Does +Arizona not know what a metropolitan is? If the PB is not a metropolitan—he/she isn’t—then such insignia are wrong no matter who has previously worn them.

Also, what exactly is incorrect with ‘Bishop Shori’?

I see from the comments to him that he has sufficiently drummed up the troops to provide a liberal response about the horrible “inaccuracies”.

I thought his response to the criticism that TEC’s liberalism was linked to its rapid numerical decline was indicative of the overall tenor of his approach.

He states that almost all organised religious groups are in numerical decline. Which might be true, but does not address the validity or otherwise of the criticism as there may be a variety of a factors at work, some of which affect some groups and some others.

TEC’s declension has been stunning, and even its own people with their “we must follow the truth even if it costs us numbers” have acknowledged the link at times.

The whole post is more of a political spin, rather than a coherent response.

She misspelled the PB’s last name, #1. That’s the problem he raises.

The WSJ article did, it seems to me, have some factual problems—and the author’s tone undercut a bit it as an effective tool exposing the folly and hypocrisy of TEC. However, one of the commenters on +Arizona’s blog did make a very good point: this is how a great many people out there perceive TEC now. The bishop, as one would expect, chose only to respond by issuing the sort of party-line chatter that validates the original article’s critique.

Our “leadership” is so used to excluding differing opinions, shaming opponents, and silencing criticism through the use of naked power that it must sting quite a bit to experience a rebuke about which they can do nothing. My immediate response to +Kirk’s post was “turnabout is fair play.”

Ouch… it clearly hurt!!!
Yes there were inaccuracies ... but there were some very telling accurate points as well.

I was told that when Jimmy Page viewed the movie “Spinal Tap” that he didn’t think certain things were very funny. Sometimes things are a little too close to home. So Bishop Kirk… feeling a little guilty?

In fairness the bishop did make a few legitimate points. But overall I still think the WSJ article was more right than wrong and basically got what TEO is about.

WSJ wrote:

“Formally changing the structure of General Convention will most likely formalize the reality that many Episcopalians already know: a church in the grip of executive committees under the direct supervision of the church’s secretive and authoritarian presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. They now set the agenda and decide well in advance what kind of legislation comes before the two houses.”

How is that inaccurate?

Sure, a bishop of that church may prefer not to hear it or read it.  But inaccurate?

“In recent years she’s sued breakaway, traditionalist dioceses which find the mother church increasingly radical. Church legislators have asked publicly how much the legal crusades have cost, to no avail. In the week before this summer’s convention, Bishop Schori sent shock waves through the church by putting forth her own national budget without consulting the convention’s budget committee—consisting partly of laymen—which until now has traditionally drafted the document.”

All 100% accurate.  Liberals in TEC have been asking precisely these questions: how much have we paid for the litigation, what have we got to show for it, and why did you produce a budget without consultation?

The bishop of Arizona appears to be nitpicking.

“I have only one more thing to say to the Wall Street Journal:  I am cancelling my subscription.”

that’s fair. Sort of like parishioners no longer contributing to diocesan coffers, don’t you think?

“Sort of like parishioners no longer contributing to diocesan coffers, don’t you think?”  How magnificently funny!!!!

Two things. #7, that gave me a great Saturday morning laugh. This is really an opinion piece and we all know only liberal elites are allowed to have an opinion.

The GetReligion.org blog covered this article as well. They had a good right up on it from a journalistic integrity standpoint.

Hmm, in contesting “truthiness” the WSJ clearly comes out ahead on statements regarding existential reality.  The Sqishop, not so much.  Which raises the question of how much spin renders fact “truthiness” in the eyes of the beholder? ... and should persons so spinning be allowed to drive vehicles on public highways.  That level of disorientation seems dangerous.

Well, really, I’d say it’s more likely that the Bishop of Arizona is running scared, now that the truth has come out in print.  Liberals don’t like having their dirty laundry aired in public, it seems.

Any writer—prelate, lay person, believer, non-believer, etc.—attempting to publish a persuasive response to a newspaper article on the status of the Episcopal Church should be expected to hurdle a bar that clearly escapes approaches to the subject which appear to dominate the Bishop of Arizona’s response. Some of these approaches include: an opinion concerning another individual where there is no apparent basis unless it is a difference of view (stating that the WSJ writer (listed as an Episcopalian) apparently knows little or nothing about TEC and expressing the doubt that the WSJ writer even “attended” (whatever in the world that is supposed to mean)), advancement of a isolated/limited point as valid for refutation of a wider matter (the non-involvement of the Arizona deputation with fancy wines and a similar non-observation of fancy steakhouses), mention of a third party and/or parties as apparently having relevance to the points to be critiqued (e.g., Rupert Murdock Virtue Online, right-wingers). At least this bishop’s reference to critiques which he found worthwhile is appreciated as a possible source of a critique that avoids the above-mentioned approaches.

So in other words, the Arizona delegation didn’t socialize like the others did?  Maybe they couldn’t afford to.

My biggest problem with the article was that it only scratched the surface of the lies and heresies promulgated by the Episcopal church over the last several decades. The Episcopal church is no longer a Christian church in the patristic sense of the definition. It is a cult and a vicious one at that ie., the vindictive litigation against the democratically majority vote of many parishes to separate from the church. The Saints are turning over in their graves.