Orthophobia?

We have all heard claims of ?homophobia,? ?gay-bashing? and ?hate crimes? against homosexuals, but could there be such a thing as ?orthophobia??an irrational fear of the orthodox, that may itself lead to verbal and physical aggression?

Kenya?s Bishop Simon Oketch of Maseno North Diocese, who was in London during the time of the Episcopal General Convention to speak at a missionary conference, was accosted by two Church of England priests angered by Kenya?s opposition to New Hampshire?s gay Bishop Coadjutor-elect, Gene Robinson.

The encounter ?almost resulted in an exchange of blows before members of the public came to Oketch?s rescue,? reported East Africa Standard.

In Texas, vandals caused fire and considerable other damage at the orthodox Holy Spirit Parish, Graham, in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Police found ?God and Jesus love Homosexuals? written on a wall of the church.

A number of members of an Anglican mission in Peru also were said to have been attacked because of the General Convention?s endorsement of Robinson?s consecration.

A fourth incident, at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, was reportedly witnessed by, among others, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and his wife, Eileen, who were visiting at the time. A homosexual member of the cathedral showed up there with a gun; he was agitated by the fact that the Dean, Paul Zahl, had hung a black flag outside the cathedral in response to the convention?s support for Robinson. The man threatened to wrap himself in the black flag and shoot himself on the high altar. The police were called and were able to disarm him.

As gays just won a battle in the culture war in Minneapolis, conservatives were left to wonder what might have happened had they lost.

Sources included Virtuosity n

Seminary Partnership Formed

The conservative, foreign-sponsored Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) has announced a partnership with Denver Seminary in Englewood, Colorado.

The two organizations have established the Anglican Parish Ministry Program, a cooperative venture dedicated to the academic and professional training of Anglican candidates for ministry within the AMiA.

?I have been working with students and graduates of Denver Seminary since 1990,? said AMiA Bishop Alexander M. (Sandy) Greene. ?They have few equals in terms of academic excellence and spiritual formation. I am even more delighted now that we have an Anglican Studies emphasis to go along with an already outstanding program.?

*WELL KNOWN TELEVANGELIST, The Rev. Dr. Pat Robertson, spoke at the June 7 ordinations of two AMiA clergy in Georgia, providing an encouraging message from 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12. AMiA Bishop Thad Barnum ordained George Hoyle Ivey III as priest and Paul Edward Hogan as deacon at Church of the Messiah, Canton. The candidates were among the first to graduate from the Pathfinders training program. The Pathfinders Institute was established by Church of the Messiah in 2001, to train and equip lay ministers for vibrant leadership within their communities, and also to begin the training and discernment process for those being called to church planting and ordained ministry.

Sources: Denver Seminary release, AMiA n

Announced

Hepworth Elected TAC Primate

The Rt. Rev. John Hepworth, leader of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia (ACCA), is the new primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the largest international Continuing Church fellowship.

Chosen by TAC?s international College of Bishops, Hepworth succeeds Archbishop Louis Falk, who stepped down after 12 years; Falk continues as primate of the Anglican Church in America, TAC?s U.S. province.

Hepworth, 59, who has travelled widely for the TAC, is a past university lecturer whose major area of scholarship is the interaction of religion and politics. He is also a regular commentator on national radio and television in Australia, and has written for the Australian Newspaper. He now leads a global flock that he believes is nearing the 200,000 mark.

Born in Adelaide in 1944, Hepworth was educated at Sacred Heart College. He then followed a common pattern of young Australians in working for some years in England, in his case as a truck driver.

He studied philosophy and theology at St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Seminary, and was ordained deacon and priest by Archbishop Matthew Beovich in 1968.

In 1976, he was received into the Anglican Communion and the Anglican Church of Australia by the Bishop of Ballarat.

After working in parishes in South Australia and Victoria, he resumed his studies, majoring in politics at the University of Adelaide. He also has a Graduate Diploma in religious education from the University of South Australia. His doctoral thesis at the University of Adelaide examines church-state relations in the 20th century.

He was a tutor in politics at the latter university for five years, during which time he was an assistant priest in the Archdiocese of Adelaide. This was followed by five years as inaugural lecturer in politics at the Northern Territory University, during which he was an assistant priest at Darwin Cathedral; and seven years as coordinator of international and regional studies at the University of South Australia.

Hepworth joined the TAC on December 5, 1992, the day on which the first female priests were ordained in Adelaide. He left the university at the end of 1997, following his consecration as bishop in the TAC in 1996. He was elected diocesan bishop in Australia in 1998.

His study of the interaction of religion and politics has been of value in his work for the TAC, on whose behalf he has taken part in talks with the Congregation for Christian Unity at the Vatican. He has also represented the TAC in travels to Canada, Africa, the U.S., Japan and England, where in 1998 he was an observer at the Lambeth Conference.

In March, 1999, he addressed the World Congress of Families in Manila, and signed the Declaration on the Family with Roman Catholic and other religious leaders.

He chairs the Australia-Vietnam Human Rights Committee, and in that capacity he addressed the European Parliament on religious persecution in Asia in December 1999.

He was elected as a delegate to the Australian Constitutional Convention in February, 1998.

Hepworth?s wife, Dr. Ieva Stupans, is an associate professor in pharmacy at the University of South Australia. The couple has three children, Anna (11), Alexander (16) and Nicholas (22).

At deadline, no date had yet been set for Bishop Hepworth?s installation as TAC primate.

Falk Lauded

Hepworth praised the efforts of his predecessor, Archbishop Falk, who began with ?three smallish? provinces and ?the determination that the great tradition of Anglicanism had a future.?

?He leaves the primacy with the TAC as a global force,? Hepworth said of Falk. ?It is part of Anglicanism?s future, and therefore a part of the Christian future. We are a...real Communion proclaiming the one, holy, catholic and apostolic faith of the Creed,? and doing so in languages as diverse as Hindi and Xhosa.

?We have churches in North America and Central America, in Southern and Central Africa, in Japan and England and Ireland, in Australia and its Torres Strait, in India and Pakistan,? he said.

During his tenure, Falk had also ?laid the foundations for conversations? with Canterbury and Rome, and oversaw the concordats that brought the TAC into full communion with traditionalist Forward in Faith organizations in the U.K., Australia, and North America. In this, Falk kept the TAC from becoming a ?comfortable ghetto,? rather compelling it to look outward toward ?the mission,? Hepworth said.

?His is the work that our Japanese bishop recently described as ?a gift of God.??

Sources included The Messenger

Alfred Woolcock: A Godly Bishop Called ?Home? At Age 93

The Rt. Rev. Alfred Woolcock, the former leader of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC), a Continuing Church body, died July 1 at the age of 93.

Bishop Woolcock had just celebrated the 70th anniversary of his ordination a few weeks earlier, on Trinity Sunday. And despite his advanced years, he was present at Mass regularly, and either preached or celebrated on most Sundays.

On Trinity I, he had a massive stroke from which he did not recover.

Alfred was the youngest son of a Cornish family. He cherished the memory of his boyhood parish, dedicated to St. Phillack (a corruption of Felicity, the martyr of 2nd century Rome).

Woolcock?s ministry was not only long but multi-national and diverse.

During World War II, he was appointed chaplain to the Royal Hampshire Regiment, with whom he saw service in Northern Ireland, North Africa, Sicily, the Italian campaign, the Holy Land, and Poland. He finished the war a much decorated soldier.

From his ordination in 1933 until his ?retirement? in 1974, Bishop Woolcock served a number of parishes within the ?official? Anglican fold in the U.K. and different parts of Canada.

While serving as Archdeacon of Saskatchewan, Canon Residentiary of Prince Albert Cathedral and Bishop?s Commissary for Indian Parishes, he learned Cree and travelled much across prairies that presented harsh conditions in both winter and summer.

In 1984, long after his ?retirement,? Bishop Alfred became the second Bishop of the ACCC, a part of the Traditional Anglican Communion. He succeeded Bishop Carmino deCatanzaro and was succeeded in 1989 by Bishop Robert Mercer, C.R.

From 1987-88 he also oversaw the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia, a role he passed on to Bishop Albert Haley when he consecrated him.

In 1984 Woolcock founded the ACCC Parish of the Good Shepherd, Oshawa, which he served as rector for 19 years, until his death, and where his funeral was held.

?He died with his boots on, aged 93, still rector of Good Shepherd...still lifting weights, doing tai chi exercises, driving a car and looking after himself at home; still zone chaplain to the Royal Canadian Legion,? said Bishop Mercer.

Quoting Matthew 25:21, Mercer said: ?Well done, thou good and faithful servant, Enter into the joy of thy Lord.?

Bishop Woolcock was preceded in death by his wife, Eleanor. He is survived by a daughter and a son.

Williams Reaffirms Support

For Women Bishops

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recently reaffirmed his personal support for the consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England, but said the final decision rested with the church as a whole.

?I cannot find any theological objection myself to women becoming bishops if we accept women becoming priests,? Dr. Williams said July 2 at a church gathering in Trondheim, Norway.

?The question is in what way and at what pace is that appropriate,? he said. ?...I wait to see what is possible and listen to those on all sides.?

The C of E started ordaining women as priests in 1994, but has not yet approved women bishops. Only three of the 38 Anglican provinces?the U.S., Canada and New Zealand?already have female bishops; the Scottish Episcopal Church just voted to accept them. The Anglican Churches in Ireland, Brazil, Mexico and Southern Africa have made women bishops canonically possible, but have yet to appoint any.

