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An Episcopal priest who was accused of sex crimes against a young parishioner died of an apparent drug overdose last night on the sixth floor of the Government Center parking garage, police and his lawyer said. Police said they were called to the garage about 7:40 p.m. and found a man inside a gray 2006 Saturn. Police attempted to perform CPR on the man, but were unsuccessful. Boston EMS declared the patient dead at 8:05 p.m., and the call was referred to the Medical Examiner, police said.

Recently, the Archdiocese of San Francisco, perhaps at the instigation of its incoming archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, denied permission for drag queens to emcee at charity events in the community hall of Most Holy Redeemer, a Roman Catholic church in the Castro district. That prompted this letter to me from the Rev. Robert Warren Cromey, who will identify himself in the letter: "When I was rector of Trinity Episcopal in the late nineteen nineties, I conducted at least five funerals of drag queens in the church. They were usually held on Saturday afternoons. Neighbors' heads would lean out the windows in...

The Episcopal Church's 77th General Convention concluded Thursday with the adoption of a long list of resolutions, from one that calls on the U.S. Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act to another providing rites for pet funerals. Episcopal leaders, who met in Indianapolis for over a week, considered dozens of resolutions – the most controversial being the approval of transgender ordination and rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. In protest, leaders from the Diocese of South Carolina, including its bishop, left the convention early after expressing clearly their belief that the decisions mark a departure from Scripture...

Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful. Episcopalians from around the country gathered here this week for their church's 77th triennial General Convention, which ended Thursday. Although other Protestant denominations have national governing councils, the Episcopal Church's triennial gathering stands apart. For starters, it's one of the world's largest such legislative entities, with more than 1,000 members. General Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere. For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order...

The headlines coming out of the Episcopal Church’s annual U.S. convention are stunning — endorsement of cross-dressing clergy, blessing same-sex marriage, the sale of their headquarters since they can’t afford to maintain it. The American branch of the Church of England, founded when the Vatican balked at permitting King Henry VIII to continue executing any wife who failed to bear him sons, is in trouble. Somehow slipping out of the headlines is a harsh reality that the denomination has been deserted in droves by an angry or ambivalent membership. Six prominent bishops are ready to take their large dioceses out...

South Carolina deputation leaves General Convention [Ed. Note: South Carolina has shown constant grown in parishes and average Sunday attendance figures for years. In the discussion, House of Bishops on July 9 prior to the vote on A049 gay blessing liturgy, Bp. Mark Lawrence said the following, "40 years ago, I was backpacking in the High Sierras and we were above the timberline. There was no trail and as the sun set, we realized that we had to make camp and settle in for the night. We could not see and did not know where we were. In the morning,...

Bishop Robinson, You are reaping what you have sown Why the Bishop of New Hampshire is wrong NEWS ANALYSIS By David W. Virtue in Indianapolis www.virtueonline.org July 110, 2012 When the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson took a private communication one of my staff sent him and made its contents public inside the House of Bishops this week, he opened a can of worms that he has only himself to blame for. No one asked him to do that; he did it on his own recognizance. He did not ask my permission. The communication was about rumors...

GC2012: Communion Partner Bishops Issue Minority Report July 11, 2012 The Indianapolis Statement The following statement was read from the floor of the House of Bishops on the final day of the 77th General Convention in Indianapolis: The 77th General Convention of The Episcopal Church, in passing Resolution A049, has authorized the provisional use of a liturgy for blessing same-sex unions. The purpose of this statement is to record our dissent from this action. 1. At our ordination as bishops of the Church, we have all taken a solemn oath: "I solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures...

GC2012: HOD Vote came Silently on Same-Sex Blessings By Mary Ann Mueller Special Correspondent July 10, 2012 INDIANAPOLIS - The House of Deputies' afternoon vote on A-049 came in silence, the result of modern technology. When the House of Bishops voted to approve same-gender blessings each bishop was called by name and with their own voice they were required to vocalize their vote - yea or nay. Electronic voting was the rule of the day in the House of Deputies. Each Order - lay and clergy, were called to vote using their hand-held electronic voting devise. The laity was called...

GC2012: HOB Passes Provisional Blessings for Same-Sex Unions By David W. Virtue in Indianapolis July 9, 2012 To no one's surprise the House of Bishops passed a provisional rite for the blessing of same sex unions. By a vote of 111 to 41 with three abstentions the HOB changed the definition of marriage, approving a liturgy to bless homosexual couples of both sexes, something that has never been done in 2,000 years of church history. Resolution A049 was passed by the bishops on the 5th legislative day of the 77th General Convention. The text of the resolution states that the...

