The Anglican world is about to be plunged into a new crisis over sexuality as the American Diocese of Colorado ordained an openly gay and partnered priest yesterday.
Under terms agreed between member Churches of the Anglican Communion, there is a moratorium on ordaining further openly gay people, but Bishop Robert O’Neill (pictured) ordained Mary Catherine Volland, along with three others, to the priesthood at St. John’s Cathedral on Saturday.
If you could see me you would see my ‘not very suprised face’.
What else would you expect from arrogant Episcopalians who believe they are doing the right thing when they follow their personal feelings over the clear teaching of holy scripture and the teaching of the Universal Church throughout the ages.
I mean why on earth would they do anything other than progress the pseudo religion they are seeking to replace the faith of the apostles with?
Well, so much for TEC’s honoring of moratoria! They agreed to it, while all along, they had no intention of honoring it! How typical of them!
Actually, the moratorium was against consecration of practicing homosexual bishops. Ordination of practicing homosexual as priests is A-OK with Rowan Williams, apparently.
But I for one am happy with the clarity – “We chose homosexuality over the gospel.”
This was IMO inevitable. The moratorium was never more than temporary in the minds of the powers that be in TEC. In this respect it was rather like the respect for those opposed to w/o. It was inevitable that tolerance for dissent on that subject would eventually come to an end, and it has.
I think this is just the beginning. The flood gates are about to be opened. With the large scale exodus of conservatives from TEC over the last year there is now even less holding back the revisionists. On which I note I concur with Robroy’s observation in #3. Clairity is a good thing.
TEC is once again thumbing its nose at the rest of AC. While I expect nothing to come of it from Canterbury, I do expect the oncoming deluge to provoke a more formal response from the GAFCON provinces. Rowan Williams days of playing the ostrich are coming to an end. He can bury his head in the sand all he wants but this problem is not going away. And if he wont deal with it, others will.
The only question is whether or not when its over, Canterbury will still occupy its place at the head of anything resembling what has been the Anglican Communion. My guess is that it will not.
Under the mercy,
[url=http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/]John[/url]
An [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4pUphDitA]Orthodox [/url] Christian
Moratorium? More like an [b]ignoratorium[/b].
Any Communion Partner clergy from Dio. of Colorado or elsewhere care to comment on how you plan to witness to this latest action from the bishop?
This will make the vote in favor of the new province much easier at that next Primates meeting.
In His Peace
Jim Elliott <>< Florida
Oh for heaven’s sake … “agreed terms on a moratorium on ordaining further openly gay people” my alb!
Efforts to keep schismatics at the table have failed. The rest of the church is moving on. Including Colorado. Blessings on them!
#7 Susan Russell,
“Efforts to keep schismatics at the table have failed”. Could you clarify what you mean by this statement? Thanks.
I must have missed the memo: I don’t recall any moratorium on ordaining openly-gay priests (as opposed to bishops).
[i] Efforts to keep schismatics at the table have failed [/i]
Fie on that ungrateful rabble!
Yep, they’re moving on and studiously ignoring the fact that they’re shedding dioceses, churches, clergy and faithful. Oh, well, huh?
When I was channel-surfing a few weeks ago, I got caught up in an episode of “My Fair Brady,” embarrassingly enough. It happened to be the episode in which Christopher Knight (Peter Brady) and his fiancee were looking for a place to hold their wedding. She chose Christ Episcopal in some California city — a beautiful, old gothic church. HOWEVER, it is just a building now. Someone bought it and was removing the altar so he could turn it into a bar. That’s where TEC is going, and it’s very, very sad.
The sky is falling!
To be fair, the Episcopal church agreed only to a moratorium on the consecration of a noncelibate glbt as bishop. The wonderful thing about this action is that it helps clarify to the world the simple truth that the Episcopal church is more interested in being a cult of its own divining rather than part of the Church catholic or even the church Anglican. It will be interesting to see just how “diverse” the theological positions of the parishioners in CO are. A bishop asked conservatives not to show up or discuss it in their congregations? If the diversity is so well tolerated, why the secrecy? Why ask the priests not mention it?
As to Ms. Russell’s claim that the Episcopal church is moving on, I have no doubt. The blessing of transexuals (an underlying theology which claims that God made a mistake in His creation of this person), the blessing of divorces (oops, sorry God, our hearts were hard but we want to sunder what You put together, anyway), the attempts to eliminate references to God as Father, Son, and Spirit, and all kinds of wonderful “innovations” should pick up a pace.
The ‘schismatics’ are the ones who own the table, unfortunately, and are suing everyone who wants to uphold the true Faith once delivered.
Moving forward towards a wrong destination is not progress, either. If one is being told they are on the wrong road, and continues on it, they are not making progress unless they turn around and correct their course to arrive at the RIGHT destination (apologies to C. S. Lewis, who said it better).