The issue is being considered in the C of E by a working party, the Rochester Commission, which is due to report in 2004 or 2005.

?Committed To...Two Integrities?

Despite his own stand on the issue, though, Dr. Williams has backed the consideration of proposals for a separate province for those opposed to women bishops.

Forward in Faith-U.K. has advanced such a proposal because, it says, the admission of female bishops would render current provisions for women priest opponents inadequate.

Notably, as well, Dr. Williams has spoken warmly recently about those no longer in full communion with ?official? Anglicanism due to theological objections to women?s ordination, reports The Messenger, the publication of the global Continuing Church alliance, the Traditional Anglican Communion.

In a recent letter to one TAC bishop, Williams wrote that he is ?deeply committed? to supporting ?the ?two integrities,???Anglicans on both sides of the women?s ordination issue?however regrettable such a situation might be.

Moreover, he acknowledged that ?questions about relations between the ?traditional? jurisdictions and the See of Canterbury... will have to be clarified soon.?

TAC?s new primate, Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, said that Archbishop Williams appears to recognize that there is legitimacy in traditional Anglicans following their conscience on the matter of women?s ordination. He also may be seeking to help alleviate what Hepworth termed ?a profoundly hurtful split under the previous two Archbishops of Canterbury.?

?I will be seeking the mind of my fellow bishops on an approach to Canterbury,? Hepworth said. ?Without betraying [any] of our principles, it would seem that the witness of Anglican Christians in the world has everything to gain by ending the persecution and intolerance endured in so many places by those who believe as we do.?

Sources also included Anglican Communion News Service, Ecumenical News International

Britain Could See First

Woman Bishop Next year

The first female Anglican bishop in Britain could be in place as early as next year, after an overwhelming vote by the Synod and all prelates of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The SEC?s June decision for women bishops was expected to increase pressure for the Church of England to follow suit.

Only 24 members of the SEC Synod voted against women bishops, while 124 backed them. The decision ?ended centuries of tradition,? a church spokesman proudly stated.

Among those who took part in the Synod?s debate, Prof. David Atkinson, an Edinburgh layman, said that ?common sense, fairness...and our ability to be effective in our ministry and mission, which needs to be seen as in touch with and understanding of society, dictate that we must pass this change to our canons.?

The Rev. Ruth Edwards of the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney said female bishops must follow from the ordination of women as deacons and priests, earlier approved by the church. ?It will help our ecumenical work much more if God can call men and women equally to all levels within the church...It is about faithfulness to the truth,? she stated.

David Fuller of the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles strongly rejected the motion and asked for more debate. In such a ?volatile? time of change we ?should try to steer clear of making serious doctrinal mistakes,? he said.

Also calling for more deliberation time was Fr. Trevor Stevens of Forward in Faith-Scotland. During the debate, he said the SEC had not done enough to explore the theological issues, and urged delay in order to learn from a report anticipated next year from a Church of England commission on women bishops.

But it was not to be. SEC?S Primus, the Most Rev. Bruce Cameron, acknowledged that the ?momentous? decision would evoke joy for some and pain for others, and called for sensitivity. But he thought that all SEC members would want to continue as such.

Guidelines for SEC?s College of Bishops maintain that its members will ?be available to help with...matters of pastoral provision and sacramental care.? But traditionalists faced with a woman bishop will be dependent on her willingness to allow the ministry of an alternate male bishop, Fr. Stevens indicated.

The Synod did pledge in a motion that church members theologically opposed to women bishops will always have ?a valued and respected place? within the church.

Interestingly, the same motion said the SEC did not intend by its approval of women bishops to depart from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. But it also sadly acknowledged ?that in seeking to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it has felt called to act without the existence of a consensus on the matter in all branches? of the Universal Church, and expressed ?penitence for the existing divisions within the Body of Christ and for any further division therein which today?s decision may cause.?

Sources: BBC, Anglican Communion News Service, Church Times

?Consequences? Bound To Follow ECUSA Vote, C OF E Bishop Says

?We are facing a very significant realignment? in the Anglican Communion, and the Episcopal General Convention?s approval of Anglicanism?s first actively gay bishop-elect can only catalyze that movement, the Church of England?s Bishop of Rochester told TCC during the convention in Minneapolis.

?Our fellowship with one another is based on our common belief on what scripture teaches, including about moral law, and if we depart from this then that has consequences,? said Bishop Michael J. Nazir-Ali, who was widely said to be on the short list for Archbishop of Canterbury, a selection process that ended with the appointment of Dr. Rowan Williams.

The exact details of those consequences are as yet unclear, but Nazir-Ali believes a significant response is assured.

?The story is not finished yet,? said the conservative, Pakistani-born prelate. ?The primates and their reaction, individually and corporately, will be important, and in light of their responses that of the Archbishop of Canterbury.?

Nazir-Ali was in Minneapolis, not to be an interloper at the General Convention, but to give two addresses at the behest of the American Anglican Council and the U.S. branch of the Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion. But TCC sought him out for a response to the convention?s consent to the consecration of V. Gene Robinson as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire.

Exactly what effect this flagrant repudiation of the global Anglican consensus will have in the Church of England remains to be seen.

But one gauge is likely the C of E?s own recent brush with the possibility of a homosexual bishop?a bitter chapter that ended with the cleric?s decision to decline the appointment as Bishop of Reading in the Oxford Diocese, at the request of Archbishop Williams. The latter is, of course, personally liberal on the issue, but has pledged to uphold church policy on it?a task that has become urgent as serious liberal revolts in Canada and now America threaten to produce what could amount to two Anglican Communions.

There is a ?finely balanced majority? among C of E bishops on the gay issue, Nazir-Ali noted. However, he said that the strength in the C of E is in the Evangelical parishes. It was pressure?theological as well as financial?from them, along with that from a number of diocesan bishops who were ?willing to declare themselves? and from foreign Anglican leaders, that he believes compelled the homosexual appointee to stand down.

?I think that those bishops in England who adhere to the 1998 Lambeth Conference?s orthodox sexuality resolution and our own policy on the issue would see some problem with relations with ECUSA,? the bishop said.

ASKED WHAT HE THINKS about a potential separate province for America?s faithful Anglicans, he said the situation is ?fluid at the moment,? and that he would like to see as little ?confusion? as possible. But ?it?s certainly true,? he added, ?that orthodox Anglicans need to find a way of associating and in due course the Communion will need to recognize it in one way or another.?

Nazir-Ali is, in fact, quite familiar with the concept of a separate province. He leads a working party that will examine all the biblical and theological arguments for and against admitting women bishops in the C of E, the implications of such a move, and the options for handling differences over the issue, including a separate or ?free? province, for which several bodies have proposed plans. The most well known of those comes from the traditionalist Forward in Faith-United Kingdom, which has a working party on the matter with which Nazir-Ali?s panel has been in dialogue.

So far, in the U.K., the separate province has been thought of as comprising largely those who hold orthodox positions on both faith and Holy Order. But in America, where liberal revisionists have now managed to overthrow 2,000 years of church teaching on sexual morality as well, a new paradigm is being sought for both traditionalist and conservative Episcopalians. Those two groups, while they agree on most everything, do not always concur on women?s ordination, an important issue. Can they be successfully meshed?

Nazir-Ali, who himself has supported women?s ordination, agreed that this is a difficulty that will have to be faced and discussed by the two parties.

But he does not think it insurmountable. If both segments of faithful Episcopalians ?are willing to acknowledge each other as orthodox, the difference could be acknowledged and space made for one another so that we can face the much bigger issues that are dividing the church...What unites us is much more important than what divides us,? he said.

Most important, he said, is for the faithful to remain just that? ?faithful to what the gospel has revealed.?

What God has revealed, he reminded, ?is not something arbitrary, but profoundly to do with how the world has been made, how we have been made, and what makes for our flourishing.?

ECUSA?s Actions Spur Angry

Calls Even To Continuers

No doubt about it, ?separated? orthodox Anglican bodies have seen more worshippers following the Episcopal General Convention?s watershed pro-gay decisions, but some of these groups have suffered because of those decisions as well.

So blackened has ECUSA?s convention made the Episcopal and Anglican names, that even some traditional parishes in these extramural bodies have received nasty calls from those who erroneously linked them with the Episcopal Church?s liberalism; one Continuing Anglican congregation was accused by a caller of being ?sodomites.?

?There is serious reaction going on. ?Anglican? is a dirty word right now, because of this, and it hurts our witness,? said the Rev. Charles Nalls, a Washington-area priest of the Anglican Province of Christ the King. ?But we?re the ones who oppose this and warned of it.?

The Most Rev. Louis Falk, primate of the Anglican Church in America, told TCC that he had had ?a number of e-mails [regarding] the Robinson matter which fail to distinguish us from ECUSA?just about equally divided between ?shame on you? and ?Oh, you dear, brave souls.? Bishop Langberg [of ACA?s Northeast Diocese] has had more, and finally decided to put a disclaimer (?it isn?t us?) on our website (ACAHome.org).?

?I have received very angry, belligerent phone calls from Episcopalians in the ECUSA Diocese of Southwest Florida,? expressing ?passionate anger [over] the approval of Gene Robinson,? said Bishop Thomas Patrick McGinley of the Southeast Diocese within the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), a body formed in the late 19th century.

McGinley, who also serves as vicar of St. Paul?s, St. Petersburg, told TCC that the phone calls have all been one-sided, in that their intensely angry ?barrage of words??How could you allow this?!?, ?This is absolutely against what the Bible teaches!?, ?This has been the final straw, I?m never coming back!?, ?You should be ashamed of yourself!? etc.?would not allow me to get a word in edgewise. One gentleman was so distraught that he never heard me say that I agreed with him, that I, too, felt it was against the Bible...the 39 Articles of Religion, and all that I stood for as a reformed, orthodox, biblical, evangelical clergyman. This gentleman just slammed the phone down in my ear.?

