A fine French cat who has nothing whatsoever to do with the following post.
A slate of four nominees for the next presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church was announced today; this article gives more information on each. In the wake of all the controversy over Gene Robinson's election, there's been a lot of speculation and gossip about who would be nominated and what those nominations might portend, but I was very happy to see that for the first time, one nominee is a woman, and none of them are arch conservatives. (One voted against Gene's election, and none of the four were present at his consecration.) Already today, church traditionalists were complaining mightily about the nominees because none of them were members of their camp, ready to "lead the church back to orthodoxy".
It's amazing how much publicity mean-spirited rabble-rousers are able to get in this country when they're all worked up, especially about sex. The predicted mass exodus from the Episcopal Church simply has not happened, but from the amount of press the story has gotten over the past two years, you'd think the whole thing was going to collapse. While I would have liked to see a more actively progressive slate of nominees, I was still happy to see that one is female, and that none are retrograde - which means that the church at large probably has the backbone, along with the House of Bishops, to stick to its basic principles and look forward on issues of justice and inclusion rather than bowing to pressure from either the fundamentalist fringes, or the Anglican Communion and Canterbury, to preserve the institution at all costs.
I'm proud of that.
Yes, progress often moves in ratchet fashion -- a little jerk forward, and then apparently motionless again while all the forces readjust. Not going backwards is good enough.
Posted by: dale | January 27, 2006 at 02:52 AM
Yeah, but the cat doesn't care.
HUGE cat.
Posted by: zhoen | January 27, 2006 at 02:59 PM