Out with the old, in with the new. Today is St. Andrew's Day, and I therefore decided that my Advent Fast would begin today. This was decided as I was staring at sausage pizza.
The beginning of the liturgical year also is an opportunity to clean up a few matters in the sidebar.
First, Kinesis is no more. Rev. Deacon Karen wisely decided to scatter her blog to the winds before entering her first call.
I now have the correct address of Dean Kniseley's fine Entangled States. It is a good mixture of science and sermons.
A couple of new blogs enter the fray. One comes from an Anglo-Catholic priest, who claims his parish is the most traditional and orthodox parish in the Diocese of Los Angeles. But they're staying! Yay! The hike to the OC would be a bit much, but I do like Father David's blog, and I think most of you would, too. He apparently also shares one of my hobbies, writing science fiction. I had been meaning to mention the blog for a while now, but I was spurred to action by a kind promotional e-mail in my Inbox from one of Father David's parishioners.
The other is Father Tony Clavier's self-titled blog, though I think "West Virginia Parson" is a much better title. Father Clavier is fighting cancer while having some quite interesting (and convicting) thoughts about mission and the Episcopal Church. I am still working on a response to his thoughts on Anglicanism.
All right, that's it. Go read the Postulant or something. But if you do read the Postulant's entry about a Network bishop etc. etc., please know that the rumor in question is a very old one and is related to his quite enthusiastic support of a "discreet" ex-gay ministry in his cathedral city and his unmarried state. Please... Hasn't anyone ever heard of the eunouchion pneumatike ?
4 comments:
Note: the Fr. Clavier response post is below this one.
Ah, I suppose I should have said "revived" or "rejuvenated" or something like that, not "started." Shows what I know.
Actually, the rumours are more than that if one knows priests who know the bishop in question.
As I commented to The Postulant there is more to this than meeting an abstraction or rebuking unkindly made arguments against the bishop in question though I haven't read those he rebukes, so I don't know the extent of their own unkindness. As the good philospher rightly pointed out (I rarely use that word "rightly" but here I think the observation correct), he tends to come from a philosophical framework of tight analysis and abstraction mete to his temperament. Being an INFP sort, I tend to come to things from particulars and intuitive gut sense that seems to too oft cast me as pastoral care "auditor", to use Kierkegaard's term, concerned with particulars of persons, psychology, context, practice, virtues and how "reason" is so oft the justification of neurons already fired off in particular emotions, reactions, sentiments, and "reason" the justified conjenial result of one's own temperament and outlook devoid of self-critical humility or a sense of history in our failure repeatedly to criticize our rhetoric and outlook revisiting the same justifications and words of contempt upon different flesh and blood even as we abhor the past with "never agains". As the Lieutenant remarks is Greene's majestic novel I recently completed:
"I hate your reasons....I don't want reasons. If you see somebody in pain, people like you [the priest] reason and reason. You say--perhaps pain's a good thing, perhaps he'll be better for it one day...."
And the priest's late reply:
"God is love....We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, nad smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark?"
The comment:
I am less concerned about the longstanding knowledge that said bishop is a recovering homosexual than that his lack of charity toward those who disagree with him has even gone so far as to refuse Eucharist to lay gay persons in his diocese. I don't think folks can understand the pastoral rage, that perhaps my own priest mentions on his blog in discussing this bishop, until you have had to work with gay folk who have been harmed by the pastoral practices in said diocese to the point of grave distress and possible loss of faith. Most of these folks are not philosophers or trained in great ethical analysis and cannot so easily find a way through this when it happens.
More than one same sex couple ventures to this diocese on Sundays to commune as they have openly been refused communion at said bishop's direction in San Joaquin. Having been refused Eucharist in the RC tradition for being openly gay, until you have experienced this, it's hard to understand the rage that comes up against one like said bishop, and forever destroys illusions that somehow God can be found alone in bread and wine. Frankly, were I in that diocese I would have left the Episcopal Church for a more broad tradition as even the RC is better there for openly gay persons than is TEC. I don't agree with those who would assisinate his person or character, but frankly, being frank about his brand of pastoral care and how that may relate to his choices is needed, as is a real life discussion about the dangers of repressive sexuality not simply for one's own self but for those around him. If the traditional view is untrue, as I believe it is, it has the potential and has done great damage and that damage coming from a bishop can be incredible and is not simply a matter of one's own beliefs or choices but can and has damaged the Body. Sacrifices of this sort can and are not always noble and may rather embitter persons who were not called to such by God but have accepted the burden as laid upon them by other humans and internalized this. Healthy religious know this and are very wary of prescriptions around sexuality wholecloth, at least the ones I've known. I've also known a lot of unhealthy religious, many of them quite nasty and most of them homosexual and probably not called to celibacy but hiding away, and they are best at attacking those who chose to be open about their orientation.
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