It was ?funny in a very tragic way? that the callers had contacted REC?s St. Paul?s, and not the local ECUSA parish by the same name, McGinley said. ?It would seem in their outrage that they misdialed the telephone. [Some] could have been... considering coming back to the church, yet now in their minds that...is no longer an option.?

In San Antonio, Texas, an anonymous caller left a message telling the rector and people of All Saints? Anglican Church ??what our bishops and priests never will,? namely, that we had departed from the scriptures, and were now basically heretics,? said the Rev. Jerry Sherbourne. ?Unfortunately, as the call was anonymous, I could not return it to tell the poor man that he had the wrong number!?

Milton Finch, a Continuing Anglican from Bonneau, South Carolina, told TCC that, while he was not aware of any calls to his church, he personally has had to endure critical ridicule at work from those confused about his affiliation, though it did provide an evangelistic opportunity.

?No less than 20 people have given me effeminate waves in passing by, for they know me to be ?Episcopalian,?? he said.

?It has been an opportunity for me to explain how I feel to them, being a Continuer.?

Road To Gay Bishops

Well-Paved In ECUSA

While many conservatives decry the Episcopal General Convention?s confirmation of an actively gay man as Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire, some have reminded that the election would not have been possible had not open homosexuals already been serving in the Episcopal diaconate and priesthood.

Indeed, such ordinations had been taking place across the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) for a long time before the General Convention gave clear support for them by endorsing Gene Robinson.

Even so, such de rigeur ordinations have continued to startle and anger some faithful laity and clergy?who quickly learn, however, that protests are always to no avail. A few recent examples:

An orthodox priest in the Diocese of Connecticut stood up at a service a few months ago in Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford, to plead with Bishop Andrew Smith not to ordain two non-celibate homosexuals (a man and a woman).

Fr. Ron Gauss, rector of Bishop Seabury Episcopal Church in Groton, said: ?As a priest of this diocese, I ask you not to ordain these two individuals who are living in...unchaste, same-sex relationships,? a fact that makes their ordinations ?uncanonical? and contrary to the scriptures both candidates had declared to be ?the Word of God.?

Unmoved, the bishop proceeded to ordain the two candidates, plus five others, as deacons, with a view to ordaining them to the priesthood within six months.

Fr. Gauss later said that Smith had told him ?he would lobby for such a thing but would do nothing till General Convention approved. He lied.?

Gauss said that his people were more loyal to Jesus than to ECUSA, and as a result he had lost a number of families in his 700-member congregation to more orthodox bodies. He predicted that ECUSA would ?pay a great price? for Robinson?s confirmation.

Michigan Bishop Wendell N. Gibbs Jr. had an answer ready when three persons objected during a June service in which he planned to ordain an active homosexual, David Dean Dieter, a priest.

Gibbs said that he had ?examined the Scriptures,? prayed, and engaged in theological reflection on the matter. From this, he said that he concluded in part ?that everything about [any] ordination comes down to Call. Is the Holy Spirit calling a person to a particular ministry or order of ministry?...

?I acknowledge your concerns and questions,? Gibbs told the objectors, but added that he had ?no doubt...that the discernment of God?s calling to the [priesthood] has been exhaustively examined...by our brother David, and by the required canonical bodies and methods of this church.? That had produced ?several recommendations by clergy, local vestries, medical and psychological examiners, the Commission on Ministry, the Standing Committee, seminary faculty, and of course, his bishop. All of these bodies, in discernment over several years, believe it to be the Spirit?s work, God?s will; therefore, we shall pray and we shall proceed,? Gibbs said.

Some members are reported to have left Christ Church, Grosse Pointe (near Detroit), after the rector, the Rev. Bradford Whitaker, announced that Dieter would serve at the prominent parish, where Whitaker will be his mentor for the next two years.

While parish leaders agreed to the move, Whitaker conceded in a letter to parishioners that ?David?s sexual orientation will be a challenge for some in this parish.? However, he said he was ?confident that we have the compassion and the grace to face? this. Dieter?s ?pastoral skills, vast experience with retirement facilities, education and exceptional talents will bring a variety of gifts to our parish,? Whitaker wrote.

He asked members to welcome Dieter and his ?partner of 20 years, Richard Thomas,? on the new priest?s first Sunday at the parish, June 15.

One parishioner who wrote to say that he and his family were leaving Christ Church after 18 years said he could welcome Dieter as a parishioner, but not as a leader and ?role model? who is ?very visible to our young people.? The parish?s clergy and vestry have ?turned away from 2,000 years of Christian teaching,? but still ?expect everyone else to fall into line. We cannot support you,? the departing parishioner wrote.

During General Convention, a reporter asked if the Episcopal Church still regarded homosexual behavior as a sin. In response, Bishop Gibbs mentioned his June ordination of Dieter, and reprised his conclusions on the matter. ?I think Gene Robinson should be in holy orders as a bishop if he is called by God, and I believe he is called,? Gibbs said.

Apparently, that was a ?no.?

Sources included Virtuosity

ECUSA?s Stand On Gays Leaves

Ecumenical Efforts In Doubt

Report/Analysis

?Who can ECUSA talk to after this gay thing??

That was the way one orthodox Episcopal cleric posed to us a very good question.

What church bodies will still be willing to have ecumenical dialogue with the U.S. Episcopal Church after its convention officially endorsed a practicing homosexual bishop-elect and optional same-sex blessings?

In particular, can established, ongoing dialogues between ECUSA and orthodox bodies?already troubled by women?s ordination?now be anything more than a meaningless exercise?

That certainly seems the likely fate of longtime Anglican-Roman Catholic talks, at least in America.

ECUSA?s confirmation of New Hampshire Bishop Coadjutor-elect Gene Robinson has ?serious implications in the search for Christian unity and for...our bilateral Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue in the [U.S.],? said Bishop Stephen Blaire of California, chairman of the ecumenical and interreligious affairs committee for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In fact, it may have dealt Anglican-Catholic relations a fatal blow, in the view of John Wilkins, editor of the London-based Catholic weekly, The Tablet.

?There comes a point when you can?t go on any more,? Wilkins wrote. ?The two churches are going in opposite directions.?

Indeed, just days before ECUSA?s convention backed Robinson, the Vatican issued a broad denunciation of homosexuality that urged firm opposition to the spread of laws recognizing same-sex couples.

The appeal came in a strongly-worded, 12-page document that was devoted entirely to homosexuality, gay marriage and adoption by gays and lesbians, all hot issues now in North America and Europe.

?There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God?s plan for marriage and family,? the document said. Traditional marriage ?is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law...

?Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior...but would also obscure the basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity,? it said.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is to get a firsthand sense of the damage done by ECUSA?s decisions when he pays his first visit to Pope John Paul II on October 4?just days before he is to discuss the American situation with Anglican primates in London.

NOR IS ECUSA LIKELY TO GET a sympathetic hearing from the Orthodox.

U.S. Presbyterians and Methodists, though continually buffeted by the homosexual issue, seem to be holding the line overall as well.

The Reformed Episcopal Church, a U.S.-based ?separated? orthodox body invited by ECUSA to resume dialogue not long ago, has now said that the General Convention?s pro-gay decisions will ?impair and impede substantive ecumenical dialogue? between the parties. Ironically, the REC-ECUSA dialogue had just been encouraged in a resolution passed at the convention.

It would seem that ECUSA can count on continued cordial relations with its communion partner, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), based on remarks made to ECUSA bishops, just hours before Robinson was confirmed, by ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson (a liberal also recently tapped as president of the 62 million-member Lutheran World Federation).

However, though ELCA seems to be following the same path of ?study? and ?dialogue? that has shaped ECUSA?s gay policies, it still?officially?holds the orthodox line on the homosexual issue. So it would not be surprising if some ELCA members are shocked by ECUSA?s endorsement of gay practice?especially as the ECUSA-ELCA concordat permits the interchangeability of Episcopal and Lutheran ministers, and will require a Lutheran bishop to join in consecrating Robinson.

The pact was already looking a bit shaky, since ELCA has approved measures which ECUSA sees as undercutting the Lutherans? pledge to have bishops involved in all ordinations. A call in Minneapolis for a group to monitor this situation hardly signals the solidity of the ECUSA-ELCA deal.

Overall, ECUSA?s brash defiance of historic sexuality doctrine will undermine the ?credibility of interfaith discourse by Anglicans throughout the world? and imperil the work of Christians in nations with heavy Muslim populations, asserted the Rev. Ephraim Radner, an erudite, conservative Colorado deputy to the Episcopal General Convention. But he thought most delegates disregarded these concerns.

?I don?t think anybody cares? about ecumenical partners, Radner said.

Rather, the common assumption seems to be that ECUSA will lead the way, perhaps in some prophetic mode, and that its ecumenical partners?as well as global South Anglicans who now criticize ECUSA?will in time see the wisdom of its choices.

So, back to the original question. Who?s left out there for ECUSA to talk to? To be sure, diehard ecumenists in all denominations tend to want to gloss over major obstacles to their efforts, and we suspect that longstanding dialogues will be ?officially? continued on some minimal level, even if they are now privately considered a joke.

But it seems to us that, for ECUSA, the only really compatible bodies may narrow down to three: the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian-Universalists, and the gay Metropolitan Community Churches.

