The eye and the ear. Both Word and sacrament bear witness to Christ. Both promise salvation in Christ. Both quicken our faith in Christ. Both enable us to feed on Christ in our hearts. The major difference between them is that the message of the one is directed to the eye, and of the other to the ear. So the sacraments need the Word to interpret them. The ministry of the Word and sacrament is a single ministry, the Word proclaiming, and the sacrament dramatizing, God's promises. Yet the Word is primary, since without it the sign becomes dark in meaning, if not actually dumb. --- From "I Believe in Preaching" by John R.W. Stott

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
June 5, 2009

There is a natural trajectory for unrepentant sin. It is downwards.

This is the current path of The Episcopal Church. Like an open wound that refuses to heal, bacteria continue to invade the wound ultimately infecting the whole body until it dies.

So it is with truth. If you turn it on its head and openly reject truth claims, then the lies you hold to and push on others will ultimately destroy you.

We are now being told homosexuality is a gift to the church according to The Rev. Ed Bacon, Episcopal priest at All Saints, Pasadena. He said on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" that "being homosexual is a gift from God." That is turning truth on its head. If it is a gift from God, then God will need to apologize to all the men and women who have died of HIV/AIDS. Clearly, He is responsible. God is dishing out bad gifts to his children. Hardly a responsible Father.

Naturally then, abortion is no longer morally reprehensible, but a "blessing", according to Ms. Ragsdale, Dean of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. Tell that to 60,000 babies aborted by master abortionist Dr. George Tiller. They must be thrilled to know that having their brains sucked out in late term abortions is the gift they have been waiting around for.

This is another example of turning truth on its head.

Having a transsexual Episcopal priest from the Diocese of Massachusetts parade his sex change operation around at Lambeth 2008 is yet another example of turning truth on its head. Can you imagine any sane parent attending a church with a woman turned man who is married to a man turned woman? In the sexually confusing world of teenagers, this only compounds their problems.

The plethora of sexualities that have invaded The Episcopal Church has mothers running to the hills with their children in hand, refusing to look back just in case they all turn into pillars of salt.

The next frontier, I am told, is something called Polyamory. It comes from Greek πολύ [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [literally "love"]). It is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. At present, it is only being talked about, but give it time, and one day, in the not too distant future, we will see a resolution before a Diocesan or General Convention calling the church to repent of its polyamory "sins" and inviting (in the name of inclusivity of course) those persons (that we once called adulterers) into the loving embrace of say, the Diocese of Newark.

For the moment, Susan Russell of Integrity wants bishops and General Convention deputies to vote for resolutions "that will move The Episcopal Church beyond its de facto moratorium on additional gay and lesbian bishops, and forward on the blessing of same-gender relationships."

This is not primarily about inclusivity or love. They don't believe in the power of Jesus to change them. They only believe in the coercive power of general conventions to push those who don't agree with them into agreeing with them or forcing them out.

This is precisely what happened over women's ordination. First, it was brokered in illegally. Then the church accepted it with a conscience clause for Anglo-Catholics. Then, over time, it was made mandatory; hence the exodus of all the Anglo-Catholic bishops in TEC.

In time, the same thing will happen with same-sex blessings and the rites to go with them. It will be passed at GC2009, first as an option, respecting the consciences of those bishops who will not allow them to take place in their dioceses. Then in 2012 or 2015, a resolution will be put on the floor demanding that all bishops, when asked, must perform or allow their priests to perform same sex blessings and if they don't they will face presentment. (By then, of course, there may be no more orthodox Episcopalians left in the church.)

Of course, if you have a near 100% orthodox diocese like South Carolina, then it will not be an immediate issue; but what if you are the Bishop of the Diocese of Dallas where there are a number of homosexual priests? What will happen then? We await the judgment of history.

*****

Just to make the point on how angry and coercive pansexualists can be, we were treated this week to a temper tantrum by Ms. Russell, the pansexual lesbian leader of Integrity, who got into a royal snit over secrecy surrounding a study group working on the theology of same-gender relationships. The irony is that the study group is made up of liberals.

