In the Episcopal Church, in more than a dozen dioceses, large orthodox parishes snubbed their noses at revisionist bishops, lawyered up, and proceeded to walk away - some with their properties, some without -- but determined once and for all that they would walk apart from a church that had lost its spiritual way.

The buzzword for orthodox parishes was transformation, for liberals and revisionists it was inclusion, though in the end inclusion did not, nor could it, include those of orthodox persuasion who still believed in the Good News of a life-changing gospel.

Diversity, another liberal buzzword, might include the Via Media, "Integrity", the United Religions Initiative and a host of world religions, but it deliberately excluded those with a distinctive Christian Faith and by definition those who had an exclusive understanding of the 'faith once for all delivered to the saints'. And so Forward in Faith, the AAC and ACN found themselves marginalized and ridiculed for daring to say that the emperor, Frank Griswold, and the vast majority of his House of Bishops really had no theological clothes. http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3367

The Episcopal Church's story unfolded like a horror movie with the bad guys knocking off the good guys, occasionally offering a carrot and stick approach with DEPO, only to find that DEPO kept the stick in the hands of revisionist bishops, while AEO was the carrot that was really being asked for, but never obtained.

Like a three-card monte hustler on New York City's streets, the cards were repeatedly dealt to orthodox parishes by revisionist bishops only to find that, when the cards were turned up, the hustler, (read bishop), held the cards of inhibition, deposition and parish takeover.

It was a bad year for ECUSA's remnant orthodox. And it will only get worse in 2006.

Thousands of Episcopalians chose to voluntarily walk apart from the ECUSA in 2005, leaving hundreds of parishes at the rate, some estimated, of 100 a day.

And they joined themselves to jurisdictions that included Bolivia, Central Africa, Chile, Nigeria, Rwanda, Southeast Asia, Uganda, as well as the Anglican Mission in America, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Traditional Anglican Communion, the Anglican Province of America and many more.

To an outsider it must have looked ecclesiastically chaotic to say the least, but from within, it all made sense in a strange sort of way. Only an Anglican viewing all the parts can understand why, for example, Archbishop Peter Akinola felt it was necessary to form an alternative Anglican Church in North America for Nigerians (and anyone else who wanted to join) called CANA, without consulting Frank Griswold. ECUSA's Presiding Bishop! Or why CAPAC - the Council of Anglican Provinces of the Americas and Caribbean which, modeling itself on CAPA, was necessary to form to provide ecclesiastical cover for those on the left flank of The Episcopal Church. Nassau Archbishop Drexel Gomez along with Southern Cone Archbishop Greg Venables orchestrated this new regional Body, and together they now form an orthodox pincer movement around The Episcopal Church.

Among the big ongoing separations were the three parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles who, in 2004, had won legal claim to their property, but in 2005 found themselves fighting in the secular courts to keep those decisions in their favor. All Saints Church in Long Beach, St. David's Church in North Hollywood and St. James Church in Newport Beach all won in the courts, but they will face more legal challenges of the same in 2006, with the help, no doubt, of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the 'sacred' Trust Funds of the National Church in New York City. The judge, in a stinging rebuttal to diocesan claims to the parishes ruled said that St. James' was the rightful owner of its buildings and said the diocese had to cough up their legal costs.

Perhaps the biggest single separation was the four-figure attendance congregation of Christ Church, Overland Park, Kansas - the largest parish in the Diocese of Kansas. Bishop Dean Wolfe bit into the congregations' check book allowing them to keep their parish in exchange for $100,000 a year for ten years. It was blood money, but amicable enough bearing in mind how other orthodox parishes fared with revisionist bishops.

Things got downright vicious in the Diocese of Connecticut, and on Tuesday, September 27, a lawsuit was filed in the Federal District Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, naming Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, and nine other individuals and/or entities as defendants in a case involving five orthodox Connecticut priests and six parishes of the Diocese of Connecticut. The civil suit followed months of theological dispute and hostile actions by Bishop Smith, who stands in "opposition to traditional Christianity and Anglican teaching," according to the rectors of these churches. 2006 should see a resolution to both ecclesiastical and civil lawsuits in this matter.

It was the single biggest lawsuit filed by a group of clergy against two bishops in modern ECUSA history. Before then Smith sent in a Diocesan SWAT team to St. John's Church, Bristol where Fr. Mark Hansen found his church confiscated, locks on the church doors changed, he himself fired, and his computer broken into. The final insult was the installation of a woman priest-in-charge with little or no parish experience and without vestry consent. Seventeen diocesan bishops issued a letter asking Bishop Smith to reconsider the inhibition. He didn't, of course. And six retired bishops issued a statement castigating the Bishop for his actions. Fr. Hansen later sent a letter to the bishop announcing he was resigning.

