Is there any way for the Episcopal Church to excommunicate him?
They don’t want to excommunicate him. His presence as bishop is what’s causing the meltdown of the Episcopal Church...as far as they’re concerned Robinson is perfectly normal and the bishops, priests and congregations that oppose his elevation are all knuckle dragging, unchristian homophobes.
We're talking about an ecclesial assembly that put up with theological outrage after theological outrage from at least the time of Bishop Pike in the 50's through the attempted consecration of Vicky Gene. (It's my pet theory that what greased the slides into destruction was the Lambeth conference on the '30's which approved artificial birth control.)
But by the '70's political cynicism was pretty much in control of the Episcopal Church. It is NOT, I think, absurd on its face, to believe that God could make His will known to people who truly sought it in humility and sincerity, and that a representative polity might be the means of expression of that will.
But soon after I came to Virginia in 1982, it was clear that diocesan councils were run with contempt for discourse and with an arrogant conviction that God's will was known by the liberals who were called to do whatever was required to inflict that will on the Diocese and the church at large.
As ONE example of the depths to which discourse and discernment had sunk, the following argument was seriously advanced at one council:
The Episcopal church should make divorce and remarriage matters of little importance. After all, during the time when the old thinking was adopted (you know, that pesky life-long union stuff) people didn't live as long as they do know and women, especially were liable to die in child birth. So because of the shorter life expectancy, it was less of a hardship to stay married to one and only one person. But medical advances have made life-long marriages last unbearably long, so we should lighten up a little.I'm serious. This argument was seriously advanced -- and nobody laughed! Because we now live with the dreadful possibility that our wives may survive child-birth or our husbands will not die in agony after an injury sustained in farming or labor or warfare, we have a burden which previous ages could not imagine - namely, our spouses refuse to die when we're tired of them! -- how SELFish!
Consequently, the merciful thing to do is to make it easier for us, all of us, clergy and lay (no pun intended) alike, to shed those inconveniently vital people we married when they were young and attractive and find ourselves new squeezes. THAT is the the way to live the Christ-like life!
The hands are the hands of a church, but the voice is the voice of the devil.
I have been following the happenings in ECUSA with interest because I was raised in the Episcopal church, my parents were very active in the church. Spong was rector of our parish at one time. By that time I had started attending Mass at the Catholic Church and there was no looking back.