Russell roared that keeping the names of the theologians secret was "the height of absurdity and insult." She said that secrecy makes the project "suspect, disingenuous and dishonest."

Russell said that a secret study "sends a horrific message to gay and lesbian people -- both inside and outside the church" and is "utterly contrary to our baptismal promise to respect the dignity of every human being."

Undaunted, but undoubtedly shaken, Bishop Henry Parsley, (Alabama) chair of the House of Bishops Theology Committee, fired back saying, "We believe that for a season the work can best be accomplished by allowing the panel to work in confidence. This supports the full collegiality and academic freedom of the theologians and provides the space they need for the deep dialogue and reflection that is taking place among them." He concluded by saying that it has always been the committee's intention to publish the names of the panel when the work reaches the appropriate stage. You can read the full story in today's digest.

*****

As if to make the point, the clergy of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena are opting out of performing civil marriages until gay couples can legally wed--and are encouraging other clergy to do likewise, according to the Rev. Ed Bacon, rector. "At the heart of Jesus's moral vision and All Saints' historic mission is respecting the dignity of every human being," Bacon said in a June 3 press release announcing the decision, which is effective immediately. "The California Supreme Court in its recent opinion has ruled that those of same-gender affections are second-class citizens," Bacon added. "Denying fundamental rights to a certain classification of humanity is blatant discrimination with which our governing board, the other clergy of All Saints, and I will not participate. We invite other clergy and congregations to join us in this stand for marriage equality.

*****

The murder this week of Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's leading abortionists in Wichita, Kansas, highlights, for many, a double standard in the church. The narrative goes like this. A right-wing Christian vigilante kills a man who aborted over 60,000 babies. The man killed is then hailed by the Episcopal Church as a martyr and a hero who is, undoubtedly, dining at the table of our Lord for his skill in aborting babies.

When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills one Arkansas military recruiter and wounds another, The Episcopal Church says nothing.

Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The alleged gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.

Both crimes are despicable acts of domestic terrorism, but when it comes to The Episcopal Church, Tiller receives praise and adulation fit for a deceased bishop. At the same time, TEC says nothing against the Islamic militant because no one wants to offend the followers of Islam. You can read my story in today's digest.

*****

In two weeks, a new Anglican theological song will be heard across the nation. The inauguration of The ANGLICAN CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA in Ft. Worth formally unites more than 700 Anglican Congregations in 28 dioceses/clusters/networks in North America into a single body. All attendees will worship together and hear from Christian leaders such as Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, Metropolitan Jonah, of the Orthodox Church in America, and The Rev. Todd Hunter, past president of the Alpha Evangelism Ministry.

VOL will be there with a number of reporters to cover this momentous occasion, which will undoubtedly give heartburn to Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council who, we know, will never recognize this new Anglican province. Of course ACNA leaders won't waste their time asking for recognition by the ACC because ACC will never give them an endorsement since TEC is the only recognized Anglican body in the U.S. GAFCON primates have already recognized ACNA making the ACC irrelevant in this new Anglican birth. The truth is a torch is about to be lit that will not go out. So long as the gospel goes forth in might and power, it will grow and TEC will continue its downward trajectory regardless of the size of its trust fund coffers and legal wins. At the end of the day, an empty church is an empty church.

In today's digest you can read both an Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic take on the Canons and Constitution of ACNA. Bishop John H. Rodgers and Bishop William Wantland agree that ACNA passes the acid test for a new Anglican province.

*****

As the votes continue to come in, the chance for The Rev. Thew Forrester to be the next Bishop of the DIOCESE OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN become even more remote. To date, 56 Standing Committees have said no as have 52 bishops.

VOL learned this week from Bishop Alfredo Morante of Litoral Ecuador (Province IX) that he has not yet received the paperwork from 815 for him to be able to cast a vote. "I am still waiting for the paperwork," he wrote in an irate note to VOL.