GC2012: Transgender, Homosexual Activists Hail Victories at Episcopal Convention By Jeffrey Walton July 9, 2012 Officials in the U.S.-based Episcopal Church have given homosexual and transgender activists two victories on the fifth day of their triennial denominational convention. The House of Deputies passed legislation stating that "gender identity and expression" would not be barriers to ordained ministry, while also altering the church's canons to include the transsexual categories alongside gender, race and sexual orientation as specially protected status. Later the same afternoon, the House of Bishops voted 111-41 to authorize rites for same-sex blessings. The bishops had already signed off...

Breaking news: House of Bishops affirms gay commitment ceremony Posted on July 9, 2012 by cherie Cherie Wetzel reporting from the 77th General Convention in Indianapolis July 9, 2012 This afternoon, the House of bishops voted in roll call vote, to affirm A049 the resolution endorsing the same-sex commitment ceremony. The vote was 111 yes, 41 no and 3 abstained. As I listened to the 1:45 minute discussion prior to the vote, I continued to have hope as clearly 19 bishops stated they would vote no that I had not expected. At the end of the process, after announcing the...

July 8, 2012|10:00 am A day after a legislative body of the Episcopal Church voted to sell the denomination's New York headquarters amid budget cuts and declining membership, church leaders on Saturday adopted legislation to give transgenders the right to become lay and ordained ministers.At the church's ongoing week-long General Convention in Indianapolis, Ind., the House of Bishops approved proposal that would amend two canons to prohibit discrimination based on "gender identity or expression" in the lay and ordained ministry discernment process and in the overall life, worship and governance of the church, Episcopal News Service reported.The House of Deputies,...

It was St. Peter Damian, a Doctor of the Church, who explained that the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because, "Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust: It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind . . . It opens up Hell and closes the gates of Paradise . . . It is this vice that...

It’s believed to be the first time in the U.S. that a father and son have been ordained at the same Mass. Details: “Charles Albert Hough the III.”Bishop Kevin Vann’s historic words rang out at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Keller as he called first the father… and then the son.“Charles Albert Hough the IV.”Both answered the call before a big congregation during a one-of-its-kind ordination.“Oh, this is a great moment in the life of our family — a great moment in the history of our faith,” said the elder Hough.The father-and-son duo — who both go by...

The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are vying for ecumenical partners as each jockeys for recognition by the wider Christian community. TEC recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Episcopal-Lutheran Concordat wherein the Episcopal Church USA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) entered into full Communion. While this was initially met with much enthusiasm and idealism in the hope that the two denominations would usher in a new era of inter-denominational cooperation, the occasion went mostly unnoticed. In February of this year, the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in...

COLONIE — The Episcopal Church must embrace change and diversity if it is to move forward, the presiding bishop of the 2.4 million member church said Friday. "We need to discover ways to engage in the outside community," Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said, in urging the 125 delegates attending the Province II Synod of the Episcopal Church to recognize that while many believe the church is an unchanging rock, it too slowly evolves. "'We are beginning to discover a way forward into a new chapter in the church's history," Jefferts Schori said. "If we are going to save the...

Wichita, Kan. (AP) -- A California boy attends only four days at a Kansas military boarding school where he is tormented by staff and students after breaking both his legs in separate incidents. A Tennessee student's stomach is forcibly branded as a rite of initiation. A Florida cadet breaks his hand fending off a student with a history of sexual abuse who tries to grope him, and school officials refuse to investigate or inform his parents of the attack. These claims are the latest additions to a growing list of former cadets who allege in a federal lawsuit they were...

The first thing to be said about Dr. Rowan Williams is that he is by common consent a subtle theologian, a sensitive pastoral priest, and a genuinely good and holy man, because a great many less flattering things will be said about him in the next few months, some of them further down this column. Dr. Williams announced last Friday that he intended to resign at the end of the year as Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore as spiritual leader of the Church of England and, by extension, of the 77 million–strong Anglican Communion around the world. His announcement came...

The evangelical church is under constant threat to compromise its reliance on biblical truth. The human desire to be accepted, to not be seen as "outside the mainstream," can be overwhelming. But that desire is our weakness, our downfall. It does not always immediately destroy the dam we build to protect the waters of truth, but instead it leads to tiny fissures that grow until destruction is inevitable. Twenty years ago, I experienced the painful demise of the Episcopal Church, which once was a bastion of biblical truth. It was not a pretty picture. It was a picture painted in...