Sources included Christianity Today, Kairos News, The Washington Times, CNN, Religion News Service, The Associated Press, Ecumenical News International

Strange ?Diversities?

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn

The recent General Convention in Minneapolis pushed the U.S. Episcopal Church (ECUSA) as far outside orthodox faith and morality as it has ever been. But can it go farther?

Strange new forms of spirituality have gained a foothold within ECUSA?the labyrinth-walking fad, the weird eclectic spirituality practiced at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and the ?creation spirituality? promoted by Matthew Fox, the renegade Dominican whom California Bishop William Swing received as an Episcopal priest in 1994.

All these new movements have set up shop in ECUSA with little organized resistance, and with the open support of members of ECUSA?s hierarchy. The leaders of these spiritual ventures all support Bishop Swing?s controversial United Religions Initiative (URI). ECUSA?s theological troubles, in other words, extend well beyond the sexual issues that are grabbing today?s headlines.

At the Episcopal General Convention recently concluded in Minneapolis, walking ?an outdoor labyrinth? was among suggested ways to reflect on ?reconciliation? during a ?Morning of Prayer.?

But Bishop Swing?s Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, is the center of the labyrinth-walking trend that has spread through New Age workshops, mainline Protestant churches, and Roman Catholic retreat centers and convents. The leader of this movement is Lauren Artress, an Episcopal priest who runs Veriditas, also known as the Labyrinth Project.

Artress, canon for Special Ministries at Grace Cathedral, says that she first encountered the labyrinth in January 1991, when she decided to ?return to a Mystery School seminar with Dr. Jean Houston, an internationally known psychologist, author, and scholar whom I studied with in 1985.? (In the 1990s, Houston was best known to the public as the guru who helped Hillary Clinton contact the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.)

Artress says that ?as soon as I set foot into the labyrinth I was overcome with an almost violent anxiety?; the next morning, she ?awoke, distressed from a dream of having a heart attack.? Nevertheless, she has devoted herself since then to promoting the labyrinth walk as a ?spiritual tool.?

Labyrinths were built into some medieval cathedrals in Western Europe before 1500, but no documentation survives to show how?or whether?Catholics used labyrinths as part of their public liturgies or private devotions. After 1500, most labyrinths were removed from cathedral floors; the Chartres labyrinth is one of the few that has survived from the Middle Ages to the present day. It went unused?and was usually covered with chairs for worshippers?until Artress began taking pilgrims to Chartres in the 1990s. Those who resurrect the labyrinth now are making up a new religious tradition in ancient costume.

The labyrinth movement has long been intertwined with the URI. Barbara Hartford, a URI staff member in San Francisco, accompanied Artress on her first visit to the Chartres labyrinth in the early 1990s. Artress also acknowledges Sally Ackerly, who has been a URI staffer, as one of those who provided ?help in launching the labyrinth.?

Since 1995, labyrinth walks have been common at URI events, including the most recent URI Global Assembly, held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2002 (and attended by, among others, Canada?s Bishop of New Westminster, Michael Ingham, who recently oversaw the first same-sex blessing rite in his diocese).

As promoted by Artress, the labyrinth movement is New Age in form and content. In Walking A Sacred Path, her foundational book on the movement, Artress says, ?The labyrinth introduces us to the idea of a wide and gracious path. It redefines the journey to God: from a vertical perspective that goes from earth up to heaven to a horizontal perspective in which we are all walking the path together.?

?When I am in the center of the labyrinth,? she says, ?I pause to honor and bring into my being first the mineral consciousness, then the vegetable, then animal, human, and angelic. Finally, I come to rest in the consciousness of the Unknown, which is the mystery, the divine pattern of evolution that is unfolding.?

She continues, ?When walking the labyrinth, you can feel that powerful energies have been set in motion. The labyrinth functions like a spiral, creating a vortex in its center.?

Other lifts from her book dig deeper into unorthodox theology:

?The labyrinth is a large, complex spiral circle which is an ancient symbol for the Divine Mother, the God within, the Goddess, the Holy in all of creation. Matriarchal spirituality celebrates the hidden and the unseen. For many of us the feminine aspect of the Divine has been painfully absent from our lives, our spirituality, and our Western culture. The Divine feminine is often the missing piece for which both women and men are searching...

?This Yahweh is supposed to have been the God that created all of the natural order, usurping the role of the Mother, the creator of life. Yahweh, God the Father, is the only version of the Transcendent God that is offered in Western Christianity. He is seen as the first cause of all things, the God of history. He is a faraway God whom we do not know personally. He does not seem to want to know us, either...

?May we lead a spiritual revolution that includes us all, relies on inner wisdom, accepts the guidance of a wisdom tradition, and recognizes compassion as its guiding principle. Let us allow the Father and Mother God to unite in sacred mystery. Let us build a world community in which all people have the opportunity to create meaning in their own lives.?

The literature produced by Veriditas (the Labyrinth Project) since 1995 is as heterodox as Artress? book. The project?s publications (at least those published between 1996-2001) assiduously avoid providing specifically Christian prayers or other content, and rarely mention Jesus.

This is no accident; the mission of Veriditas is, as Artress said in 1995, to promote the labyrinth as ?a universal devotional tool. Anyone from any faith can walk it and find refreshment for the soul and renewal of spirit.? ?You walk to the center of [it] and there...you meet the Divine,? she said in 1996.

She subsequently said that she also sees the labyrinth as ?perfect? for ?helping our global community to order chaos,? because in a divided world it helps people who walk it to ?loosen their strictures and soften their boundaries.?

This all-purpose spiritual tool has the approval of the highest authorities in ECUSA. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, Phoebe Griswold?the wife of ECUSA?s Presiding Bishop?led labyrinth pilgrimages to Chartres Cathedral, under the auspices of the Labyrinth Project.

As of 2001, 13 Episcopal cathedrals had labyrinths, including St. John the Divine in New York, Washington?s National Cathedral, and St. Mark?s in Seattle. Grace Cathedral, San Francisco has two labyrinths. One, a large rug with the labyrinth design, is inside near the cathedral?s baptismal font. The other, made of terrazzo stone and open 24 hours a day, is in the plaza outside between the cathedral and the diocesan office.

More Weird Spirituality

If the labyrinth is not to your taste, how about some Egyptian and Voodoo gods?

Another New Age Anglican supporter of the URI is the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, former dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and now president of the Interfaith Center of New York.

While at the cathedral, Morton said, ?The language of the ?Sacred Earth? has got to become mainline.? In addition to his work with several ?green? organizations, Morton acted on this belief by holding a St. Francis Day communion service in 1993 that invoked the gods Yemanja, Ra, Ausar, and Obatala during a chant just before the bread and wine were brought to the altar; the celebrant was then-New York Bishop Richard Grein. (Yemanja is an Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea; Ra is the Egyptian sun god; Ausar?also known as Osiris and the Green Man?is the Egyptian god of life and death; Obatala is the Voodoo ?Father of Wisdom.?) It was from the pulpit of Morton?s cathedral in 1979 that James Lovelock first announced the Gaia Hypothesis?that the earth as a whole is a living, conscious organism.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, there are the activities of the earlier-noted Matthew Fox.

In 1995, Swing told the diocesan convention that he and Fox were that year ?gathering an ecumenical group to create an alternative liturgy for young adults.? Swing also lent $85,000 of diocesan funds to help Fox establish the University of Creation Spirituality in 1996. As of the spring of 2003, the school had about 200 students enrolled in its doctor of ministry program.

Fox leads rave-inspired, syncretic worship services that are consistent with the ideology of the URI, which he also supports. Each month, more than 1,200 people attend these services, held in a former ballroom in Oakland, California.

?The Techno Cosmic Mass (TCM) has been up and running for five years in Oakland,? he says. ?By altering the form of worship through taking in the elements of rave celebrations, three things happen: First, new life flows through the ancient liturgical formulas, and second, ravers are relieved of the drug aspect of raves and learn they can get high on worship itself. Third, the priesthood is not projected so exclusively onto a single minister but everyone participates in midwifing the grace of the event (no vicarious prayer!). Because everyone dances, everyone offers the priestly sacrifice.

?Themes for the Mass, which attracts not only many kinds of Christians but also Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, Jews, pagans and goddess people, are chosen consciously,? Fox says.

?They include: The Green Man; Imagination, Dreams and Visions; the Return of the Divine Feminine (where we dance in the context of 400 images of the goddess from all the world?s traditions including of course the Black Madonna and Mary from the West); the Celebration of the Sacred Masculine; Gaia (usually on Mother?s Day); the African Diaspora; the Wisdom of Rumi and the Sufi Tradition; Kabbalah and the Jewish Mystical Tradition; Feast of Lights (in December); Celtic Spirituality; Flowers, Plants and Trees; the Holiness of Animals; Our Lady of Guadalupe; The Sacredness of Our Bodies, and more. The themes are of universal attraction just as dancing is and worship is. Dancing of course takes us into our lower charkas [sic] where we literally connect with the earth, and so this kind of worship truly serves an ecological era.?

While not (yet) ?mainstream,? certainly, all of the foregoing is nonetheless included in what liberal leaders often tout as ECUSA?s ?diversity.?

The foregoing is based on a chapter in Mr. Penn?s book-length analysis of the URI and the New Age movement, to be published later this year by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a research organization that monitors international organizations? activities from a pro-life, Catholic perspective. Sources used in this story are available upon request.