In late breaking news Thew Forrester told ENS that while he will not receive the canonically required consents to his ordination he will "respect" the entire 120-day consent period. "The process has a wisdom and integrity of its own. The diocese and I have respected that all the way through and will continue to do that. When the process concludes, I will have something more to say." He then made the statement that he is steeped in orthodoxy

*****

Some good news has come out of the DIOCESE OF LONG ISLAND. Bishop Orris Walker began a leave of absence to continue until Saturday, November 14, the day his resignation as Bishop of Long Island takes effect. Walker will go down as one of the worst bishops in ecclesiastical history, having stripped most of the diocese of its orthodox priests, sold off schools, a nunnery, a hospital and sued a parish to retain its property. He also refused to answer a "New York Times" reporter over whether or not he had AIDS. Walker has appointed Bishop David Joslin as Assisting Bishop until Lawrence C. Provenzano is consecrated as the new Bishop in September. Walker will represent the Diocese of Long Island in the House of Bishops at General Convention.

*****

The COVENANT WORKING GROUP has been named. The Anglican Communion News Service reports that the text of the Ridley Cambridge Draft of the proposed Anglican covenant, which failed to pass at the recent Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) meeting in Jamaica over concern for the omission of section 4, will be reviewed by the following persons:

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the secretary general have now announced the names of the working group. They are:

* Archbishop John Neill of Dublin (chair);
* Archbishop John Chew, primate of South East Asia;
* Eileen Scully, Anglican Church of Canada;
* Bishop Gregory Cameron of St. Asaph in the Church in Wales and former deputy secretary general of the Anglican Communion.

All have been involved in the covenant process to date. Neil Vigers (Anglican Communion Office) and The Rev. Canon Joanna Udal (Archbishop of Canterbury's secretary for Anglican Communion affairs) will provide staff support.

Meanwhile, the Ridley Cambridge Draft text of the covenant has been sent to provinces seeking their comments on section 4 of the covenant. Responses are requested by Nov. 13, 2009. The working group will meet Nov. 20-21 in London and report to the Standing Committee meeting Dec. 15-18.

*****

The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued an appeal to churches to pray and act for the environment ahead of key UN talks on climate change later this year. Dr Rowan Williams is urging churches to use Environment Sunday on June 7 as an opportunity to pray for the planet and campaign for climate change to ensure that the best deal is reached by government leaders at the Copenhagen summit.

So the Archbishop sees the environment as the most urgent issue facing the governments of the world today - not the global financial meltdown, worldwide unemployment, the ravages of war in Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine/Israel, does the phrase "out of touch" come to mind. To an unemployed man trying to scrap together enough pennies to put enough gas in his car to get to a job interview, he would say that the man should voluntarily pay more for the gas in order to fund green energy.

Even so, all of these issues are secular. What of the religious issues? Is not the complete breakdown of public morality in the West an important issue? Is it not important to the head of the Church of England that declining church membership is going to leave him without a flock unless it can be turned around?

*****

The Catholic Church in IRELAND is losing market share. An almost unnoticed, but historically dramatic, social change has occurred in Ireland over the past few years: more and more Irish Catholics are joining the Church of Ireland. After a long decline ever since 1861, Irish Anglicanism is undergoing a quite remarkable period of growth. In the early Nineties, there were 82,840 members of the Church of Ireland in the 26 counties. This has increased by 50pc, to 121,229. Some of this expansion is due to immigration. But a substantial amount is due to conversion -- cradle Catholics turning to the Reformed faith. Some 10pc of Irish Anglicans studying to be ordained were former Roman Catholics. In Ennis, Co Clare, the Church of Ireland population has increased from 68 to 400 -- a sixfold growth, in what was, numerically, the least Protestant county in Ireland. In Navan, Co Meath, the Protestant population has grown from 111 to 541: virtually a five-fold increase.

