Episcopal priest mulls split from denomination

The Morning Call ^ | 6 October 2003 | Genevieve Marshall

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Episcopal priest mulls split from denomination Whitehall Twp. church rector among clerics opposed to gay bishop.

By Genevieve Marshall Of The Morning Call

The Rev. William Ilgenfritz will get on a plane today for a flight he booked on an Internet discount site and head for Dallas, where conservative Episcopalians are meeting this week to decide whether to break from the denomination over a gay man's appointment as bishop.

Although he is open to modern conveniences, the 56-year-old Ilgenfritz believes in tradition.

He is vice president of Forward in Faith, a conservative Episcopal group formed more than a quarter-century ago to oppose the ordination of women.

Yet he quietly works side-by-side with women priests in the Diocese of Bethlehem, where he is rector of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Whitehall Township.

Ilgenfritz is going to Dallas because — unlike the ordination of the first woman priest — the appointment of an openly gay priest named V. Gene Robinson, who is bishop-elect in the New Hampshire Diocese, is not something he can live with.

''It's morally objectionable,'' Ilgenfritz said on a late September afternoon in his office in the church rectory. ''This is not a theological, philosophical difference. It more than goes against the church's history.

''By allowing a practicing homosexual to lead a diocese, the Episcopal Church is condoning his sinful behavior,'' he said. ''And that is a serious split from the faith I have grown up with.''

[ahadams2]

sorry folks this from one of those papers that only allows excerpts....

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Ping

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[mel]

I know a couple of people who at first said that the uproar over the gay bishop would blow over like the ordination of women. But that is nothing compared to this. The church as a moral authority and teacher ha what a joke, there is no way i am taking my daughter back to that church.