Diocese of South Carolina Fed up with General Convention

News flash: the bulk of the deputation to the House of Deputies from the Diocese of South Carolina has left General Convention one day early, following the actions of the Convention thus far to (a) add transsexual persons to the list of people who cannot be denied work at any level in the Episcopal Church (USA); (b) adopt a rite for the blessing of same-sex unions, in violation of both the Book of Common Prayer and the ECUSA Constitution; and (c) refuse to act at this time on the proposed Anglican Covenant.  The deputation  issued the following statement:

Due to the actions of General Convention, the South Carolina Deputation has concluded that we cannot continue with business as usual. We all agree that we cannot and will not remain on the floor of the House and act as if all is normal. John Burwell and Lonnie Hamilton have agreed to remain at Convention to monitor further developments and by their presence demonstrate that our action is not to be construed as a departure from the Episcopal Church. Please pray for those of us who will be traveling early and for those who remain.

Bishop Mark Lawrence is also leaving the House of Bishops to return home tomorrow, after addressing the House on a point of personal privilege to explain his reasons for departing early. Other bishops report that their attempts to change his mind failed.


[UPDATE late 07/11/2012: Thanks, Alexi -- I fixed the report t show that Bishop Lawrence addressed the House of Bishops on a matter of personal privilege today, to explain to them why he could not stay at Convention.


And to round out the day in the House of Bishops, word has been received that the Rt. Rev. Jerry Lamb, former bishop of my diocese, suffered a series of small strokes while at the Convention earlier today. He is in the hospital in Indianapolis, can talk and move, is stable, and is resting comfortably. He is attended by his wife, Jane, and by Bishop Barry Beisner, his successor as the diocesan in Northern California. Please include him in your prayers.]


I shall not speculate on the response(s), if any, that those in ECUSA's leadership might make to this development. (I have done that once too often, and they have always managed to equal or exceed my worst expectations.) I shall note here only that there is no Church Canon, or Constitutional provision, mandating a Diocese to participate willy-nilly in the proceedings of General Convention, or mandating a Bishop to attend sessions of the House of Bishops. 

It is evident that it is far more important to the leaders of the Diocese of South Carolina to attend to their dispirited flocks than to signal that everything remains normal, after such extraordinary and illegal moves by the Church's General Convention. Many other Bishops may not be aware of it just now, but they are going to face plenty of storms in their own dioceses after they return.

This is not like General Convention 2003, when people had to read the news about the confirmation of V. Gene Robinson to be Bishop of New Hampshire in their newspapers, and then wait until their deputations returned home to get more details. Episcopalians this time were able to follow all of the debates of General Convention on streaming video, and there is no better medium in which to perceive, at first-hand, the Church's liberal faction dominating the entire show.

In addition, many of the gays, lesbians, transsexuals and similar persons who flout their orientations in public appeared online in demonstrations, interviews and other publicity stunts designed to attract attention to their agendas, which are wrecking the Church from within while they nonetheless gleefully pursue them -- all indifferent to (or in total denial of) the external consequences.

The resulting spectacle, and its legislative products, have proved revolting to many traditional Episcopalians.

God help the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

House of Bishops Votes for Liturgical Anarchy

The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (USA) is a ship without a rudder. It is adrift on the sea of spiritual platitudes, and at the mercy of the winds of popular culture. Its leaders on the bridge have no idea where it is headed, because they have lost their compass, too. And as for the crew -- well, they just keep on doing what they have always been doing, which is to keep their heads down, work at their daily tasks, and hope that they eventually will find a safe harbor, despite having no idea how to get there.

They listen to daily prayers which have no root in the liturgy, but which "sound" quasi-spiritual. "May God be with you," intoned their chaplain just before they voted to "approve", 111-41, some kind of liturgy for some kind of mumbo-jumbo to be pronounced over some kind of persons who see themselves in some kind of relationship.

How is the Church to "bless" something which its Book of Common Prayer cannot even define?

The Bishops do not tell us; they just say: "Do whatever your own Bishop may choose to approve in his or her own Diocese. It can be this liturgy, for example; or it can be something someone else has written for this liturgically undefinable occasion, as long as the Bishop says, 'That's fine.' Or it can be no such rites or liturgies whatsoever, if the Bishop says that. Whatever -- just go with it, pewsters."

This is a recipe for liturgical anarchy in the Church, and is symbolic of the systematic damage the Bishops have allowed to eat away at ECUSA's foundations over the years. The pastors have ignored their real flocks while chasing after particular kinds of sheep (who actually are very few in number). In the process, the fences have all fallen down, and now the pastors can scarcely tell who is in their flock, and who isn't, while there are no longer any protections against beasts of prey.

