So one Lamberth defines our belief and another does not. Curiouser and curiouser.

Eventually, however, a determinedly Procrustean approach to polity will leave them without a leg to stand on.

Considering the stool only has 3 legs, if you take one away, you fall on you thing.

After I wade through her “high sounding” words, I am still left with the impression that there is nothing but thin air to her faith, whatever faith it is.

it makes me uncomfortable to say this- especially being an unworthy priest myself - but she always seems such a parady of what an Archbishop should be.  From her vaccous theology to her whacky consecration robes- it is as if someone is lampooning the Church rather than actually leading or serving it.

I am sorry but along with Gene Robinson I just cannot see God’s presence in any of this…is that a terrible thing to say?

When I look at ECUSA it is as if God is being mocked. It would bring me great comfort to hear I was wrong- and that my discomfort arises due to an inability to accept Women’s ordination as valid.

But it seems ever more likely that the reverse is true and my suspicion was right all along. That the decision to ordain women was not of God. And it has therefore led to its natural conclusion in the land that first embraced it fully. Away from orthodox belief (and obedience) to a situation where human will is an idol to be worshipped:

...please God am I wrong?

“... it is as if someone is lampooning the Church ...”
Someone is. A very sinister Someone.

Ah, ambiguity as a root value.  I trust that the statement of the obvious be remembered along with “Yes” in Tanzania and conversation via lawsuits.  Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

The now you see it now you don’t on salvation is a classic and maybe even a parody. I guess we are called to be above average, agnostic, altruists. What is it about the color purple?  “I love you. You love me. We are a happy family.” My sense is that most families are disfunctional including ours. I believe I read the theology of Barney. And the PB.

Rugby, I fear your instinct is true.  How a woman can serve as an icon for the Great High Priest who has passed through the Heavens is a mystery to me.  I, nor any man, could serve as an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  ECUSA today has totally confused the genders.  Hence, a homosexual bishop and prayers to mother Jesus.  But God will not be mocked.  TEC is dying as the Holy Spirit vacates the body.

“I have no clear answers, that’s what pastoral skill is about.”

Of course she has completely clear answers about some things. She has her fundamentals as much as any Bible Baptist.

As to pastoral skills, this is, I suppose, derived from a Rogerian self-directed therapy approach. What nonsense!

I was there to hear the conversation. It became very clear that the PB is really all about having “pastoral skills.” If you were not calm in your questions, then she commented that you must be acting out of some sense of being anxious/fearful and that was a VERY BAD THING indeed. There must also be something in the way she thinks that says having a strong theological oppinion is unpastoral. So, if you are not caught under the spell of the monotone voice and the pastoral caring, she comes across as unbending and not very accepting to those who do not agree with her. It’s an odd combination that must work for her among people looking for someone pastoral above all other things.

I was absolutely floored when she said she could not affirm anything about Jesus because she just could not talk about what she could not talk about. Left me with little doubt she has not had a close personal encounter with the Risen Lord. That’s the real pity. We as a church value pastoral skill more than personal faith. Now it all makes sense ... or not ... so to speak ...

Is this a Christian leader?

Wasn’t it Bill Clinton who said “I can FEEL your pain!”?

My experience of KJS was very much along #11’s lines. She is a very controlled person, and very cutting of those who don’t play by the rules of dispassionate, intellectual Christianity. Due to the monoculture that produced her, she has little or no knowledge of any other approach. I, too, feel it is hard to imagine she really has met the tranforming Jesus I have…one that impells the Disciple to share His Love and transforming grace. 

As I attend various meetings in my diocese, it is becoming harder and harder to “pretty up the corpse” of a dying entity. All of this talk of vibrancy, inclusivity, newness &c. means that little of this is actually happening on the ground. The PB’s almost complete inability to discuss the Faith in anything like a understandible manner demonstrates the radically exclusive mindset that has come to control this part of the Church. Someday a history of this will be written, and I think it will say that her election marked the end of an era. Her speech in Virginia is, for this reader, iconic of a morabund, remote, and fundamentalism-from-the-Left sort of faith. For KJS (and those falling all over themselves to canonize her while still in office) having no easy answer has become her easy answer.

When you read this several times, what you learn is that she has said, ‘I have nothing to say.” and her speech is the practical consequence. Why the ambiguous talk about ambiguity? Because this position permits her to say nothing, and then qualify that position at some length. REad it and despair.  LM

Re 12:  It’s evident from her answers she’s not a Christian, she’s a universalist:

Our understanding as Christians is that Jesus is our salvation, that he died for the whole world. That said, we don’t necessarily know the mechanisms by which God saves the whole world … My understanding of idolatry includes the assumption that I can know and comprehend the way in which God saves people who are not overtly Christian. I understand that Jesus is my savior, I understand that Jesus is the savior of the whole world. But I am unwilling to do more than speculate about how God saves those who don’t profess to be Christians. I look at the fruits of the life of someone like Mahatma Ghandi and the Dhali Lama and I see Christ-like features …

The first thing that sprang to mind in reading the description of her “monotonous voice” and “calming manner” was C.S. Lewis’ description of the Green Witch in The Silver Chair.  This woman is dangerous.