DCN Dale, don’t expect a response. Susan is one of those who pops in, makes a controversial statement and pops out again.
“To be fair, the Episcopal church agreed only to a moratorium on the consecration of a noncelibate glbt as bishop.”
No, Rowan put forth the moratoria which firmly secured the equivalency of homosexual bishops and blessings of SSU’s with foreign interventions. But there was no soliciting of assent to these moratoria.
Ms Russell is correct. There was nothing about ordination of homosexual priests. But of course, their should have been. It is simply illogical to ordain homosexual priests but not consecrate homosexual bishops and bless SSU’s. Either homosexuality is condemned or not. (And it is clearly condemned.)
Why didn’t Rowan include a fourth moratorium about not ordaining practicing homosexuals? Perhaps, because it is because he thinks that homosexual unions can be equivalent to Christian (and thus necessarily heterosexual) marriage and that he simply wants to follow the liberal well worn path of establishing facts on the ground firstly.
What were those efforts?
Well, I guess Ms Russell is right, in a way. TEC’s efforts at keeping us “schismatics” at the table HAVE failed. They’ve failed because we refuse to accept their heresies, and they’ve failed because when we point out to them that they HAVE failed because of those heresies, they refuse to admit that they’re WRONG! In other words, “we’re right because we SAY we’re right, we’re the Episcopal Church and WE run things, and you’re wrong because we say you’re wrong, you’re NOT The Episcopal Church, and we STILL run things!”
[i] Comment deleted by elf. [/i]
[blockquote]Fie on that ungrateful rabble! [/blockquote]
Before you know it, they’ll be cancelling the table scraps!
Not to be too flip, but did anyone ever doubt the screeching heretics running TEC would pause for more than the slightest moment before plunging headlong with their apostate cordless bungee jump? It was more likely a race between Chane, Bruno, O’Neill, Sauls, etc. to see who could stick his thumb into the eye of the Communion first.
In a very narrow sense, Susan is right: Anyone with the slightest bit of orthodoxy should depart TEC forthwith and leave it to the sodomites and heretics. Or does anyone think Romans 1: 24-27 isn’t fully at work here?
I think that the message from Susan Russell above is an indication of clarity from ECUSA as to where they intend to be headed.
It amuses me no end that the heretics of the Episcopal “church” refer to the exiting orthodox as “schismatics”. This has been a repetitive them in our local newspaper blogspot covering the Colorado Springs/Denver conflict.
“No news is good news.” Unfortunately, the news keeps coming…
Jeffersonian
[blockquote] Anyone with the slightest bit of orthodoxy should depart TEC forthwith and leave it to the sodomites and heretics. Or does anyone think Romans 1: 24-27 isn’t fully at work here? [/blockquote]
You are absolutely correct. See my comment #6 in the [url=http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/19442/]should I stay or should I go[/url] thread.
Ad Orientem, well done…fleshed out far better than I possibly could have.
Robroy:
I really do think we should make some distinctions here. Not everybody who is opposed to ordaining unmarried non-celibate persons believes homosexuality (same-sex attraction) is condemned by God. In fact, some of us can imagine an homosexual person married to an opposite sex person (difficult, but it does happen) in order to procreate and raise a family.
Going forward, the problem (as I see it) with same-sex marriage is the distortion done to the word marriage. The meaning of the word has always been tied to procreation between a man and a woman. Obviously not every married couple can have children – Ok, so certain exceptions have been made to allow for marriages after divorce, for infertile couples, older people, etc.. But the model upon which these exceptions are made is the youthful first marriage.
My sense is that GLBT people want to appropriate the term marriage without submitting to the gender norms implied in marriage. I can’t imagine gay couples (in general) agreeing that one person would be the bride and the other the groom, for the sake of extending marriage to gays as just another exception based on the youthful first marriage ideal. I also don’t think GLBTs would stand for being considered an exception to the rule, in the way divorced or older people ride the coat-tails of youthful first marriages.
But once the connection to procreation is severed completely, logically I can’t see why other classes of people shouldn’t be allowed to marry. Why, if procreative first marriages aren’t the model shouldn’t same-sex siblings be allowed to marry? Or threesomes? I mean, same-sex siblings can’t have children, so why would there need to be a restriction on this type of thing?
Back to the beginning. I’m not against homosexuals. I don’t believe God condemns them in any greater percentage than others. I am against unmarried non-celibate people being ordained. And I’m against same-sex marriage because it stretches the meaning of the word marriage to incoherence.
“Efforts to keep schismatics at the table have failed.”
Heh.
Too fun. Notice the appropriate passive voice. It’s just like a human resources document from a large corporation. “Efforts to prevent departures from staff have failed.”
Or the post-Stalinist classical Soviet phrase, “Mistakes were made.”
The Diocese of Los Angeles ordained 10 priests last Saturday. Who knows?