So what, exactly, did the Bishops do today (July 9), besides "pass" a piece of paper labeled "Resolution A049"?

Did they amend the Book of Common Prayer?

They did not.

Did they approve an alternative to the BCP for trial use on a Church-wide basis?

They did not -- the proponents of A049 knew they did not have the votes to do that.

Instead, at the last minute, they carefully reworded their Resolution to take out the word "trial [use]" wherever it appeared, and put the word "provisional" in its place. In this way, the rudderless Bishops apparently believed they were not opening up a route to amending the Book of Common Prayer, by triggering the requirement of the need for a supermajority under Article X of the Constitution (as discussed in this post).

But did they approve, then, an experimental rite for "special occasions" and for use only with the permission of a bishop, as discussed in this earlier post?

No, they did not manage to do that, either. And why not? Take a look again at the language of Art. X, as quoted in the post just linked. Under it, Bishops may

take such order as may be permitted by the Rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer or by the Canons of the General Convention for the use of special forms of worship.

The BCP Rubrics are of no comfort to them, because they provide that the only union that can be blessed is that between a man and a woman. (See page 433.) Nor are the Canons any help, because no Canon authorizes General Convention or any Bishop to proceed contrary to the BCP in devising rites for "special occasions."

So what, in the final analysis, did the Bishops in their cluelessness about Constitutional limitations and requirements do?

Simple: as I say, they voted for liturgical anarchy (H/T for that term: Canon Harmon). It's every man for himself. (Note to feminists and LGBTQIs: that's "man" in the generic sense. Try rewriting that sentence to include all your "categories." See what I mean? And some of you refuse even to be described by pronouns, so the task is impossible without using a generic noun for the lot of you.)

From now on, when it comes to the services you can hear in an Episcopal church, throw out the Book of Common Prayer: its title is now an oxymoron, because there is no more "common prayer." Come this Advent, we start blessing "same-sex unions"; come next Lent, it will be rites for departed pets and perhaps even human-animal "unions"; and come next summer, who-knows-what will be in vogue.

No one can say. And that's my point.

Ask your Bishop (good luck with that). Everything is open to experiment, to "provisional" use, as the whim strikes your Bishop.

In just a little over three short years, the Episcopal Church (USA) has gone from refusing to confirm the election of a Bishop who dared to tinker with the Sunday liturgy, to telling all the Bishops: "It's your show -- whatever tickles your fancy, folks."

And now to the important question: Why have our Bishops, the "keepers of our faith," voted for liturgical anarchy?

Aye, and there's the rub. Consider the following simple exercise in mathematics. (Or skip to the bottom line, if you don't like math.)

As of 2011, there are 311.6 million people in the United States (Google it). Of these, 75.2%, or just about 234.3 million, are 18 years or older.

The latest and best estimate, based on five separate studies, is that there are just about 4 million adults in the United States who identify themselves as gay or lesbian. That number represents 1.7% of the adult population of 234.3 million.

According to the latest ECUSA statistics (2010), an average of just 657,831 attended Episcopal churches on Sunday. (That number will be some 40-50,000 less by now, but use it anyway, even though it also includes young persons under 18.)

If the percentage of gays and lesbians going to ECUSA Sunday services matches their percentage in the adult U.S. population, then there would be about 11,230 of them in church on Sundays. Of that number, available statistics show that approximately half are in some kind of relationship that has existed for more than four years, but only fifteen percent have been in relationships of twelve years or longer.

Say, of those longer-term, committed relationships, that every one of them who were both church-going Episcopalians wanted to have their unions "blessed" in a church ceremony. That's 1,684 committed Episcopalians, or 842 potential pairs that are candidates for Episcopal blessings.

Eight hundred and forty-two couples. And for them, our Bishops sacrificed our Church's traditions, its Book of Common Prayer, and its very integrity.

Maybe they did it for non-Episcopalian gay couples, too, in the forlorn belief that it would add to the number of Episcopalians. So call it 2,000 -- call it 3,000; it does not matter. The number is minuscule, any way you slice it. The Church is losing ten times that many members every year.

And for them, our Bishops decided to lead our Church over the cliff, and let the rest of us be hanged.

Now do you see what they did today?

Episcopal Church (USA) -- the Spoiled Child of the Anglican Communion -- Wants It All

The current General Convention at Indianapolis is fast becoming like Dennis the Menace at Christmas-time: "I want it all!"

Consider: on Sunday, July 8, when everyone else was at worship, the huge majority of Episcopal Bishops attending GC77 voted in favor of preventing their parishes from refusing to hire any cross-dressers, or even people who refuse to identify as either male or female (because they reject being forced to come down on one side or the other), as (a) their priests, (b) their deacons, (c) their Senior or Junior Wardens, (d) their Sunday School teachers, (e) their Youth Group leaders, or (f) any other positions -- voluntary or paid -- in their parish. You name it, and they have to be hired if there is no other reason to refuse them the position. (At least, that is what the Canons of General Convention will now say.)

