TO BLESS OR NOT TO BLESS...

[David Virtue]

TO BLESS OR NOT TO BLESS...

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue

In little more than six months, the 74th General Convention of the
Episcopal Church will gather in Minneapolis, Minnesota and, among other
things, the Church will be asked to consider whether or not it will
pass a resolution proposing rites for same-sex blessings.

It will be a defining moment in the life and history of the Episcopal
Church.  Only the United Church of Christ did this in 1997, when it
voted the inclusion of such a rite in its service book. The Episcopal
Church will join an 'elite' group that have broken with, and blatantly
attempted to change the testimony and authority of Holy Scripture, the
apostolic witness, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, the Church
Fathers - Augustine, Origen, Athanasius, - Luther, Calvin, Wesley,
Graham, Lewis, et al.

If it passes, (and there is some question that the House of Bishops
will not, as it is almost certain that the House of Deputies will do
so), it will signal that the Episcopal Church has officially and
irrevocably brokered pansexual behavior into its life and witness.

On the one hand it will be the final drum roll and last victorious
battle for Dr. Louie Crew, the church's aging First Sodomite and
Integrity founder, who has spent a lifetime whining, pressuring,
arguing, cajoling and defending a behavior that has seen more than half
a million Americans run headlong, like gadarene swine, over the cliff's
edge into self-inflicted, premature deaths.

Bishop William Swing (California) had it right when at GC2000 in Denver
he stood up in the HOB before the passing of D039 and said, "We know
where this is going to..." And he was right. The Rev. Michael Hopkins,
Integrity president pled for a bone, anything to hold onto and he got
it. Now the final chapter is being written.

If such a resolution passes it will also signal to the Anglican world
that a line has been crossed by the most liberal province in the
Communion, and that disciplinary action can now no longer be put off.
The failure of two Primatial gatherings (Oporto and Kanuga) to
discipline the ECUSA must now be recognized and action taken.

If, for some reason it does not - local option - a much-favored way for
pro-homosexual bishops and Integrity followers to get what they want
while continuing to snub their noses at Scripture and church teaching,
will continue.

Furthermore if Canon Gene Robinson is elected Bishop in the Diocese of
New Hampshire it will be another nail in the coffin of ECUSA.

Sources at the very highest levels of the Anglican Communion tell
VIRTUOSITY that if rites are passed by the ECUSA, such an action will
not go unpunished. A majority of Primates, VIRTUOSITY has been
informed, will formally move to declare themselves out of communion
with Frank Griswold and the Episcopal Church with Griswold himself
being declared a "gentile" (Mt. 18:28).

It will be the most humiliating defeat and slap at a man who has
publicly defended sodomite behavior and what he calls "pluriform
truths" in the face of overwhelming Biblical, medical, psychological,
sociological and theological evidence that this behavior has neither
the blessing of God, nor is empirically, a way to live.

Same sex blessings, which have been going on "in a corner" secretly and
not so secretly in dioceses like Los Angeles, Kansas, New York,
Pennsylvania and Delaware, will now be done openly and publicly - with
the church's blessing.

But the sound of popping champagne corks marking such a victory will be
short-lived.

Despite tacit support from the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and his
public utterances to the contrary, the Global South bishops will, to a
bishop, say they will have nothing more to do with ECUSA and any other
Western provinces that defy the plain teaching of Scripture on human
sexuality.  Only Southern Africa Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane among
all the African bishops will side with the West.

Whatever the make-up of the communion and how it will function at this
point, while open to interpretation, lines in the sand will be drawn,
that can never be reversed.

Within the ECUSA wholesale defections will begin. Not only will
parishioners walk away from Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic parishes
taking their money with them, but bishops, some even Evangelical, will
be forced to watch as parishes commit in-your-face acts and take their
congregations and head to the Anglican Mission in America.

There isn't enough diocesan money to litigate their return. Some
bishops simply don't have the money or the will to fight, with some
orthodox bishops openly refusing to fight with fellow brothers just
because they wear a different Anglican name-tag. And revisionist
bishops like Charles Bennison are finding it increasingly difficult to
get rid of orthodox priests, tied up as they will be for years in the
courts.

The public pain and media humiliation with such defections will make
Crew's sodomite "pain" pale by comparison.

The hand-wringing, public statements, and equally public lies by ECUSA
officials and the media stories that will flow from them, will turn the
ECUSA into a three-ring circus.

Sex, lies and drugs, will all be viewed as part of a greater continuous
whole, though the whole will seem more like a hole into which 40 years
of compromise with immorality will climax into one anti-climax of
disgust by thousands of Episcopalians as they walk out the door.

The canons and constitutions now flaunted by one side or the other,
will mirror the now nearly total loss of the 'faith once delivered' by
more than 70 percent of the House of Bishops.

No doctrine, no enforceable canonical standards on sexual behavior and
a theologically deficient Prayer Book will take its toll. All that will
be left is a host of clerics dressing up in fancy costumes, playing
make believe religion - hollow men - men without chests, earnestly
awaiting their pensions to numb their minds on golf courses and before
TV sets.

All they will truly have to look forward to is the final judgement of
God and his eternal anathema upon them.

Oh ECUSA where is thy victory, Oh Church what is thine end.

END