It sounds as though My Lady Rhode Island is sincerely doing everything she can to give this presbyter an opportunity to “choose this day”...or a day 90 days hence. 

I commend in every way Bp. Wolf’s gentleness in dealing with this priest.  However, the situation cannot help but bring to mind some other presbyters and bishops (some of them dear friends of mine) who have been deposed for abandoning the “Communion of this Church” while remaining faithful Anglican Christians, yet the Reverend Ms Redding remains under Holy Orders despite espousing the doctrines religion both strange and foreign to those who follow Our Lord.

How can any rational being treat this matter seriously? LM

Friends, I posted the entire letter from Bishop Wolf to the House of Bishops here, if you want to read it.

#2, because Mother Redding is a child of God, she deserves our care and love, as do all children of God. That’s why we take it seriously.

Pax,
  Scott+

I was at General Seminary during the time Anne was there.  Another of our classmates converted toJudaism.

This whole state of affairs speaks volumes about TEC seminary education.

“... for I was determined to learn nothing but Christ and Him crucified”  This sort of thing was greatly frowned upon by students and faculty alike (with a few notable exceptions, such as the Drs Koenig)

And so, we have wiccan TEC priests, and Jewish TEC priests, and now muslim TEC priests.

I agree with KevinBabb.  REAL loving pastoral care would sit her down and put it to her:  Jesus Christ alone is Lord and Savior—THE Way The Truth and The Life—or not.  Pick one; you really can’t have both.  Becoming a muslim may be a free choice, but it most certainly consistutes “Abandonment of Communion” and Faith and all.

+Wolf seems to have handled this well, and with patience.  Redding was and is suspended, which is what really matters.  I will only be disappointed if +Wolf decides to let her off.  The evidence at hand, from her own hand suggests she will not.  This is what “abandonment of communion” was really designed for.  If it is not used properly after having been so misapplied elsewhere, then TEC’s canon law will be (perhaps even further than it already is) beyond farce.

Extended grace periods can bear fruit, but sometimes they send the wrong message.  This sends the message that TEC bishops will tolerate apostasy (or at least spiritual confusion) among their clergy, but will not tolerate clergy who oppose the Church’s sanctioning of homosex.

“Suspended,” yes, but deposed, no…....unfortunately.

It is beyond me how the TEC allows a priest to serve two masters, she should be defrocked for heresy.

She never should’ve been “ordained” in the first place…....but that’s another matter.

It is quite obvious that the “Rev.” Holmes is serving two masters, as Lutheran-MS says.  If I may suggest a way she can do this:  The Bible and the Koran contradict each other in many areas.  In order to reconcile the contradictions, one has to “ignore” the passages in question in each book. The “Rev.” Holmes does this by ignoring Mat 6:24. Simple?

Conclusion: she has to go.
H

I agree that +Wolf is handling this gently and maturely.  Give Ms. Redding time to decide, but decide she must.  To not decide is to decide.

I think that this is very fair to the Rev. Redding and to TECUSA.  Just because some bishops are overly zealous in bringing priests to trial (or just deposing them without trial) does not mean that we should not allow the process in this case to work itself out.  Since Redding is inhibited, waiting to depose her does no harm (unless she violates the inhibition, but that is another matter).  Bishop Wolf is busy getting ready for Lambeth and waiting a few more months won’t hurt anything.

YBIC,
Phil Snyder

“Suspended,” yes, but deposed, no…....unfortunately.

No, they seem to only be hell-bent on deposing priests who are changing their affiliation to a different Province in the (supposed) same Communion, while professing the same Lord and faith.

AMAZING!!!

To bother to treat with her at all is an offense. Child of God? Well, in theory. In practice, yet another TEC fruitcake. She should be condemned to California with no promise of remission. She will be right at home.  You would think TEC had no serious business to attend to. LM

Larry, your little slam at California is not becoming to you.

I, too, knew Ann back at GTS, and it always seemed to me that her own deep frustrations with Christianity would eventually lead her to some very different place. I am impressed by her bishop’s willingness to deal with a potentially very incendiary situation patiently and wisely. She is making sure that all the stones are being turned over, so that recriminations later on will not “stick.”

Someday, this entire era in our church will look so sad and perplexing (it does, of course, to many of us now - but I think it will be much more clearly so later). Ann’s apostacy is part of a much deeper sickness in our faith that was made clear to me by my contact with those in the process towards ordination. So many of the folks at GTS back then seemed so angry, so hurt, so ill-formed, and so confusion. How could they possibly lead effectively, I wondered? And then there was the hot-house atmosphere there: it was an environment that encouraged people to think that the Real World would put up with such confused and toxic thinking. Even most TEC parishes will not.

As a friend of mine says, TEC became a hospital with no doctors in the 70’s, and I guess we are going to have to follow that trajectory through to its conclusion in order to understand where it leads!

#3 ~ ‘Mother’ Redding? Sorry, Mother is already taken, has been for centuries, by the nuns. She claims to be a priest, call her Father.
T

Rob K: Ok I take it back. You KNOW Cal is a standing joke, land of the nuts and fruits etc. Just the way farmers daughters are a standing (if that’s the right word) joke. You are being too sensitive I think, but my apologies anyway.  Larry

LM - Thx - Most of the “fruits and nuts” come here from somewhere else, as a matter of actual fact.  There used to be an old saying uttered by some author, that “If you tipped the U.S. on one corner everything loose would roll to Southern California.  Some truth in that, and it also applies now to Nor Cal also!.

I’m getting tired of my state being dumped on!  The fruitcakes live in the major metropolitan areas…...San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley (Berzerkeley).  We REAL Californians live in the “boonies” as far as they’re concerned.  A POX on ‘em!  Social malcontents love company, and we don’t need ‘em among us!

San Diego?  SD has always struck me as fairly conservative; isn’t it mostly a Navy town?

Me, I’m happy to live in liberal Seattle.  And if people who are so benighted as to live on the wrong side of the Rockies choose to vent opinions about what goes on over here on the West Coast, they’re welcome to do so but it’s no concern of mine

Whoops Cennydd, I guess I stepped on more than one toe. By the bye, I must tell you that Vermont has more crackpots per square toke than any place I know of. (Maine has its share of crackpots, but they tend to carry 30-06s in the cab so one has to be careful.)  Rueful in Maine