Yes a voice lacking in passion is what she seems to yearn for. How very strange and ever more sinister.

Yes #17. What an interesting thought ...

Interesting too to compare the PB with Archbishop Tutu. Have heard him, met him , seen him on many occasions. While I have not agreed with some of his ideas of late (heard him compare Hitler, Hussein and Bush as similar types of leaders), at least you come away from hearing Tutu with a sense of life and spirit. He is overflowing with energy and speaks vibrantly. The PB is the exact opposite. Why is it she has become our highest standard for what it means to be faithful?

Youj almost expect her someday to preach quietly and calmly in her most pastoral voice on the text: And Jesus said, “You shall know the ambiguity and the ambiguity shall set you free.”

The PB’s gender is not the problem—the doctrine and theology she holds (or lack thereof) is the problem.  I respect that some of you have a problem with WO—but a male PB could as easily (and has had in the past) views and beliefs that are not in line with the faith as received.

I understand her “passion” for ambiguity. If she can establish this as a credible principle then criticism for her failure to uphold specific and concrete religious positions can always be qualified by the ambiguity principle. Moreover, ambiguity becomes a synonym for unqualified tolerance, which TEC has been advocating - at least, as so many have noticed - unqualified tolerance for those positions that TEC espouses.

  And politically, it is in her best interest to create an ideology that leaves every door open, for she appears to be aware that time, in our culture at least, is on her side as far as the church’s homophilia is concerned. Almost certainly, she need only wait for the momentum for the entire homosexual agenda to become nationally successful.
It is surely gaining strength at present.

And yet, the dice are rolling every minute, as we all know. I am beginning to feel that the US has begun to run out of patience with sex as the Supreme Endeavor. It has become too commercialized, popular to the point of weariness and boredom, too incessant and too tawdry; and I suspect that the stabilizing family will increasingly reject sexual athletics as a worthy goal for children. Do you not smell change in the wind? If this is so, Schori is betting on a fast horse grown slow with age and too many races.

Her position above is another sign of the extreme distress TEC is feeling. The data are against TEC’s continuing viability, and she is hoping that a non-inflammatory persona and a doctrine of vagueness, that everything is possible, will stanch the bleeding.

Accordingly, what we most need to do is turn our backs on Schori an TEC, so that they can get no limelight at all. We need to ignore her and all her cohorts resolutely.TEC must become invisible. LM

I am hearing this correctly? Her touting “pastoral skills”? Here is her pastoral skills, “OK my sheep, let me introduce you to Mr. Wolf. I think you will like him, and he will certainly like you.” Her idea of keeping the flock together is not herding but suing them when they get fed up and leave.

The church of radical illusion.

“We are still living into the theology of the ’79 Prayer Book,” she offered, “and the shift in ways of being is even harder than the shift in ways of thinking.”
I found this interesting; A surprising statement that the theology of the Church is different than it used to be, and this is reflected in the 1979 prayer book. I wonder if she could say clearly how the two theologies differ?

24:  Among other things, the ‘79 “prayer book” jettisoned the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the core document of Anglicanism (which I believe was adopted by the American church in 1801 but was dismissed by the ‘79 “prayer book” as an “historical document”).  Thus, Her Bishopess can preach Universalism (see my post #16 above) although specifically condemned as heresy in the Anglican Communion:

XVIII. Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ.
They also are to be had accursed that presume to say, That every man shall be saved by the Law or Sect which he professeth, so that he be diligent to frame his life according to that Law, and the light of Nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only the Name of Jesus Christ, whereby men must be saved.

Jim; I understand and agree. My question is what would the presiding Bishop say since she rarely speaks of theology in any way as she did here.
The Articles are reformed in their theology, and the Catechism in the 79 prayer book is Armenian or Semi-Pelagian; I am wondering if the presiding Bishop would express it that way.

Re 26:  The only other thing I can think of is this continual referral to the “Baptismal Covenant,” which I understand was also re-written in the ‘79 prayer book to put “peace and justice” type stuff into it.  Thus, the need to follow the UN’s millenium development goals, rather than the Gospel, becomes the fulfillment of the “baptismal covenant.”

Since I was fortunate enough to be baptized under the 1928 BCP (and also I left ECUSA in 1997), I don’t pay much attention to that, but the “baptismal covenant” argument seems to be used to cover a multitude of sins (no pun intended) in the ECUSA, such as the fact that all “baptized” persons are now entitled to full participation in the church regardless of whether they are actually Christians or show any fruit of the Spirit in their form of life.

#17 - That’s odd. As she was depicted in this account, she reminded me intensely of The Director in CS Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength”. But I agree that the Green Witch is another depiction of the same activity and purpose.

TEC as Belbury, perhaps? 

Teach me to re-read That Hideous Strenght and read about TEC back to back.