have laid claim to an unquestionable orthodoxy and become self-declared defenders of the faith.  Serious discussion with both groups has become a virtual impossibility.  My hope is that in the midst of the present ideological warfare, faithful reason will prevail, and that a way will be found both to hold TEC’s ambitions in check and maintain the evangelical and catholic identity of Anglicanism.  My hopes and prayers in respect to these matters focus particularly on the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates, and the leaders from the Global South who represent the largest and most vital part of the Anglican Communion.  I write with these men and women particularly in mind.
 
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Killing a Church

August 4th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

By Mark Tooley, American Spectator

Virginia's Supreme Court recently ruled against conservative former Episcopal Church congregations trying to keep their property as members of a new theologically orthodox Anglican denomination. Hundreds of local churches across America are agonizing over whether to remain in the old and increasingly heterodox Episcopal Church or depart, potentially losing venerable church properties.

Former Dallas Morning News editor and current syndicated columnist William Murchison remains in the old denomination. He published his book about the Episcopal Church just in time for the denomination's implosively historic 2009 General Convention, which officially sanctioned gay clergy and same-sex unions. Himself a long-time active Episcopalian in the theologically orthodox Diocese of Dallas, and partial to the church's Anglo-Catholic wing, Murchison sagely traces the church's fall from America's most culturally elite church to an increasingly marginal, though still highly entertaining religious sideshow.

The Episcopal Church's current crisis technically began with its 2003 election of openly homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson, igniting growing tensions with the nearly 80 million member Anglican Communion, especially its increasingly dominant and conservative African members. But Murchison traces the church's wrong turn to the 1960s, when Episcopal elites increasingly chose for cultural conformity rather than cultural transformation. Like other Mainline Protestant elites, Episcopalians began to shed "exclusivist" claims about Christianity in favor of pluralism, where every ideology has a voice except for orthodoxy.

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Episcopal Head Talks Conflict, Diversity, Immigration

July 29th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

By Lillian Kwon, Christian Post

The existence of conflict in the church is a sign of health and vitality, the head of The Episcopal Church told a live Web audience Wednesday.

"If there's no conflict, it means that we're dead," said Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. "There has always been push and pull in the church. It's a sign that the diversity among us is passionate and that is a gift from God, not something to be squelched."

The Seattle native was addressing Episcopalians and the wider public in the first of a series of webcast conversations, which have been designed to foster better understanding in the church and to address current issues.

Jefferts Schori had just returned from a meeting in London involving a number of Anglican primates – chief bishops of the Anglican Communion's 38 provinces – and others on the Standing Committee. During the July 23-27 meeting, committee members rejected a proposal that The Episcopal Church be separated from the rest of the global body. Cutting the U.S. church would inhibit dialogue on sexuality issues and therefore would be unhelpful, they agreed.

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Anglican Communion Standing Committee Gives A Pass to Episcopal Church

July 28th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council, TEC Comments Off

Canon Kenneth KearonBy David W. Virtue, Virtueonline

Despite a proposal from orthodox Anglican leader Dato Stanley Isaacs from the Province of South East Asia that the American Episcopal Church be separated from the rest of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues, Committee members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (aka the Anglican Communion Office) rejected the plea, arguing it "would inhibit dialogue and … would therefore be unhelpful."

While rejecting the proposal, Standing Committee members agreed to defer further discussion on the matter until progress on a listening project had been considered. Currently, Anglicans worldwide are participating in "The Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Project," which is intended to open the ears of Anglicans to the experiences of homosexual persons, according to a July 26 bulletin from the Anglican Communion Office.

The committee, which included the Archbishop of Canterbury, met in closed sessions July 23-27 at the Anglican Communion Office in London.

