Well we can begin with Bishop Shelby Spong, retired bishop of Newark. He was recently interviewed in Toledo.

The 76-year-old retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark is a theologian who believes the Bible is "time-bound and time-warped" by the first-century Jewish culture in which it was written. He is on a mission to change the way people look at the Bible and at Jesus, stating that he wants to "break Jesus out of the boundaries of antiquity and explain it in the 21st century."

Among his iconoclastic teachings, Bishop Spong believes that Jesus was not born of a virgin, never performed any miracles, and was not bodily resurrected from the grave. Yet he states that Jesus is "the defining God presence in a human being" and that Jesus "stands not only at the center of my faith, but also at the center of all that I am."

Read the entire interview if you like, but it is just more of this rejection of God as Divine Authority.

Then we have the Rev. Ann Fowler. She is an ordained Episcopal priest and ardent supporter of abortion. She just published an essay on why abortion is a perfectly acceptable moral choice.

At another point, a few years later, I did have an abortion. I was a single mother, working and pursuing a path to ordination in the Episcopal Church. The potential father was not someone I would have married; he would have been no better a candidate for fatherhood than my daughter's absent father. The timing was wrong, the man was wrong, and I easily, though not happily, made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

I have not the slightest regret about either of these decisions, nor the slightest guilt. I felt sorrow and loss at the time of my abortion, but less so than when I'd miscarried some years earlier. Both of my choices, I believe, were right for me and my circumstances: morally correct in their context, practical, and fruitful in their outcomes.

Please note at the time she was studying to be an Episcopal priest she was sexually active with a man to whom she was not married and whom she would never consider marrying. While studying to become an Episcopal priest she ended the life of her unborn child. She states she feels absolutely no remorse or guilt for these actions. She feels very free to publicly relate these facts in her role as an Episcopal priest.

Do read the entire essay (see below. It is rife with the moral relativism that Pope Benedict XVI warned against. It is this moral relativism that Fr. McBrien and Sr. Joan endorse. Be on guard and fervently pray sed libera nos a malo.

---Denise Hunnell describes herself as a Catholic, Wife, Mom, Doctor, Major, Soccer Mom, Military Wife

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Abortion as a Moral Choice

by Rev. Anne Fowler

In April of 1973 my husband left me, pleading that he had fallen in love with our upstairs tenant and wanted to spend his life with her. I was four months pregnant. Roe v. Wade had been decided three months earlier.

My obstetrician sent me to see a social worker to help me sort out my feelings and make my plans. She began every one of her questions or suggestions with, "if you want an abortion...", until I finally shouted at her, "I DON'T want an abortion. " "Well, " she observed, "That solves that problem."

I had wanted this baby fiercely for some time, and my husband's defection did nothing to diminish my desire. But that conversation with the social worker, and the knowledge that an abortion would have been legally available had I felt unable to proceed with the pregnancy, added depth and resonance to my desire. This was a most wanted child. I had the choice, and I chose to have a baby.

My daughter told me recently, in a discussion about her father- who has never figured into her life except as an absence, a question mark- "Mom, when I was a kid and used to ask about my father, you always said, 'You were a very wanted baby.'" So that knowledge has been central to her sense of her self.

At another point, a few years later, I did have an abortion. I was a single mother, working and pursuing a path to ordination in the Episcopal Church. The potential father was not someone I would have married; he would have been no better a candidate for fatherhood than my daughter's absent father. The timing was wrong, the man was wrong, and I easily, though not happily, made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

I have not the slightest regret about either of these decisions, nor the slightest guilt. I felt sorrow and loss at the time of my abortion, but less so than when I'd miscarried some years earlier. Both of my choices, I believe, were right for me and my circumstances: morally correct in their context, practical, and fruitful in their outcomes.

That is, both choices were choices for life: in the first instance, I chose for the life of the unborn child; in the second, I chose for my own vocational life, my economic stability, and my mental and emotional health and wholeness.

Shortly after my ordination to the priesthood, I was asked to speak at the National Abortion Federation's annual meeting, on a Clergy Panel, with the theme of "Abortion as a Moral Choice." I wondered skeptically who would attend such a panel, but to my surprise, the room was packed with people - abortion providers and other clinic workers. Our audience was so eager and grateful to hear their work affirmed, to hear religious authorities assuring them that God was on their side! I understood that I had a responsibility, indeed, a call, as a pro-choice religious professional, to speak out and to advocate publicly for women's reproductive rights and health, and I have tried to be faithful to that call.

To talk theologically about women's right to choose is to talk about justice, equality, health and wholeness, and respect for the full humanity and autonomy of every woman. Typically, as moral theologians, we discuss the value of potential life (the fetus) as against the value of lived life - the mature and relational life of a woman deciding her capacity to continue or terminate a pregnancy. And we believe that, in general, the value of that actual life outweighs the value of the potential.

I like to talk, as well, in terms of gift and of calling. I believe that all life is a gift - not only potential life, but life developing and ripening with its many challenges, complications, joys and sorrows. When we face difficult reproductive choices we balance many gifts, many goods, and to fail to recognize the gifts of our accomplished lives is to fail to recognize God's ongoing blessing. I believe as well that God calls us all to particular vocations, and our decisions about whether and when to bear children are part of that larger pattern of our lives' sacred meanings.

END