ECUSA?s Bishop Swing

Denounces Drugs, And Dogma

Report/Analysis By Lee Penn

After grappling early this year with reports of illegal drug use at one of his parishes?a story first uncovered by THE CHRISTIAN CHALLENGE?liberal California Episcopal Bishop William Swing has issued an important policy statement forbidding any such practices, while also implying that ?dogma? is as destructive as drug use.

As TCC originally reported, the San Francisco parish of St. John the Evangelist, and ultimately the whole Episcopal Diocese of California, were rocked in the winter of 2003 as reports surfaced of illegal drug use during all-night ?rave? dances held at St. John?s since 1996 by a parish group called the Divine Rhythm Society (DRS). It emerged that there was a non-fatal drug overdose at one of the events last year.

Until recently, St. John?s had a cutting-edge liberal rector, the Rev. Kevin Pearson, and its own ?Bishop in Residence,? Otis Charles?the avowedly gay retired Episcopal Bishop of Utah?both of whom were claimed by some witnesses to support the DRS and its alleged notions about using drugs as ?entheogens,? i.e., as ways of enhancing or achieving religious experience.

In the fall of 2002, parishioners? discontent with the activities of the DRS and with Fr. Pearson?s leadership led to a vestry member?s brief detailing evidence in the matter, and an appeal for Bishop Swing to intervene.

Swing?s response, seemingly accelerated by coverage of this story by TCC and then by the San Francisco Chronicle, was to obtain the resignation of Fr. Pearson from his post; to secure the resignation of the entire vestry so that the congregation could elect an entirely new one in February 2003; and to direct that the DRS would have no further ?rave? gatherings at any ECUSA facilities anywhere in his diocese.

Now, St. John?s is seeking an interim rector; Bishop Charles is no longer active in the parish altar party; most adherents of the DRS have left St. John?s; and parish liturgies once again follow the norms of the 1979 Prayer Book and the 1982 Hymnal.

Moreover, Bishop Swing has followed up his decisive action at St. John?s with a stern anti-drug message for the whole diocese, published in the spring 2003 issue of the diocesan magazine, Pacific Church News. The liberal bishop?s message was generally remarkable for its clarity and firmness of purpose.

In ?Drugs and the Diocese of California,? Bishop Swing said, ?The time has come for us to be as specific as possible about drug use. Some teaching is heard among the theologically trained and ordained in our diocese that certain drugs taken in appropriate quantities can be beneficial to spiritual growth. In former days Timothy Leary would tout the use of LSD. Today people are touting ?Ecstasy? or ?entheogens? as the threshold that opens human beings to supernatural realms. The Hopi Indians and their use of peyote are cited as beneficial models.

?What are not mentioned in these endorsements are the ravages of countless lives that trusted in drugs as a path to paradise. There are probably some very sincere pilgrims of the Spirit who have gone on a quest for the Transcendent, and certain drugs may have seemed to advance them. Their individual quests, as vivid as they may have been, will not be given an official platform in the Diocese of California. We have seen too many drug disasters, too many drug-imprisoned souls,? Swing wrote.

?Rumor has it that the Diocese of California is liberal about matters. Not always so. On the use of drugs in our buildings, at our functions, this is absolutely forbidden. No wink, wink. Drug use in our churches will be absolutely forbidden.

?There is a higher path to God, i.e., the path of Jesus Christ. The cross is not a needle. The bread and wine are ordinary, not a hallucinogen. Ecstasy is a path, not a pill. Our drug policy will reflect this,? the bishop wrote.

However, Swing, founder of the controversial United Religions Initiative, was not quite able to leave well enough alone. In the same column, he equated ?dogma? to the use of mind-bending drugs.

He said: ?When human beings are alert, we yearn for an experience of the Divine, with the Divine. That is not the problem. That is to be encouraged. The question then is how to have a transcendent experience without having your brain fried...by drugs or dogma?? (The ellipsis was in Swing?s original document.)

The bishop?s comment leaves one wondering: which articles of the Creed and which dogmatic definitions of the Ecumenical Councils of the Church cause the brain to fry?

Swing went on, moreover, to laud ?creation spiritualist? and radical liturgist Matthew Fox, whom Swing received as a priest after Fox was ousted from the Roman Catholic Church.

?It is possible to get high on healthy religion,? Swing wrote. ?My hero and pioneer in all of this is the Rev. Matthew Fox. He took the old `Rave Mass? and converted it to a ?Techno Mass.? No drugs. Period. Yet there is an openness to new forms of liturgy and common life that allow young people to tap into the brilliance of being with God.?

Swing?s intervention on behalf of the ordinary parishioners of St. John the Evangelist has borne good fruit. However, Swing?s continued support for Fox?s liturgical and doctrinal radicalism, and his promotion of the URI, which some believe is aimed at producing a one-world religion, leave Swing and his diocese planted firmly in the liberal camp.

Sources included Pacific Church News, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post

The P.B.?s Excellent, If Sometimes Odd, African Adventure

It was, by all accounts, rich, interesting, and, well, enlightening, for all concerned.

The U.S. Episcopal Church?s Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, and Episcopal News Service both wrote thoughtfully and movingly, at times, about Griswold?s recent trip to Uganda, undertaken at the invitation of Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi-Nkoyoyo.

But there?s no hiding the fact that one of the odder moments in recent church history took place during the visit, when the liberal, pro-gay presiding bishop preached on the Feast of the Martyrs of Uganda on June 3. That is a national holiday in the country, marked by a pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of Anglicans and Roman Catholics to Namugongo, where 25 young boys ?were literally roasted to death on June 3, 1886 for refusing to renounce their faith in Christ.? That?s how Griswold put it in a letter following his visit.

ENS was a bit more forthcoming about what led to the martyrdom, saying that the ?22 Christian pages in the court of King Mwanga of Buganda were...roasted alive in 1886 for their refusal to renounce their faith...swear allegiance to him, and submit to his sexual advances.?

In other words, the boys, newly converted Christians, laid down their lives rather than submit to homosexual relations with the king.

?According to witnesses, the youth went to their deaths singing and praising the Lord,? wrote ENS. ?The occasion marked a major turnaround for the church, changing the perception of Christianity as a white man?s religion to one that was truly African. Today Uganda has the largest percentage of professed Christians of any nation in Africa.?

In his sermon at the four-hour Anglican service, Griswold noted that the Ugandan martyrs were on his province?s calendar of saints. He talked of the heroic witness of the church to the power of the Holy Spirit, ?giving grace and endurance even to this day in difficult conditions.?

One ?on the ground? account came from the Rev. Dr. Stephen Noll, the American-born vice chancellor of Uganda Christian University in Mukono. He wrote that Griswold ?was warmly welcomed (as are all visitors here) and given due respect by the Archbishop as a fellow primate. He led a bishops? retreat and visited many of the institutions of the church, including Uganda Christian University. The Mother?s Union sponsored an evening fete in the garden of the Archbishop?s Palace...?

Griswold, he said, greeted the Martyrs? Day assembly by saying ?Praise the Lord,? the common greeting of Ugandan Christians who identify with the ?Revival strand? in Uganda, ?stemming from the pietistic Revival movement of the 1930s onward.? (Christianity in Uganda also includes the ?Establishment strand, reflecting a long history in which the English favored the Anglicans and Catholics were marginalized,? Noll said.)

This Martyr?s Day observance, as Griswold noted, was organized by the Dioceses of Northern Uganda and Kitgum. ?Both these areas have been terribly torn by a guerrilla war that the government seems unable to stop,? Noll wrote. ?One of our university students was killed on his way home to Kitgum on Christmas Eve. The P.B. recognized the family of the late Janani Luwum, a Revivalist from the North who became Archbishop, opposed Idi Amin and was killed for it in 1977.

?It certainly seems anomalous, that a bishop who had signed the [pro-homosexual, 1994] Koinonia Statement and is said to have ordained practicing homosexuals would preach on this occasion,? Noll commented. ?After all, according to a recent history of the period: ?The immediate cause of the killings was the Kabaka?s anger at the disobedience of his Christian pages, in particular their refusal to indulge in homosexual practices.? In fairness, [Griswold] noted with approval that the martyrs had ?resisted the King?s advances,? and this comment no doubt reflects his belief that there is a fundamental difference between coercive and consensual liaisons.

?As to the way in which the Ugandan Church dealt with the anomaly,? Noll said, ?there was in fact a second sermon, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Edward Muhima, Team Leader of African Evangelistic Enterprise, the Revival organization founded by Bishop Festo Kivengere. The bulletin reading had been changed to Daniel 3 about the young men in the fiery furnace, and Muhima?s sermon was fiery. At one point, he turned to the Prime Minister, who was seated on the dais, and warned about God?s judgement on the rampant corruption in the country, including the growing tolerance of promiscuity and homosexuality.

?Then he called on the congregation to turn to the Lord and repent. From the opposite hillside, where several thousand people were seated, came forth a stream of 200 to stand before the dais and give their lives to Christ. The Archbishop led them in the salvation prayer.?

This, according to online church journalist David Virtue, left Griswold embarrassed and squirming.

Griswold?s visit to Uganda, and one last year to Nigeria, were widely seen by conservatives as an attempt by the P.B. to mitigate through personal contact and the flash of the dollar sign the gathering storm of wrath in the wider Communion, and especially in Africa, over ECUSA?s acceptance of homosexual practice.

In particular, the leader of Communion?s most populous province, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, has been heavily courted by liberals since he took office a few years ago. And for a time, the liberals appeared to be gaining ground with him.

What is eminently clear now, though, is that any effort to get Akinola and other African leaders to take a softer stance toward ECUSA?s brazen liberalism on the gay issue has been spectacularly futile.