Once more no one is prepared to exercise godly discipline on the Episcopal Church for its blatant defiance of the Windsor Report and a Covenant in the process of being ratified by all the provinces of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues which has seen TEC defy the communion not once, but twice by electing an avowed homosexual and lesbian to the episcopacy. The open defiance of the communion's requested Moratorium is met with muted outrage as no one is prepared to put their foot down and lay down the law, largely because the communion's Instruments of Unity are stacked with liberals and token orthodox believers who get shot down if they should so much as raise their voices. Witness what happened to Isaacs.

Groaned one English cleric, "Why, oh why, oh why is TEC permitted to retain such influence in a Communion in which it is an insignificant flea on the rump of the orthodox majority?"

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Presiding bishop preaches at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London

July 26th, 2010 Jill Posted in Church of England, TEC Comments Off

By Matthew Davies, Episcopal Life Online

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori challenged those attending Sung Eucharist at historic St. Paul's Cathedral here July 25 to be "ready, willing and able" to speak out and take action against the world's injustices and indignities.

"Prophetic work is about more abundant life for the whole world, and it is about a home everywhere, a home for all," she said during her sermon for the feast of St. James. "Prophetic work is about challenging human systems that ignore or deny the innate dignity of all of God's creation … We lose our dignity when we tolerate indignity for some … The work of the cross is the most life-giving journey we know. Are you ready, willing and able?"
 
The motto "ready, willing and able," she explained, is used by the Doe Fund, a New York-based organization that helps to transform the lives of those affected by homelessness, poverty, poor education, alcoholism and drug addiction.
 
There is a human tendency, she said, "to insist that some are not worthy of respect, that dignity doesn't apply to the poor, or to immigrants, or to women, or Muslims, or gay and lesbian people."
 
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American woman bishop visits Wales

July 25th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC, Women Bishops Comments Off

By David Williamson, WalesOnline

WOMEN should be represented at all levels of the church, the most powerful Anglican in the US has said during a visit to Wales.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has been a personal guest of Archbishop of Wales Barry Morgan, whose conviction that church leadership should not be a male-only preserve she shares.

The US church’s support for bishops in homosexual relationships has sparked conflict with traditionalists and the communion, which has adherents in more than 160 countries, is threatened with schism.

Critics see Bishop Schori’s church as responsible for the potential detonation of the international network, but she said she believed the changes ahead would reshape Anglicanism for the better.

She said: “I think the Anglican Communion is in the process of growing up and evolving into a set of relationships that will serve the wider church in the third millennium.”

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21 Lessons Learned during the Lawsuit

July 17th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

By Matt Kennedy, Stand Firm

16. Never express bitterness or resentment toward the judge, the diocese, the bishop or anyone else to the congregation. Resentment spreads like gangrene and the last thing you need when everything is all over, is a bitter, angry congregation. That’s the quickest way to die. Here’s the attitude I wanted my people to have: “God has entrusted us with this time of struggle and sacrifice. We must glorify him by forgiving and loving those who persecute us. This is not a tragedy it is an honor and a privilege to be called to lose everything so that we may walk with Jesus in his way.” I preached that, taught it, and counselled it. Resentment, while present, has not been a major problem.

The 21 items below represent some of the lessons I've earned over the past two years of legal turmoil; the fruit of failures, idiotic mistakes, and successes. It is written from a pastor's perspective and it is intended to help pastors who face or who are preparing to face similar circumstances. It is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it's a start. I think I probably learned more in the last two years about leadership in the church than I could have learned in ten years of peaceful service.

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ECUSA Defies Texas Courts

July 8th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

By A S Haley

The arrogance and hubris that characterize ECUSA's legal strategy are nowhere on better view right now than in the courts of Texas, where there are two lawsuits pending in which it is involved — one in Hood County, and one in Tarrant County. ECUSA has lost key battles in both of them, but is acting as though those losses never happened.