Other cardinal parishes that left in 2005 were the majority of St. Nicholas', Midland, in the Diocese of Northwest Texas under Bishop C. Wallis Ohl (causing a major financial crisis in the diocese); four congregations in the Diocese of Ohio told Bishop Hollingsworth that enough was enough and were out the door; and at least two parishes; St. John's in Tallahassee, and Calvary in Jacksonville, said that ECUSA was beyond spiritual repair and were gone. At least another eight parishes in the Diocese of Florida politely told high flying, high living, Bishop Samuel Johnson Howard that they will be out the door in 2006. The bishop rejected a request for alternative episcopal oversight from seven of his clergy, offering DEPO to another four rectors. The other six petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury's Panel of Reference looking for a resolution to their situation. But nothing happened, and probably never will. The Diocese of Florida could lose as much as 40 percent of its parishioners by the end of 2006. Holy Cross Anglican (formerly Episcopal) in Raleigh, in the Diocese of N.C. changed its name and got a new start. The parish came under the Province of Uganda; and a new church plant in the Diocese of Virginia, South Riding Church, got off the ground even though Bishop Peter Lee was none too pleased and felt the need to inhibit and depose the priest. Word has it that Bishop Lee has more shocks coming this year.

In the Diocese of Eastern Michigan, Fr. Gene Geromel, SSC, whose parish, St. Bartholomew's, had long since left the ECUSA, was deposed by Bishop Edwin Leidel in a mockery of a service to end his ecclesiastical career. At diocesan headquarters they lit a candle for his requiem and a solemn statement of deposition was read to him. He had been a godly priest for 31 years, no matter, he had to go, and out the door he went. Bishops of seven dioceses promptly granted Fr. Geromel a license to function in their dioceses, and seven suffragan and retired bishops joined in endorsing the letter.

Five other parish priests who walked out on Bishop Leidel in 2004 and got inhibited announced they were flourishing in 2005 just nicely, thank you very much. They walked away leaving properties, assets and a handful of parishioners but in the end they succeeded, leaving behind what they viewed as spiritual death to their souls.

As the year ended, the Anglo-Catholic parish of St. James the Less in Philadelphia lost its appeal in a property case opinion by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court this week. The PA. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the diocese and four vestrymen could also face lawsuits from the bishop, even after being thrown out of their parish. It was a bitter blow for Fr. David Ousley who has been the parish rector for 22 years. He has found another place for him and his congregation to hang their hats, so the parish buildings will lie fallow, with a school closed. Bishop Charles Bennison has about as much chance of reviving this parish (despite the ringers who will fill the church for the first Sunday or two) as V. Gene Robinson has of going straight.

All these departing parishes and many more are now singing a chorus of 'Bye, bye Miss ECUSA pie, took my parish from ECUSA coz ECUSA was dry, an them good ol' bishops were drinkin whiskey and rye singing this will be the year that I die...'

What now is happening is a waiting game for thousands of orthodox Episcopalians. They are waiting to see how the 75th General Convention will play out in response to the Windsor Report when they gather in Columbus, Ohio in 2006. If there is no full repentance and recognition of the havoc they have wrought on the Anglican Communion there will be a general exodus the like of which has not been seen since the 1979 St. Louis Convention and the formation of the AMiA five years ago. The prevailing issue is the consecration of V. Gene Robinson who got consents after the 2003 Convention in Minneapolis.

As things transpired several bishops got the heave-ho in 2005. In the Diocese of Southern Virginia Bishop David C. Bane was politely shown the door, but not before the diocese unloaded its suffragan, a woman by the name of Joy Gallagher, who got a payout to get lost and found her way to a hell hole called the Diocese of Newark. Another two bishops may well get their marching orders early in 2006. VirtueOnline will keep you posted.

THE PREVAILING ISSUE AND DOCUMENT that took center stage in 2005 was the Windsor Report around which almost every diocesan convention gave its opinion as to whether it would follow its request for ECUSA to repent and pass that along to General Convention. There was so much prevarication and spin at every diocesan convention one doubts that the Global South Primates monitoring all this cannot possibly know how it will all end - liberal ECUSA dioceses are on treadmills going nowhere; they are losing money and members they can never recover. Only a handful of dioceses, including Pittsburgh, came out full endorsing the findings of the Windsor Report, but even it found dissent in its ranks.

Thirty six of the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion met in Northern Ireland in late February which saw upheaval and anarchy flowing from its ranks. The result was a communique in which the North American provinces of ECUSA and the ACC were told to step back and not to send representatives to meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council. The Primates revealed just how broken and fragmented they were when Griswold left early and the orthodox Primates partied with leaders from the Anglican Communion Network.

The Episcopal Church having been told at Dromantine to "walk apart" got their official marching orders in Nottingham, England when the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) met in June. Both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada were asked to explain themselves and make presentations which they did. The ECUSA tossed in a little blue book called To Set Our Hope on Christ, euphemistically titled "A response to the Invitation of the Windsor Report that documents the 40 year history of the Episcopal Church sexuality debate." The booklet tried to spin their actions, but it was seriously theologically flawed. A number of orthodox theologians made mincemeat of it.

