Bishop John Bauerschmidt of Tennessee requested the roll call vote before urging bishops to defeat the resolution. “It is reasonable to believe that vowed fidelity that is exclusive and lifelong to one other person is predicated on sexual difference,” he said. “This liturgy that is proposed does not have the basis in scripture, tradition or reason for us to authorize its use.”
The resource would authorize the liturgy for provisional use and call upon the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) to conduct a review process over the next triennium.
“That will mean different things in different locales,” Bishop Thomas Ely of Vermont said when discussing the resolution. “There is a place in this process for every Episcopalian regardless of their level of support for the material. Read it. Reflect upon it. Use it, but please don’t ignore it.”
This headline seems disingenuous. They did not merely “approve resources.” They authorized a liturgy. Using an uncanonical process.
BIG DIFFERENCE.
Words matter.
Not if you are Humpty Dumpty. Then they merely mean what you want them to mean when you use them and without any requirement for consistency between uses.
However, the money quote here is “Please don’t ignore them” – a blatant statement of what the approving bishops were after (even if only for one news cycle) – attention. Maybe they can frame the newspaper accounts to remember the occasion! That will make them “feel” important transiently.