www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Episcopal Church selects openly lesbian bishop

"Los Angeles Episcopalians elected an openly lesbian bishop late Saturday, the denomination's news service reported..."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/06/episcopalian.lesbian.bishop/index.html

How very progressive of them.

Another nail in their coffin.
Stephanos I

I wish her well bishopping - with the Protestants where she belongs.

It doesn't change anything. The Episcopalians won't be uninvited to Lambeth.

The only crisis that might break up the Anglican Communion is if one of the white liberal national churches officially becomes unitarian: apostasising from Christianity. (Dropping the game they've played since the 1700s of lip service to orthodoxy but really being agnostic.)

Such continued apostasies will strengthen the Continuing Anglicans and make them all the more appealing to embattled orthodox Christians ensnared in other heterodox denominations.

Yeah, yeah and dog bites man and sun rises at dawn. Who's surprised?

Alexis

Now, "Episcopalians Choose Straight, Celibate Male Who Affirms Nicene Christianity"--that would be an earth-shaking headline.

There are Rectors of that stripe, but they would never make bishop. The canon of St. Paul's in OKC comes to mind, a friend of ours; and the rector of St. John's in Detroit is another. Those two churches celebrate mass with enough bells, smells and solemnity to turn the average Roman Catholic green with envy.

They also practice what they preach. I hope they avail themselves of the Holy Fathers offer to Anglo-Catholics.

Is it any wonder why the Episcopal Church has declined so much in the U.S. over the past few decades? When a church starts making up new rules on who can be ordained, it's asking for trouble. All I can say is that an event like this, just like the election of Gene Robinson (another gay bishop) almost six years ago, is the death knell that signals the beginning of the end for the Anglican Communion.

Actually, if you want to pick a moment, I would say some time in the 1970s when it began ordaining women to the presbyterate. But, then, Anglicanism always had the seeds of its own destruction within it, because of its origins as a polito-religious settlement that focused on stability through comprehensiveness. It had to be all things to all people, which in effect meant it was nothing at all.

Wasn't it only within the past two weeks or so that the Church of England had a very negative reaction to the ordination of a lesbian bishop for the Diocese of Stockholm in the Church of Sweden with which the Church of England has some sort of relationship? Did we not see those reactions in the links in that thread in Town Hall?

BOB

Learning of developments like these make me feel like I've joined Alice in Wonderland: things just get curioser and curioser.

Agreed ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

What I wonder is why are we still trying to have unity between us and the Anglican Communion. At this point they are so far from any Apostolic Roots that to me it is an exercise in frutility.

Protestants as a group are a lost cause. We can hope for individuals to join but not who groups.

Fush BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

I think we can, in Christian charity, refrain from these snarky remarks. There are Anglicans who, in good conscience, are still struggling with what the whole turmoil in their Communion means for them in their personal pilgrimage. Many are heartsick, but have been rasied to believe that the Reformation saved historical Christianity, thus making any move toward the Apostolic Churches impossible.

Remember, too, that the Enemy is at work here. And as the Desert Fathers remind us, we ought not to marvel when someone falls, but we ought rather to marvel when one is able to escape the jaws of the Enemy.

In Christ,

Bob
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