Posted on 09/15/2006 6:59:10 PM PDT by sionnsar
Captain Yips explains the Episcopal problem as well as it has ever been explained:
I had dinner recently with a couple who attend one of the large North Shore parishes, who are intelligent, educated, informed, lively people, and who are very largely unaware of the pertinent details of the Anglican Situation. They know there’s a kerfuffle going on, they know that Gene Robinson has something to do with it, but that’s about it. To the extent that they think about the kerfuffle at all, they tend to adopt the ENS spin. They were a bit surprised at some of the details I related, but the context of the dinner forbade a long harangue, and I thought that their general attitude was, what does this have to do with me? And in this, I think, they are typical of a pretty large percentage of the remaining Episcopalians. For this sort of Episcopalian, the horizon is the parish and the sacramental life offered there. They are used to occasional waves of weirdness from the sermons, and discount it; they expect to hear peculiar things from the pulpit, and don’t really care so long as the staff is pleasant, run the parish effectively, and are reasonably effective pastorally. It isn’t that these folk are casual Christians; but their horizons are too close. And that’s intentional. There’s little inter-parish cooperation, even where parishes are near together, and only a small percentage of the membership gets involved beyond their parishes. And this is just fine with Management. The Episcopal Church has always tended toward oligarchy.
This was my Episcopal experience exactly. Indeed, it was how I rationalized staying in as long as I did, even through Spong and Walter Righter and the rest of ECUSA's apostasies. That's out there somewhere and has nothing to do with me. It was only when Robbie got his pointy hat, my bishop voted in favor and my parish clergy indicated their support that I finally realized that I couldn't lie to myself any longer.
I know that there were perfectly orthodox Episcopal parishes around here. One eventually walked out, one may be looking hard at the exits, particularly if ECUSA gets run from the Anglican world, and one particularly wealthy one may have been thinking really hard about the idea three years ago. But to the vast majority of Episcopalians with whom I worshipped, church life stopped at the parish walls.
Bring up folks like Spong with these people and you might have gotten some support, a good bit of derision(among those few who were familiar with his writings) and a whole lot of "So what? What does that have to do with me?" The rector expresses support for Robinson or drops a Godself or three in a sermon and it's just more pulpit weirdness and it's not like all that many people are really paying attention anyway.
If my old parish is any indication, and I think it is, ECUSA getting run from the Anglican world will not matter in the slightest to the rapidly-dwindling number of people in ECUSA pews. They'll go on hearing about the "Book of Common Prayer" and the "Anglican tradition" as if nothing had happened. Because, to them, nothing did.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. The loons took control of the oligarchic machinery, which means that they control the seminaries AND who is admitted to ordination. They will not ordain anyone who doesn't toe the party line, and have not done so for 20 years or more.
So if you have an orthodox, old-fashioned rector, he's probably pretty close to retirement. And when he does retire, the only people available to replace him have the Seal of Approval of the ECUSA leadership. And such a person will be quite willing to conceal his heterodoxy until he's safely ensconced in the pulpit and has placed plenty of "yes-men" in strategic positions.
That is what happened to our old parish when the old rector retired. And that is when we finally shook the dust of the place from our sandals and Went Over to Rome.
Trinity and Nashotah are the exceptions and their enrollment has tripled. All is not lost.
But the bishop in our former diocese has refused to ordain ANYbody from Nashotah or Trinity . . . and I understand that is the case in many dioceses.
But not all of them. We are in the midst of selecting a new bishop. If we're lucky, the old one will ordain a few more before he leaves.
Same deal for a Christian Ed director search process that I was in. No Trinity School grad made it past the deployment officer. Then there's the deployment officers' quarterly or semi-annual gatherings where they trade info (kinda like trading athletes) on the different candidates. These guys know the scoop on their priests. There's nothing deadlier to these guys than having a Trinity or Nashotah graduate.
The Diocese of Atlanta is hopeless, the bishop is a big bud of Griswold and Schori. He would no more consider a Nashotah or Trinity graduate than he would march naked down Peachtree Street . . . in fact he would be more likely to do the latter if it involved a Gay Pride parade or some such nonsense . . .
*spew* The thought of Alexander marching naked...Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
They keep sending us the diocesan newsletter (and no doubt counting us among their members despite multiple requests to take us off the rolls) and I occasionally catch a glimpse of it as I toss it away (I'd use it to line the litter box but it might corrupt my cats.)
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