Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
All
we are saying, is...
Give Peace a Chance
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
[The Living Church (September 29) has published this under the title, "Let's
Really Show RESPECT for One Another." It will appear also in the October
edition of Diocesan Life. Thanks. --Bill]
It almost worked.
As we prepared for the 2000 Denver convention, the House of Bishops covenanted
that we would not stereotype, mind-read, marginalize, or otherwise disrespect
one another.
When the convention was nearing its end, we were discussing the possibility
of sending teams into dioceses where women are not ordained. A bishop rose
and told the House that male bishops who don’t ordain women may not believe
women are human.
This statement managed to mind-read, stereotype and marginalize these few colleagues
all at once. One of those men left the convention early, in tears.
Nobody objected to this characterization. I carry with me the guilt of not
jumping to my feet. The bishop who spoke and the bishop who left are people
I love. That may explain, but not excuse, my paralysis.
The problem with my colleague’s denunciation of the right is that it
denies the first precept of civil (let alone religious) discourse. Without
proof to the contrary, we must assume that those who hold other opinions hold
them with an amount of integrity and thoughtfulness that matches our own. Conversations
that do not start at this point are likely to fail.
In terms of who is ordained in this diocese or who gets to serve churches here,
it has to be concluded that I am squarely with the left. Those who read the
Blue Book for Denver should have to come to the same conclusion. None-theless,
a priest coming to this diocese was warned by the bishop he was leaving to “watch
out” for the “conservative” bishop in Bethlehem.
In the months since that revelation reached me, I have been trying to identify
what in my thinking would be conservative. Certainly not in biblical interpretation:
my usual comment about certain Old Testament stories is “It’s a
good thing this didn’t actually happen.” Certainly not in liturgy:
I have been known publicly to lift up, gaze upon, and carry about the Sacrament
in direct contradiction of the Articles of Religion.
Two things came to mind. The first is that I don’t believe we can simply
do theology (what a phrase!) as though Christianity started last Tuesday. In
order to discern where the Spirit is steering the cutting edge of the tradition,
one needs to understand and be part of the tradition. A prayer I value is “Guard
us from contempt for what is old, from fear of what is new.”
The real point of my conservatism has to do with ecclesiology. The increasingly
totalitarian approach taken by some bishops (whose theology I largely share)
is a scandal.
Enormous negative evangelism is created by heavy-handed bishops who must have
things their way or who have given interviews explicitly about the acquisition
of power. In a discussion with a witness present, a bishop said of conservatives
in his diocese, “I have no pastoral concern for those people.”
Such an admission should be valued for its candor. We really have begun to
say to each other, despite the apostle’s warning, “I have no need
of you.”
Most of us come to new ideas gradually. That means that some get there before
others. Many proponents of the ordination of women were once horrified by it.
The emeritus bishop of Newark is courageous enough to say he once opposed a
place for gay people in the Church. He was led to see things another way. Since
this is true, why does the majority adopt a punitive view towards those whose
process is slower or different from their own, towards those who may never
change their minds in this life?
At the moment, Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) has asked for bishops
to be consecrated to serve like the non-territorial “flying bishops” of
England. We already have such suffragans to the Presiding bishop who care for
ministries to the armed forces and prisons or who care for the bishops themselves.
There is nothing particularly new about the idea of bishops suffragan to the
Primate who have ministries to special consistencies.
After all the posturing is done, the issues for many of my colleagues are territory
and control. I claim a special right to speak to this issue: one of the priests
FIFNA has chosen is a rector in my diocese. Few of my colleagues have to consider
what it would mean to have such a bishop in their back yard, especially if
he is consecrated by other than ECUSA bishops.
Let us not say we cannot handle anomalies. The arrangement with the Lutherans
is more than an anomaly; it is a mystery rivaling transubstantiation.
Absent the very unusual consecration of Seabury by the Scots, the Whig government
of England would never have permitted the transmission of the episcopate to
the former colonies. The irregular ordinations in Philadelphia got the Church
off the dime on women’s ordination.
This is not to deny the good any of those actions produced. It is to insist
that we can find a way to live with the anomalous when we want to. I am prepared
to live with a “flying bishop” in my back yard because it is more
important to me to preserve the communion of the Church than it is to be the
only Anglican bishop in the 14 counties of northeastern Pennsylvania.
It may well be painful; in fact it is already painful. It may well be humiliating;
I have tasted only a little dram in this regard. Nonetheless, it is less important
to me that I should suffer pain, embarrassment, or humiliation, than that I
not contribute to another division in the Church.
Should my priest be ordered a bishop by foreign primates, I would have the
canonical right to rain down hellfire. Somebody else will have to start that
trial process, though, for I have come to a somewhat different view of the
exercise of rights:
A certain very intelligent man formed an interest in traffic regulations and
traffic planning. Nobody equaled his expertise and authority in the field.
One dark and stormy night he saw the walk light, and confidently stepped into
the protected crosswalk. He was struck by a passing vehicle. Onlookers wondered
about his peculiar DaVinci smile as he lay dying, his viscera squishing out
from his rent abdomen. They did not know how much satisfaction he took from
his last thought as the life left his body: “I had the right of way.”
It is laudable if we die for our principles; it is quite a different thing
if we die of them.
Our Church is already a sect from the point of view of the numbers. Some may
not care, so long as we are moving with the right agenda. We may soon become
their idea of a perfect church, but with no members.
When it comes to preserving a church where we struggle to make a home for all
who say that Jesus is Lord and confess him the risen one, you may put me down
as a conservative any day.
(return to Bishop Paul's Columns
Index)
Please direct any
questions or comments to the webmaster@diobeth.org
