There are no Blue Cows

by Walter Righter

On a typical cold winter day in Vermont, in the midst of a snowstorm with both ice and snow making the going difficult, Mary Adelia McLeod was consecrated the Bishop of Vermont.  She is the first woman in the Anglican Communion to be a diocesan Bishop.  The preacher was Barbara Harris, since 1989, the Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts. She is the first woman in the Anglican Communion to be consecrated Bishop. Bishop Harris’s words were prophetic to most of us in attendance. Her words at that point were addressed to the new Bishop. One sentence still stands out.  It was something like this – No matter what your experience has been in the past what is coming to you in the future is like nothing you have experienced before. Bishop Harris undoubtedly had experienced a certain uniqueness in the office of Bishop.  What struck me however was this. Everyone elected and consecrated Bishop is unaware of what is ahead.  There is no preordination training that equips one for the episcopate.

My first weeks in office I was startled by the number of times I had to refer to the constitution and canons in dealing with issues that clergy and lay persons brought to me.  The book containing them lay on my desk with Prayer Book and Bible. In talking with other new bishops I found this was true for lots of us. I consulted my chancellor about how unusual I found some of the questions to be and asked if he had any advice for me.  He said something like – "Remember you will not ever get a 'blue Cow' case."  I took that to mean that in the history of jurisprudence, especially in the church, nothing would be so original as to be the one and only situation ever.

I still believe that to be true. But in recent years we have come pretty close to something like it.

We have seen two bishops renounce their orders and start the process for becoming Roman Catholic.  We have seen the House of Bishops depose two bishops for abandoning this communion.  And there are two more Bishops that are in the process of being dealt with in the same way.  One of the latter is a seminary mate of mine with whom I served in the parish ministry in the same diocese for seventeen years.  If anyone had told me, on the day of my ordination in 1951, that this was going to happen I would have suggested they talk with a psychiatrist. Statistically that is a mere two per cent of the House of Bishops, but the rumbles clustering around it make it more significant than a statistic. 

The rumbles can be grouped in two groups.  The first group questions the canonical validity of what was done in deposing those who abandoned the communion.  No matter that the canons the Presiding Bishop followed she followed meticulously.  No matter that her chancellor gave her and the House of Bishops, in its meeting recently, his pertinent advice.  No matter that the House of Bishops voted to do what the canons require.  No matter that had they not done this we would have looked like fools in the Anglican World. Canons seem optional in the eyes of those who object.  And at times they seem to want to make resolutions mandatory. The same people seem to reverse things and ask us to take scripture literally and make scholarship optional.

The mildest of the assertions being made questions the competence of the Bishops in applying the canons to the situations in which the Bishops involved were clearly seen as abandoning the communion.  The words used, about the House of Bishops are these "the canonical violation appears to be something that slipped under 'everyone's' radar."  Meaning the bishops violated the canons in their action of deposing Cox and Schofield.  There are other sterner expressions used.  It has been suggested that perhaps the griping about this action is part of an effort to keep the House of Bishops from deposing Robert Duncan, the present Bishop of Pittsburgh.  He has been, in the last five years of my presence in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, moving toward abandonment, and urging his diocesan convention to do so as well.  Beside moving in that direction he has inspired fear among many of his clergy .  They hesitate to act in opposition.  Many of them were heard to say at the recent diocesan convention that they did not want to vote for leaving the Episcopal Church and joining the Southern Cone, but were afraid of hurting the Bishop if they did not.  Fear being the key word.  The Bishop also seems to like being a victim. In many of his speeches that have been published that is a key concept.  

The second set of rumbles is somewhat different. They involve concepts instead of canons.  Inclusion is a concept that people find objectionable.  Allied to it are suggestions that the ordination of women may turn out to be wrong, even though some of the dioceses do have women priests in them.  In spite of that there is real resistance to having a Presiding Bishop who is a woman.  It is my understanding that the Presiding Bishop wanted to visit Pittsburgh and Bishop Duncan would not allow it. Allied also are all the ideas about gays and lesbians being included. One priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh actually told one of his parishioners he would not baptize a gay person. Another key word is revelation. The fact that God revealed a great truth to us in the person of His Son Jesus Christ is accepted. But the idea that God may continue to reveal fresh truths to us even today does not have much credence.  There are of course other concepts such as the value of biblical scholarship, the necessity for expository work on Biblical texts and stories – and the direction users of those particular skills take with them.

For me, this adds up to one basic idea we need to grasp.

Here it is. We need to claim as clearly and as thoroughly as we can that God is working through us in the Episcopal Church.  As difficult as that may be we need to claim that we are leaders in the Anglican Communion. We need to put an end to apologizing for ourselves because the majority of Bishops in the 1998 Lambeth Conference disagreed with us.  I honestly believe that God has revealed to us the path we are taking.  That path is not in conflict with our creedal beliefs or our ways of reading and interpreting scripture.  We need to claim that we are the pacesetters in the Anglican Communion not the disobedient minority.  We need to believe that we have done something unusual in the deposition of some bishops.  We need to believe that not to depose those who are in process would be tragic and confuse the worldwide communion that looks to us for leadership as well as money.

In the first years of my ministry I learned a truth from Bishop Austin Pardue then Bishop of Pittsburgh. He was making his annual visitation to the parish church I served and he was having a grand time.  He drew me aside towards the end of the visit and said "Walter you are doing a fine job here.  But don’t start believing it until twenty years have gone by."  It is that long sweep of history we are involved in here.  Let’s claim it and move on with mission – and Love, believing God is revealing himself/herself to us as we live our lives in faith, not apologizing, but rejoicing. 

______________________________________

[The Covenant Journal, Number 28, May 2008]

The Rt Revd Walter Righter, VII Iowa, ret'd.