Injunction Against Former

Accokeek Rector Lifted

By Auburn Faber Traycik

An injunction barring the orthodox former rector of Maryland?s Christ Church, Accokeek, the Rev. Samuel L. Edwards, from conducting services on or close to the Episcopal parish was dissolved July 11 by the judge who first imposed it.

Acting on a motion filed by counsel for the rector and vestry of Christ Church, Judge Peter J. Messitte of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland lifted the injunction which resulted from a lawsuit filed by former Acting Washington Episcopal Bishop Jane Dixon, who sought to oust Edwards as the parish?s rector.

Messitte?s October 2001 decision backing Edwards? removal was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2002.

Messitte?s agreement now to remove the order barring Edwards from holding himself out as an Episcopal Church (ECUSA) clergyman or conducting services on or near Christ Church?s property is based on changed circumstances in the case and the lack of opposition to the motion to dissolve the injunction.

In June 2002, Edwards left ECUSA for the Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), a Continuing Anglican body (while Christ Church opted to remain in the Episcopal diocese, having secured some assurances from new liberal Washington Bishop John Chane; the parish is now led by conservative cleric, Fr. Stephen Arpee).

In addition, Dixon, the plaintiff, is no longer ecclesiastic authority in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, a necessary condition for the injunction.

?While Mrs. Dixon would not agree to the motion, she did not oppose it, essentially, we feel, because she no longer had standing to do so, based on the Fourth Circuit?s Decision,? said Canon Law Institute (CLI) Director, the Rev. Charles Nalls, who had been handling the civil case as private counsel for the defendants.

?I?m glad that it?s over finally,? Fr. Edwards said. ?It was silly that [the injunction] stayed in place as long as it did.? There had been no reason not to lift it when he left the Episcopal priesthood a year earlier, he said. ?And there were aspects of [the injunction] that were ridiculous,? such as the judge?s demand that Edwards not come within 300 feet of the church property.

That removal of the order puts a final point on a chapter that conservatives saw as starkly exposing the escalating persecution of ECUSA?s faithful.

?We are satisfied that this particular matter has been put to rest,? Nalls said. He went on to thank co-counsel Rufus Peckham, assisting counsel Mark Jakubik of CLI (on briefs), as well as John Hollister, advisory counsel, and Kenneth R. Matticks, who represented Episcopal Bishops Jack Iker of Fort Worth and Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Fr. Edwards and the vestry.

Far-Reaching Impact

Yet Nalls said the main impact of Dixon v. Edwards remains far-reaching. Though it means little for parish property, it means a great deal for ?the prerogatives of episcopal authority.?

In Dixon v. Edwards, both District and Circuit judges backed the bishop?s claim that she, as top authority for ECUSA in her diocese, was empowered to ?interpret? church canons. In this case, Dixon judged them to mean that she could intervene against Edwards? call as Christ Church?s rector at any time, even after the 30-day time limit cited by the canons. Over two dozen ECUSA bishops had supported her contention about a diocesan bishop?s authority in a friend-of-the-court brief.

This decision ?sets up, civilly, far more power in an Episcopal bishop than is contemplated in ECUSA canons,? said Nalls. ?We heard from the court that the bishop becomes the absolute local authority on interpreting canon.?

He also noted that the decision did nothing for Christ Church?s vestry, which ?didn?t get the priest that it called.?

The vestry maintained that it carefully followed canonical procedures in calling Edwards, who was then illegally refused by Dixon. Fifty-three days after the canonical 30-day review period, Dixon decided that Edwards, the former executive director of Forward in Faith, North America, and a priest in good standing in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, was not ?duly qualified? to serve in the D.C. diocese. Among the disqualifying points was that he had said some harshly critical things about the heavily liberalized national church, and could accept her as a bishop only administratively, not sacramentally?a view held by a few other clergy already serving in Washington.

Edwards, who now leads a Maryland APCK mission, St. Mary the Virgin, announced his departure from ECUSA on June 27, 2002. At the time, he said in part that: ?I now believe that, beyond a reasonable doubt, [ECUSA] is neither desirous of reform from within nor capable of reform from without. Indeed, the evidence indicates that, while some people of good will remain within it, the institution taken as a whole is unremittingly hostile to any calls to halt and reverse its decline from authentic Christianity.?

In the conservative view, Edwards? contentions were unambiguously confirmed by ECUSA?s General Convention in Minneapolis. Ironically, though, the convention?s rebellion may have ignited the kind of realignment that will largely limit the impact of Dixon v. Edwards to the liberal majority remaining in ECUSA.

Canon Law Institute

Names Associate Director

An expert civil litigator and active Episcopalian has been named the associate director of the Washington-based Canon Law Institute (CLI), an organization which provides legal advice and information to faithful congregations and clergy in the Episcopal Church and other canonically-based denominations.

CLI?s Board of Directors appointed Mark E. Jakubik, Esquire, of Pennsylvania, to the number two spot, to serve with CLI Executive Director, the Rev. Charles H. Nalls.

A 1992 graduate of Villanova University School of Law, Jakubik has been an attorney member of CLI for the past several years, and has been active in religious legal matters, particularly litigation, both as private counsel and as a lay leader in his Episcopal parish, the well known Good Shepherd, Rosemont.

He will concentrate on issues relating to the litigation of ecclesiastic issues in federal and state courts, as well as on matters of canon law.

Nalls said that Jakubik?s agreement to become associate director provides critical help at a time when CLI is receiving a ?high volume of requests on civil matters, especially church property litigation,? a key area in which Jakubik will be involved.

Following graduation from Villanova where he served as an editor of The Villanova Law Review, Jakubik entered practice in Pennsylvania with Drinker, Biddle and Reath to work on complex litigation, particularly insurance and commercial cases. Over the last 11 years, he has litigated a variety of matters in federal and state courts, particularly complex commercial, antitrust, RICO, insurance, banking and other business actions. Currently, he is principal of Jakubik Law Offices, L.L.C., a law practice concentrating on commercial litigation matters, as well as appellate work, issues consulting, and the law of religious organizations.

Jakubik has served as a vestryman at Good Shepherd, Rosemont. He is a member of the Federalist Society, the American Bar Association, the bar associations of Pennsylvania and Chester County, and is the author of several law journal articles on banking law and internet domain name registration litigation.

He, his wife and daughter make their home in Exton, Pennsylvania.

NC AMiA Parish Decides

To Get On With Mission

After a failed bid to reverse a court finding that its property belongs to the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina, a parish which earlier seceded from the diocese ?unanimously voted to cease pursuing [the] matter, and to get on with our purpose, which is mission.?

So said Tonia Glasgow, a spokesperson for the some 300-member St. Andrew?s, Morehead City, North Carolina, which is now to be called All Saints? Episcopal Church. Glasgow is involved in the church?s long-range planning.

It ?became clear that justice would not be found in the courts of men, but only in the court of the Lord,? said the Rev. John Grayson, longtime assistant cleric at St. Andrew?s, which earlier left the Episcopal Church and diocese for the conservative Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), overseen by the Anglican primates of Rwanda and South East Asia.

The parish?s rector, the Rev. C. King Cole, retired May 1, and Grayson has been serving as interim.

But a new rector for St. Andrew?s has been named. The Rev. H.G. Miller, 37, the executive pastor of Phoenix?s large Valley Cathedral for the last eight years, was to take up the reins in September as the congregation settles into space in a busy part of Morehead City.

?We are very optimistic, our vestry has a wonderful sense of peace, and we are very excited about what the Lord is doing and going to do,? said Glasgow. ?There is no animosity with the other group. That?s wasted negative energy. We have already started two new mission parishes, one in Hope Mills, and the other in New Bern,? both in North Carolina.

*SINCE VOLUNTARILY UNDERTAKING a missionary assignment in the U.S. just a few months ago (without regard to local Episcopal bishops), Archbishop Benjamin Nwankiti, former leader of the Church of Nigeria?s second province, has already launched a new African congregation in Atlanta?soon to be received into the AMiA?and helped an African study/prayer ministry in the South Bronx move toward a formal Anglican identity. Nwankiti is based All Saints? Anglican Church in Houston, another African congregation affiliated with the AMiA.

Sources: Virtuosity, AMiA

The Spreading Shadow

Of Lawrence

Report/Analysis By

The Rev. Samuel L. Edwards

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT?S JUNE 26 DECISION in Lawrence v. Texas is clearly deserving of the landmark status that has been accorded to it by the press and public.

The question is whether the landmark is a sign that this society is emerging onto broad, sunlit uplands of tolerance and inclusion, or instead signifies an increase in the angle of the slope leading downward to the dissolution of Western society.

Two-thirds of the high court joined in striking down a Texas law designating homosexual sodomy as a crime. Five of the six justices in the majority also joined in reversing a 17-year-old ruling of the court in Bowers v. Georgia, which affirmed that regulating sexual behavior between consenting adults was a legitimate state interest.

The decision?s scale and sweep appears to have stunned all parties to the culture war which it represents.

Liberal Rejoicing

Social liberals, hoping for a win, nevertheless did not expect the bulk of the referees? squad to don their team?s jerseys. The rejoicing from the pan-sexualist alliance (including some very strange bedfellows calling themselves ?Christian polygamists?) took on a somewhat breathless quality.

In a release from the tendentiously-titled, pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign, Executive Director Elizabeth Birch gushed, ?This ruling opens the door for new advances toward full equality and should be viewed as a challenge to legislators to help pass important legal protections for [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] Americans like employment non-discrimination laws and comprehensive hate crimes legislation.?

Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry, a pro-gay advocacy group in New York, was quoted in The New York Times as saying that, ?America has hit a tipping point in which fair-minded people now support equality and inclusion for gay people and most Americans are ready to accept marriage.

?We are in a Brown v. Board of Education moment,? Wolfson continued. ?The Supreme Court has said in the strongest possible terms that love and intimacy and family have deep constitutional protection for all Americans and that gay people have an equal right to participate. This gives us a tremendous tool for moving forward to end the discrimination.?

However, he said it is important to remember what came after Brown: ?major legal challenges and acts of courage but also fierce resistance.?

A Libertarian View

The Lawrence ruling also found approval among secular Libertarians. (This is not as strange as it may seem to people who habitually, albeit erroneously, take Libertarians to represent one of the several varieties of Conservatism, because of the similar positions they take on some issues.)

Cato Institute scholar Randy Barnett saw the decision as representative of a positive change (from the Libertarian perspective) in the high court?s method of constitutional interpretation.

In a commentary published on National Review?s website, Barnett writes that the Lawrence decision ?is revolutionary because Justice Kennedy (and at least four justices who signed on to his opinion without separate concurrences) have finally broken free of the post-New Deal constitutional tension between a ?presumption of constitutionality? on the one hand and ?fundamental rights? on the other. Contrary to what has been reported repeatedly in the press, the court in Lawrence did not protect a ?right of privacy.? Rather, it protected ?liberty? and without showing that the particular liberty in question is somehow ?fundamental.??

Barnett claims that the decision marks a sea-change away from the Supreme Court?s previous practice of placing the burden of proof on the individual claiming that his liberties are unconstitutionally impaired by state limitations on personal behavior, and toward a new (or, as Barnett would claim, renewed) practice of placing the burden on the state to prove the necessity of such regulations. Justice Kennedy, he says, ?puts all his energy into demonstrating that same-sex sexual freedom is a legitimate aspect of liberty?unlike, for example, actions that violate the rights of others, which are not liberty but license.?

Barnett?s positive assessment of the decision is not difficult to understand, given his classic Libertarian definition of liberty: ?Liberty is?and has always been?the properly defined exercise of freedom that does not violate the rights of others. Your right to liberty is not violated by restrictions on your freedom to rape and murder, because you have no such right in the first place.?

He maintains that fears (such as those voiced by Justice Antonin Scalia in his scathing dissent read from the bench) that this principle will be extended to other forms of non-traditional sexuality are not grounded in reality. It is a position which?given the way cultural and social revisionism has worked up to this point?seems, if not disingenuous, startlingly naive.

Conservative Anguish

The reaction of religious and cultural conservatives to the Lawrence decision ranged from muted shock to fierce outrage.

The outcome ?is a disaster for the pro-family side of America?s culture war,? wrote Campaign for Working Families Chairman (and former Republican presidential aspirant) Gary Bauer.

After pointing out that two-thirds of the justices in the Lawrence majority were appointed by Republican presidents and that the current Republican administration had not even bothered to file a brief in the case, Bauer asked his readers to ?review the country that our federal courts have been constructing for us. It is a place where unborn children can be destroyed on a whim, a nation that requires parental permission for a tattoo, but not an abortion. It is a country where a copy of the Ten Commandments on the courthouse lawn is a threat to our liberty and the words ?under God? in our Pledge of Allegiance is a violation of the separation of church and state. And soon it may be a place that allows men to marry men, effectively destroying 2000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition on the meaning of marriage.?

Remarking that ?Supreme Court decisions increasingly read like transcripts from the Oprah Winfrey show,? The American Spectator?s George Neumayr went on to assert that, ?We are losing real liberties while the Supreme Court invents bogus ones. To deprive a community of the liberty of preserving traditional laws is a monstrous distortion of the framers? work and an act of judicial despotism which should outrage the public.?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) reacted by calling for passage of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, thereby preserving the special protections and privileges accorded by Western culture to heterosexual monogamous marriage during the last two millennia.

A month after the Lawrence decision, and as Canada moved toward legalizing gay marriage, President Bush finally said that he would not ?compromise? on the issue and that ?marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or another.? Administration lawyers were ?looking at the best way to do that,? he said.

In what could be called a reflection on the law of unintended consequences, World Net Daily?s Vox Day grimly warned that, ?by using the Supreme Court to achieve their aims instead of the state legislatures,? the homosexual movement will ultimately ?reap a devastating whirlwind that will, in the long term, destroy it. Cultural embrace of homosexuality is a late-stage pre-imperial phenomenon. Once the republic collapses, which will surely happen within the next 200 years if the Roman example is any guide [...] a harsh anti-libertine reaction will take place, one without the traditional moral constraints that were dismantled over the last 100 years...The infamous closet of old will look like a paradise in comparison.?

Confrontation

At its most profound level, the Lawrence decision is the latest and most noticeable episode in an ongoing, headlong confrontation between two ultimately irreconcilable views of reality.

On the one side is the view that reality is what man makes of it, or by his own exploration and experience discerns it to be; on the other is the view that reality is what God has shown it to be.

Those who take the first view?which is at least as old as pre-Platonic philosophy?see the world as self-explanatory, and base their explanations on ultimately impersonal principles (idealism) or ultimately impersonal processes (materialism). Those who take the second view believe that the world only makes sense in relation to One outside it Who made it, to Whom it is ordered, and to Whom its rational creatures are responsible for their actions.

The confrontation between these two ?realities? usually shows itself in clashes over the doctrines of man, human freedom, politics, law, the state, and society.

Where it concerns man, the clash is between those who see human beings as the creators of their own meaning, and those who believe that personal identity is discovered and enhanced in the quest to subdue our selfish natural inclinations and conform our behavior to that which the Creator requires.

This struggle is well and truly out in the open in Lawrence, as a comparison of the notions of human freedom manifested in Justice Kennedy?s majority opinion and in Justice Scalia?s dissent will make clear.

The former argues that liberty in its most profound sense is ?the right to define one?s own concept of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.?

The latter, after ruthlessly skewering this dictum as the court?s ?famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage,? adds that ?if the passage calls into question the government?s power to regulate actions based on one?s self-defined ?concept of existence, etc.,? it is the passage that ate the rule of law.?

Kennedy advances a secularist perspective which sees man in essentially individualistic terms (and even in opposition to society), while Scalia speaks out of the classical Judeo-Christian perspective which sees man as personal because he is made to be part of a society of ordered liberty.

The clash might be defined as one between an ethic of preference and one of reference: In Kennedy?s view, the basic meaning of freedom is the ability to do what one prefers (provided that nobody else gets hurt), while Scalia points toward an understanding of freedom as the capacity to choose to cooperate with the design of the Creator in the achievement of genuine humanity. If this option is not exercised, then the state ends up ?eating the rule of law,? and with it any possibility of humane civilization.

The real effect of something like the Lawrence decision is that in the end, everybody, including those who now celebrate it, gets hurt. Once the rule of law has been ?eaten,? then, absent divine intervention, moral and social anarchy followed by tyranny is inevitable.

Looking Ahead

It may be that some inchoate sense that this is the prospect facing Western society, should the basic world-view behind Lawrence win the culture war, is fueling what may prove to be an 11th-hour reconsideration, not by the Supreme Court, but by those to whom the justices, whether they like it or not, ultimately are accountable.

At deadline, the results of a Gallup poll commissioned by USA Today and CNN (neither a notable hotbed of cultural conservatism) were released, showing that ?Americans have become significantly less accepting of homosexuality since a Supreme Court decision...hailed as clearing the way for new gay civil rights.? The poll found that in only two months, support for legal recognition of same-sex relationships dropped from 60 to 48 percent.

Of course, such a steep decline is not likely to continue into the single digits, but it may signal that the latest exercise in social engineering by the nation?s highest court has awakened many formerly apathetic citizens.

However, this will be of little consequence in the end unless those so stirred?especially professing Christians?attempt to meet the challenge articulated by Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson. He urges Christians to examine their own contemporary cultural assumption that ?sex?s overriding purpose? is pleasure, which ?suits our culture?s obsession with personal autonomy? and, having found this assumption not only wanting but dangerous, ?change the terms of the debate? by affirming that the dual purpose of sex is ?procreation and promoting spousal unity.?

If that can be accomplished, then what seems now a spreading shadow will begin to retreat before the Light and be dispersed by the wind of the Holy Ghost.

The Rev. Samuel L. Edwards is the former executive director of Forward in Faith, North America, and now serves as a priest within the Anglican Province of Christ the King. He and his family live in Fort Washington, Maryland.

Canada Will Permit

Gay Marriage, Chr?tien Says

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chr?tien has confirmed that his nation will change its law to allow homosexual marriage, joining Belgium, Denmark and The Netherlands as the only countries where same-sex couples can legally wed.

The new law, defining marriage as the ?lawful union of two persons,? was drafted by the Canadian government and submitted July 17 to the Supreme Court of Canada for review, before Parliament considers it. Chr?tien?s Liberal Party has a commanding majority in the legislature, though the issue has caused division in the Liberal caucus.

The actions meant that the government decided against appealing recent provincial court rulings that declared unconstitutional the nation?s definition of marriage as the union of a man and woman.

Within a month after such a ruling in Ontario, hundreds of homosexual couples were said to have taken ?marriage? vows there.

Opinion polls indicate that a slight majority of Canadians favor legalizing same-sex marriages, though some commentators charge that survey questions were carefully skewed toward producing a liberal outcome.

The actual feeling among most Canadians about the decision to allow gay marriage is far different, asserted Peter Vere of Envoy magazine.