*****

The Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho will posthumously receive the 2009 Path to Peace Award, the Path to Peace Foundation has announced. The award will recognize Christians who have remained in Iraq to witness to their faith. Gunmen abducted Archbishop Rahho in Iraq on February 29, 2008, outside his church in Mosul as he drove home after a prayer service. He was found dead two weeks later, with his bodyguards and driver also having been murdered. Archbishop Rahho also opened an orphanage for disabled children.

*****

New Bishops Prepare for General Convention. Thirty-seven bishops, including five Canadians, one from Scotland, and one from Ireland, recently joined six episcopal faculty members and 10 guest instructors in North Carolina for a College for Bishops' residency program. The three-year Living Our Vows program is designed to support the spiritual health and personal development of new bishops. Peer coaching with an experienced bishop, according to a news release, complements the series of three residential retreats. On May 18-22 the bishops, grouped in three classes according to the date of their consecration, attended sessions in media training and a "holistic approach to communications strategies" for the July General Convention. David Booth Beers, chancellor to the Presiding Bishop, led a study of the polity of The Episcopal Church, while Sally Johnson, chancellor for the president of the House of Deputies, focused on proposed revisions to the church's disciplinary canons.

It's interesting that Booth Beers was invited to speak. One can only imagine his lecture title: "Sue the Bastards, the Rector and Vestry, if Necessary."

*****

In the faux DIOCESE OF FORT WORTH, The Rt. Rev. Edwin F. Gulick Jr. is extending his initial six-month term as provisional bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth by about five months, until at least mid-November, according to a statement released by the diocese.

"My visitations to Episcopal parishes here have been some of the most fulfilling of my episcopacy," added Gulick, who was installed as bishop of the Diocese of Kentucky in 1994. Since February 2009, when he was overwhelmingly elected provisional bishop of the faux Fort Worth diocese, he has divided his time between the two. Initially, he intended to stay long enough to represent both dioceses at the July 8-17 General Convention in Anaheim.

*****

The CHURCH OF ENGLAND appears not to want Evangelical ordinands in its pulpits. A number graduating from Anglican seminaries could wind up on the dole if they cannot find a parish, a report out of England concluded this week. The Rev. Dr Richard Turnbull, Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford said at least eleven graduates have not been placed this year. Several others were believed to have already taken non-clergy jobs. He added nearly all the unplaced students have trained at three evangelical colleges - his own, Oak Hill in London and Trinity in Bristol. He suggested they have not been offered parish jobs because many bishops do not approve of their conservative, Bible-based views. The CofE is clearly following in the footsteps of The Episcopal Church. Most of TEC's liberal and revisionist dioceses have made it very clear they do not want graduates from the evangelical TRINITY SCHOOL FOR MINISTRY in Ambridge, PA in their dioceses.

*****

The FELLOWSHIP OF CONFESSING ANGLICANS (FOCA) holds its ground-breaking event in London on July 6. The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is a fellowship of people united in the communion of the one Spirit and committed to work and pray together in the common mission of Christ. It is a "confessing fellowship" in that its members confess the faith of Christ crucified, stand firm for the gospel in the global and Anglican context, and affirm a contemporary rule, the Jerusalem Declaration, to guide the movement for the future. "We are a fellowship of Anglicans, including provinces, dioceses, churches, missionary jurisdictions, para-church organisations and individual Anglican Christians whose goal is to help reform, heal and revitalise the Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world. The Jerusalem Declaration is the basis of our fellowship. We invite all who assent to that declaration and support the goals of the FCA to join us as we await what God will do in the Global Anglican Future."

VOL strongly urges all its British readers to attend this one day event at Westminster Central Hall, near Westminster Abbey, London. VOL will be there to cover the event and would enjoy meeting many of our readers.

*****

In the next couple of weeks, VOL will have a team in Ft. Worth, Texas, to cover the inauguration of the new Anglican Church in North America. We need funds to enable us to be there. We waste nothing and are very careful how money is spent. Please consider a donation at this time.

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All Blessings,

David