In the case in the District Court of Hood County, the dispute is over the proceeds from a trust established in 2002 by Cynthia Brants for the benefit of "St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, or its successor, of Fort Worth." In 2008, St. Andrew's was one of the parishes that voted with the majority of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth to withdraw from its affiliation with ECUSA to align with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. After ECUSA's Presiding Bishop pronounced that she had accepted the "voluntary renunciation of his orders" by Bishop Jack L. Iker, she called an illegal "special convention" to install Bishop Gulick as his replacement. Thus installed — in open defiance of all applicable canons and constitutional provisions of both ECUSA and the Diocese — Bishop Gulick proceeded to inhibit all the clergy who, he asserted, had "abandoned the communion of this Church" to realign with the Southern Cone.

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A message from Bishop David Anderson

July 3rd, 2010 Jill Posted in American Anglican Council, Archbishop Of Canterbury, Church of England, Divorce, TEC, Women Bishops Comments Off

Bishop David AndersonFrom AAC

Beloved in Christ,
 
In an article posted on Anglican Mainstream by Charles Raven of SPREAD, the following quote appears which is quite apropos to the Anglican Church in a spiritual and organizational sense: "London's Lambeth Council has some helpful advice on its website about dangerous structures: 'If you notice a building or structure that appears to be in a dangerous condition, or in serious neglect, an engineer will inspect the problem and take the necessary action. If the structure is unsafe, but there is no immediate danger, then the owner will be contacted to make it safe – if they don't, they may face enforcement action.' "
 
It occurs to me that there is still another possibility: that the structure is unsafe and there IS immediate danger. In that case, usually the building is cordoned off with police tape and the occupants are forbidden to enter even to retrieve their personal effects. The Church of England is dangerously close to moving from the example cited by Charles Raven, to the more extreme.
 
The Church of England is struggling with several significant issues, but so far has been unable to come to a working accommodation on any of them. The issue of women bishops threatens to tear the Church of England apart in structural, organic ways for which I can't remember a parallel. That could well plunge the shrinking church into litigation over property, loss of ecclesial licenses to function, loss of pensions and parsonages, etc. Then there is the emerging issue of permitting the appointment of divorced clergy to episcopal positions; this issue seems to be tracking the footsteps of The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States, as does the women bishops issue. Since the case of TEC demonstrates so clearly where this footpath goes, and what pitfalls and moral dilemmas lie ahead, it is questionable why anyone who can see past their crozier would wish to reach the same destination.
 
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Standing Committee membership, resignations confirmed by Anglican Communion Office

July 2nd, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, TEC Comments Off

By Matthew Davies, ENS

The Anglican Communion Office has announced that two new members will serve on the Standing Committee beginning with the July 23-27 meeting in London: Bishop Paul Sarker, moderator of the Church of Bangladesh and bishop of Dhaka; and the Rev. Canon Janet Trisk, rector of the parish of St. David, Prestbury, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Trisk was elected at the last Standing Committee meeting to replace Nomfundo Walaza, also from South Africa, and Sarker is the elected alternate for Middle East President Bishop Mouneer Anis, who resigned his membership in February saying that his presence has "no value whatsoever" and that his voice is "like a useless cry in the wilderness."
 
The July 2 release also confirmed that Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda and his elected alternate, Archbishop Justice Akrofi of West Africa, have resigned from the Standing Committee.
 
In April, Orombi wrote a letter to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams raising concerns that the Standing Committee has assumed "enhanced responsibility" and expressing his dismay that its membership includes representatives from the U.S.-based Episcopal Church.
 
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Owning One’s Own Actions with Grace

July 2nd, 2010 Jill Posted in Archbishop Of Canterbury, TEC Comments Off

By Ephraim Radner, from Covenant Forums

Over the past few weeks, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC), Katharine Jefferts Schori, has responded pointedly to the removal of TEC’s members from Anglican Communion commissions dealing with ecumenical relations and matters of the Communion’s “faith and order.” The removal itself was announced at the end of May in a letter to the Communion by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It was later explicated by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, during visits to the Canadian church’s General Synod, and TEC’s Executive Council. At issue, of course, is TEC’s decision earlier this year to go forward with the consecration of a partnered lesbian, Mary Glasspool, as a bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles. And this decision, according to Archbishop Williams and Canon Kearon, is one that goes counter to a consistently articulated position by Communion councils. These councils have, over and over, insisted that church affirmations of same-sex partnerships are, on the basis of Scriptural teaching, contrary to the “mind of the Communion,” and therefore that e.g. the consecration of partnered homosexual bishops and church-administered same-sex blessings should cease among member churches.

Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori’s response has criticized Archbishop Williams’ decision on several grounds. Here, let me address just three of her objections: first, that the Archbishop’s actions represent a move towards “centralization” within the Communion, viewed especially in terms of the application of “sanctions” against member churches; second, that in removing TEC members from the Communion commissions in question, the Archbishop has somehow acted as if the proposed Anglican Covenant now before the Communion’s churches were already in effect when it is not; third, that a proper understanding of the Communion’s life would entail the maintenance of diversity among Anglican churches, rather than the (punitive) pursuit of “uniformity.”

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TEC: development of theological resources and liturgies for same-sex blessings

July 2nd, 2010 Jill Posted in Same-sex blessings, TEC Comments Off

From ENS

The Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music June 28 announced the names of task force leaders charged with leading the development of theological resources and liturgies for same-sex blessings, according to a news release.

The church's General Convention in 2009 passed Resolution C056, which authorized the House of Bishops, in conjunction with the SCLM, to devise an open process that would invite church-wide participation in collecting and developing the resources.
 
The commission is to report its efforts to the next meeting of General Convention, in 2012.
 
SCLM has established three task groups: a liturgical resources group; a pastoral/teaching resources group; and a theological resources group, according to the release.
 
The leaders are:
 
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TEC Announces Members of Task Force to Create Liturgies for Same-Sex Blessings

June 29th, 2010 Jill Posted in Gay Marriage, TEC Comments Off

By Greg Griffith, Stand Firm

It's a source of frustration for me – and no doubt a source of joy for our Worthy Opponents – that no matter how brazen or successful or disruptive they are in advancing their agenda, there seems to be nothing that triggers any sort of pushback from the Beloved Moderates – on whom, like their counterparts in secular political elections, the ultimate outcome of changes such as these rest. But there we are: In about 20 years, the Episcopal Church has gone from a few rogue priests doing gay "marriages" disguised as home blessings, to a task force that in two short years will develop and present for approval by General Convention, liturgies for same-sex blessings.


When I see things like this, I can't help but think of our Beloved Moderates.

Twenty-five years ago, if you had told them that the Episcopal Church would, in their lifetimes, allow rogue priests in faraway parishes to do same-sex blessings disguised as "home blessings," they would have scoffed at you. Yet it happened, and the practice grew.

Twenty years ago, if you had told these same Beloved Moderates that, the practice of disguising same-sex blessings as "home blessings" having grown by leaps and bounds, some priests in faraway parishes had taken to blessing same-sex unions in their churches, the reaction would have been more scoffing but, faced with the facts, a wave of the hand and some mumbling about "it could never happen in OUR diocese." Yet the number of diocese in which same-sex blessings were being allowed grew from zero, to now approaching two dozen.

 
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Behind the News: an Enormous Gamble

June 28th, 2010 Jill Posted in TEC Comments Off

By A S Haley, Anglican  Curmudgeon

The recent meeting of ECUSA's Executive Council in Maryland has garnered a lot of media attention because of the impromptu visit to it by the Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion, the Rev. Canon Kenneth G. Kearon. Canon Kearon was on vacation at the time he was prevailed upon to attend a question-and-answer session, with all-too-predictable results. The members of the Executive Council asked him questions, but they did not like the answers, and soon stopped listening — as is evident from all the snide and insulting reports they have since blogged about the encounter, to which I shall not link here.

(Was it worth it, Canon Kearon? Welcome to the club.)

For a look at what really went on at the meeting of the Executive Council, we can take the official press accounts only as a point of departure, and then fill in the gaps. When one takes the effort to do this, the picture that emerges is very different indeed from the one ENS tries to sell you.

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