Calling this ?Canada?s Moral September 11th is not melodramatic on my part,? Vere wrote. ?I cannot begin to explain the effect this is having on our national psyche. Unlike America, which is still fighting the culture war, Canada has now crossed...back into pagan lands.?

?We?re...deconstructing...an institution that [has] underpinned society for millennia,? said John McKay, who represents a Toronto district.

Chr?tien assured that the new legislation will allow religions the right to decide what marriages should be sanctified.

But some Canadian church leaders worry that unwilling clergy will be forced to perform weddings for homosexual couples.

?We are deeply concerned that the effect of the redefinition will be to begin a process of marginalization for many churches and their clergy who currently participate in the civil registration of marriage,? said Bruce Clemenger, an official of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

In Canada, the Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical denominations, Eastern Orthodox churches, Muslim groups, Sikh temples, and most of the Anglican Church and Judaism oppose homosexual marriage, reports Religion News Service.

However, same-sex rites have been approved by the United Church of Canada (which has since suffered a serious decline in membership), liberal branches of Judaism, the Unitarian Church of Canada and the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster (Vancouver), where the first same-sex blessing ceremony was held in June. The international furor touched off by the action has since been exacerbated by the American Church?s pro-gay decisions, and a major realignment now looms in the Anglican Communion.

Vancouver School of Theology Professor Richard Leggett contended that the government?s decision to change the definition of marriage to include gays and lesbians ?will show that Anglicans in Vancouver who support same-sex blessings are not off the wall,? and will put pressure on reluctant Christians to follow suit.

*THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT plans to create a register of same-sex partnerships that would give homosexual couples most of the same legal rights as married ones, such as the right to inherit property tax-free. While welcomed by most homosexual groups, the plans were criticized by some, including vocal gay campaigner Peter Tatchell, for excluding a similar register of heterosexual couples who do not wish to wed.

Sources also included The Associated Press, Ecumenical News International, CNSNews.com

?Roe?s? Bid To Overturn

Famous Decision Fails

?Jane Roe?s? recent bid to reopen the 1973 Supreme Court case that helped make abortion legal in the U.S. was turned back in June by a federal district judge who said her effort came too late.

The woman who was at the center of the case, whose real name is Norma McCorvey, filed an affidavit in support of a motion in U.S. District Court in Dallas, seeking to have her case reopened and for the ?73 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion-on-demand to be overturned in light of new facts.

She said the landmark case ?was built upon false assumptions? and had ?caused great harm to the women and children of our nation.? McCorvey, 55, now a pro-life Christian, noted that when she filed her original lawsuit 30 years ago, she was not even sure of what the term ?abortion? meant.

But a federal district court dismissed her petition, ruling that it was not filed within a ?reasonable time.?

McCorvey?s attorney, Allan Parker thinks the judge misunderstands the case. ?This is not a case of newly discovered evidence, which must be brought in a short amount of time,? he said. ?It?s a case of changed factual conditions and law.?

Among evidence of ?changed factual conditions? presented were affidavits from 1,000 women testifying to the serious emotional/mental problems their abortions had caused. Cited as well was the vastly improved clarity of ultrasound imagery, which no longer reveals just a fuzzy mass but what is plainly a baby. Also, the burden on a mother with an unwanted child?which was one reason for the Roe decision?has been alleviated by laws in 40 states allowing the latter to assume responsibility for such unwanted children.

A new national poll indicates that views on abortion among women are shifting toward the pro-life side. Fifty-one percent of women surveyed by the Center for the Advancement of Women said the government should prohibit abortion or limit it to extreme cases, such as rape, incest, or life-threatening complications.

Sources: Breakpoint/Charles Colson, The Washington Times, thesmokinggun.com n

Aussie Church Okays

Actively Gay Ordinands

Australia?s (Protestant) Uniting Church may be facing a split after its national assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of allowing the ordination of those in committed same-sex relationships.

The church has informally accepted actively gay clergy for some time, but there has been a long-running battle over the issue which the assembly apparently sought to end at its mid-July meeting in Melbourne.

Mary Hawkes, a spokeswoman for conservative members of the Uniting Church, said the body was now ?horribly close? to a full-blown split.

She said the decision would put many congregations in a difficult situation and warned that up to 3,000 people in one state were considering leaving the church.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald n

Deja Vu In Minneapolis

It was a different convention center in the same city, but the ?script? for Minneapolis 2003 was the same as for Minneapolis 1976, when the Episcopal General Convention approved women priests and bishops.

So said the Rev. Carter Heyward, a lesbian priest and feminist liberation theologian who teaches at Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts. One of her focuses is ?queer theology,? whose adherents say God wants loving, committed relationships?including those that are not heterosexual and procreative.

Heyward reminded that opponents argued in ?76 that ordaining women violated historic church teaching, was contrary to the Bible and would split the church?the same arguments that were being made now against blessing gay couples and approving an avowedly homosexual bishop, she said.

It is a point that traditionalists also have tried to make with Evangelicals who oppose the gay agenda but support female ordination.

But Heyward said there is one startling difference today, and that is that one occasionally encounters a female priest who voices a conservative position.

That is within their rights, she said. But she added: ?I just want to ask, ?My sister, how do you think you got where you are???

Source: The Washington Post

Newly Released Documents

Damaging To Bennison, Griswold

Newly-released documents reveal that Pennsylvania Episcopal Bishop Charles Bennison ignored Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold?s repeated admonitions not to depose prominent orthodox priest Fr. David Moyer, and that Griswold also failed act on his threat to publicly condemn the defrocking.

The documents, recently detailed by Moyer, show that Griswold warned Bennison in letters that his plans to depose the rector of Good Shepherd, Rosemont, on a disputed charge of ?abandonment of communion? would create serious rumblings among foreign Anglican primates. The latter, he said, would view the action as ?autocratic and monumentally unpastoral.? The P.B. also told Bennison he should allow Good Shepherd the care of an alternate bishop.

But Bennison not only rebuffed Griswold?s urgings, he seems to have concealed the P.B.?s first letter, written in July 2001, from all except other diocesan leaders; and Griswold's more forceful June 2002 letter from everyone?including his standing committee and a ?reconciliation? team he named to resolve the Moyer matter.

Meanwhile, Bennison made public statements at odds with Griswold?s contentions, claiming, for example, that it was Good Shepherd rather than himself who was ?painfully alienated? from the Anglican Communion, Moyer reported. Official minutes contend as well that the bishop falsely implied that the priest's inhibition had the unanimous backing of Pennsylvania's standing committee.

Neither did Griswold ever mention the letters to his colleague?their existence was suggested by other sources, Moyer told TCC. He said the P.B.also ?dropped the ball? on his recorded intention to publicly chastise Bennison if the latter did not take the steps he advised for resolving the impasse with the Rosemont rector and parish.This failure appears to have broken an agreement with new Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. After Bennison purported to depose Moyer, Williams declared that the cleric remained a priest in good standing in his view.

THE DAMAGING LETTERS were released by Bennison under court order in connection with civil court proceedings launched by Moyer after the bishop refused to grant him a church trial before deposing him in September 2002.

Bennison charged Moyer with ?abandonment? not because he had left ECUSA, but because he resisted the ultra-liberal bishop?s attempts to preach and celebrate at Good Shepherd, and Bennison would not agree to a less problematic form of visitation (as Griswold urged). The bishop also objected to Moyer?s nomination by the organization he leads, Forward in Faith, North America, as a prospective ?flying bishop? for Episcopal traditionalists.

Despite Bennison?s best efforts, however, the supposedly-deposed Moyer has continued his ministry at the 450-member Good Shepherd Parish under the auspices of the Anglican Province of Central Africa, in which he is now canonically resident.

The two lawsuits filed by the priest last year accuse Bennison of fraud and interfering with Moyer?s employment. Neither case has gone to trial.

Sources included the Philadelphia Inquirer, Virtuosity n

?LATE NEWS?

Williams Sees Probable

?New Alignments?

The Archbishop of Canterbury has himself now indicated his belief that the Anglican Communion's traditional structure will be significantly altered by the sharp clash over homosexuality.

In an article in the traditionalist New Directions magazine, Dr. Rowan Williams forecasts a ?messy? future of ?new alignments and...patterns,? and a ?weakening of territorial jurisdiction? among Anglicans. Interestingly, he wrote the article before the Episcopal General Convention made its landmark decisions endorsing homosexual practice.

Williams concedes that unity is ?unintelligible and unworthwhile? when it ceases to be ?a theological category.? But he suggests that there should be more discernment about what matters define ?the theological character of unity,? and are ?bound up with the supernatural character of the Body.? There may be matters of serious disagreement ?that still don't fracture the possibility of recognizing the language someone else is speaking,? he said.

He seems therefore to hope that there will be enough commonality remaining to try to keep everyone in the same church framework, though he anticipates ?working at structures in Anglicanism? in ways ?that don?t either commit us to a meaningless structural uniformity or leave us in mutual isolation.?

However, any implication that the Episcopal Church (ECUSA) might not be isolated from the rest of the Communion?s is likely to be strongly resisted by a significant number of primates who think ECUSA is ?already out? of the Communion and are ready to demand that?unless ECUSA desists from consecrating an openly gay bishop?that conclusion be formalized, a decision that (under normal circumstances) can only be taken by Dr. Williams.

At presstime, there seemed good reason to believe that the primates? mid-October ?crisis? meeting in London would at least result in some form of suspension for ECUSA, and withering criticism for Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, who some sources believe is ?finished.? n