The General Convention met in the home of Mickey Mouse and some have come back trying to take the rest of us spinning on the Mad Hatter’s Tea Ride. It strains credulity that there are Bishops and Deputies returning from GC 2009 acting as if or outright saying or naively hoping that nothing changed in Anaheim. Life for the Anglican Communion as we knew it changed here:
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. (2009 GC Res. D025)
No General Convention did not overturn B033; it passed a resolution which superseded it. It superseded B033 in that resolve just referenced. Up until that point the resolution could have been characterized as simply descriptive. The aforementioned resolve is not descriptive of a conversation but states a settled theological position, “God has called and may call.”
It is ironic that the resolution refers to the discernment process. No person gay or otherwise would be recommended for ordination if a Vestry, Rector, Standing Committee, and Commission of Ministry all said that they didn’t sense a calling. And yet here we are passing a resolution which as we all painfully know [because it is referring to someone in a non-celibate partnership] that the Communion, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox Churches as well as most of the Protestant denominations don’t agree and will never agree.
The proletariat need not agree; THE elite have spoken; God had better listen, too, or they’ll snub him.
I continue to be astounded that there is a belief that if General Convention decides something or other it is therefore the voice of God. “The voice of the people is the voice of God” seems to be the TEC mantra, harking back to a defunct pagan empire. Ergo the mores of a chosen culture is holy. Presumptious is a mild term for such thinking.