Having passed the House of Bishops with an overwhelming majority, these soon-to-be canonical amendments are certain to pass the House of Deputies, with nary a whisper of objection. So thanks to the Bishops whom you elected to uphold "the faith of Christ crucified," and whom you paid to attend General Convention, the Episcopal Church (USA) will soon be a haven for sex perverts and psychological basket cases, among others, who cannot even decide whether God intended to make them in any model, and who absolutely refuse to accept society's labels describing them as, "male or female."

Such people are really in a dilemma, if one thinks about it. They say that they cannot let God dictate what they are, by the outward form in which He clothed them at birth; but they also contend that God ordained that they should have equal opportunities for employment throughout the Episcopal Church (USA). In other words: they get to choose (or reserve a decision on) how society must regard them, but all the rest of us cannot choose whether we want them to work for us. The "choice", in their view, runs only in their favor: heads they win, and tails the rest of us lose.

I realize that is strong language. But -- dammit! This occasion calls for the strongest kind of condemnation of those in authority whom we trusted to know better. I feel completely betrayed by my Bishop, and by the deputies from my diocese who will choose "to follow their own consciences" in this matter, rather than the will of the vast majority of pew sitters who elected them, and who will be stuck with the bills for their lark. In so acting on their own, those deputies repudiate the naïve expectation that they could be counted on to represent, at least on these matters of substance, the overwhelming consensus of the diocese that sent them off to Indianapolis.

The same must hold true of other dioceses, as well, or else I no longer know my Episcopal Church (USA).

To those Episcopleft sympathizers and enablers of these abominable resolutions, I ask: who appointed less than one-half of one percent of the population to dictate to local parishes what they can and cannot do, in hiring people to work with their souls and with their children?

Why would you ever support such a minuscule minority in dictating what the rest of us must do, under your increasingly irrelevant Canons? (I say that the Canons are "irrelevant," because you will not apply them as written to all Church offenders whom they were intended to place under your control.)

I remind such persons that the word "canon" comes from the Greek word meaning "measure", or "rule." Well, if you take less than one-half of one percent of the population and apply them as the "measure" or "rule" by which all others are to be weighed, haven't you just turned things on their head? Since when did such a "measure" for the many ever, in any society, become the norm?

Have you no clue whatsoever as to the impact this idiotic stand will cost you back home, when you have to face the ordinary pewsters who make up the majority of your contributors? How are you ever going to defend -- except perhaps in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Newark -- such an imposition upon your constituents' common sense? 

I am tempted, in my sheer curmudgeonly ire, to invoke the curses of Mark Twain upon you clueless Bishops. I paraphrase, but even in his original, Mark Twain had it right:

First God made imbeciles. That was for practice. Then He made Episcopal Bishops and deputies to General Convention.

What -- you still don't think I have made my case, and that I am simply indulging in curmudgeonly calumny and vituperation, for the sheer joy of it?  Think again. Consider:

--Today, at General Convention in Indianapolis, you deputies rejected signing on to the Anglican Covenant, as presented. In effect, you decided to sign on to the nice-sounding platitudes in Articles I-III, but said you wanted no part with the provisions that could have held you accountable to the rest of the Communion for your waywardness and pig-headed insistence on your own autonomy from the rest of the Communion. 

--And today, also, as just noted, your Bishops decided to surrender their local authority to the self-judgment  (nonexistent, of course, and that is precisely the joke) of individuals who cannot, and do not want to be told, to make up their minds.

--Finally, you expect the rest of us pew-sitters to go along with your idiotic resolutions, just because you supposedly speak for "the Episcopal Church in the United States of America." Well, you don't -- and now you are going to find that out. 

To sum up: On the one hand, you declared yourselves resolutely opposed to surrendering to the dictates of the majority of the Anglican Communion, should they decide that you were just wrong.

But on the other hand, you kowtow and make yourselves entirely subservient to the smallest minority of all those who claim membership in the Anglican Communion, regardless of whether that tiny minority is right or wrong about Holy Scripture.

The Protestant Episcopal Church, consisting of the people who pay for you to have your triennial fun and fantasies, hereby protests against you ignorant Bishops and deputies who voted to secure passage of such claptrap, with scarcely a peep of opposition.

A pox, we say, on both your benighted Houses.




P.S.: Think this curmudgeon has vented all his wrath? Wait until you read the forthcoming post about the whitewashing going on in the House of Bishops over the lawsuits against departed dioceses, in an attempt to make it seem as though All Is Well.™As Mark Twain says: "This was just for practice."