The ACC which includes members from all the Anglican provinces, voted 30-28 with four abstaining to suspend the North Americans from all "official entities" of the ACC till Lambeth 2008, but the ECUSA refused to take that lying down and the Presiding Bishop went on a pubic relations tour calling for more "listening", a process that wound up with the announcement that the ACC would now have a full time Director of Listening, a triumph of Orwellianism funded in part by the Episcopal Church.

The House of Bishops which met three times during 2005 found itself dispirited with one moderate bishop telling VirtueOnline that bishops were becoming "physically ill" at Griswold's leadership. At a special meeting of the HOB in January in Salt Lake City the Windsor Report was discussed and "A Word to the Church from the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church." The bishops threw a Hail Mary and said the Windsor Report called for further study and discernment on sexuality matters. At the March meeting at Camp Allen in the Diocese of Texas, the bishops produced a "Covenant Statement" which called for a time for healing and the continuing "education process" called for by the Windsor Report. The bishops then announced that they would withhold consents to the consecration of any person (straight or gay) elected to the episcopate until the General Convention of 2006. A third meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico a Property Task Force, with legal overtones was set up by 28 bishops in an ominous admission that the Episcopal Church might come apart at the seams with millions of dollars being spent on lawsuits over divided and fleeing parishes who believe that the Episcopal Church has abandoned the historic Christian Faith. The House of Bishops created a 10-member task force of attorneys and other experts to help defend the Episcopal Church and its dioceses against attempts by congregations or other dioceses to secede from the Episcopal Church with their property.

The Windsor Report got ripped apart by a number of orthodox theologians including Dr. Ephraim Radner, Dr. Robert Sanders and Dr. Stephen Noll. TESM president Dr. Paul Zahl summed it up for many when he wrote: "The Report of the Lambeth Commission is flawed fundamentally because it refuses to take up the substantial issue that caused its coming into existence: the issue of homosexuality. "Process" statements will not suffice at this juncture in Anglican church history. Theological "conservatives" can take heart from most of the findings of the Report, although it is deficient in equating the New Hampshire consecration with the crossing of diocesan boundaries on the part of "orthodox" bishops and primates. He then said that the Report was ambiguous in its use of the Bible in relation to an issue on which the Bible is unambiguous; and in its ultimate result, which papers over the cracks."

Nineteen ECUSA bishops representing all theological streams within the church met at the behest of Los Angeles bishop J. Jon Bruno in a confidential meeting in Los Angeles in July to try and figure what to do with a rapidly disintegrating church. It was allegedly secret but then V. Gene Robinson, the bon vivant of sodomite behavior, blew the whistle on the event announcing that he and Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan had had a major face off and the issues discussed boiled down to property ownership after the big split. Fifteen of them met later in Chicago for a second run at it and again confidentiality was broken to reveal that they could come to no common agreement except to apologize for the way many of the revisionist bishops had treated the traditionalist organization Forward in Faith.

The Executive Council of the national Episcopal Church held four meetings where the Windsor Report was discussed. First in Austin, Texas; then at a special meeting in Mundelein, Illinois where it was decided to send observers to the ACC meeting in England. Later in Louisville, Ky., the council approved a half a percent reduction in the dividend payout rate for the 2006-2009 budget. The pro-Palestinian HOB discussed divestment of companies doing business with Israel, but trod lightly fearing the wrath of two of its bishops who had Jewish parentage. Later Bishop Mark Sisk of NY decided he didn't want to divest as it was bad PR for a diocese surrounded by a large Jewish population. Oy vey! Later in Las Vegas the council got bad news on church attendance, hearing that average Sunday attendance (ASA) had declined by 3.3 percent in 2004. You had better odds on of winning at the crap tables than hoping ECUSA would win more converts.

BUT THERE WAS GOOD NEWS. In Pittsburgh in November, over 3,000 Episcopalians and Anglicans from around the world including some from the Sudan that included 20 bishops and seven Anglican primates, attended a conference sponsored by the Anglican Communion Network called "Hope and a Future". The conference included such speakers as Rick Warren, renowned author, world authority on church growth and Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, the undisputed titan of orthodox Anglicanism. There were a number of ordinations by Bolivian Bishop Frank Lyons (who now has more parishes he is responsible for outside Bolivia than inside it). The overall sense was that orthodox Episcopalians had everything to live for and that truth and time were on their side. Forward in Faith held their conference following it with the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman (Quincy) saying that with the passage of time some of the players had changed but the commitment to orthodoxy remains. Indeed.

Hurricane Katrina which devastated three dioceses along the Gulf Coast brought out the best in Episcopalians who were actively involved in providing relief to numerous churches. Both Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) and Anglican Relief and Development (ARDF) along with many dioceses, parishes and individuals responded to the needs of churches and parishioners of Louisiana, Mississippi, and southern Alabama. VirtueOnline traced the tragedy through the eyes of one rector the Rev. Jerry Kramer in New Orleans, but at the end of the day nearly half of the Diocese of Louisiana's 50 parishes were destroyed or damaged by the hurricane. It will take years for the churches to recover. Millions of dollars were poured into the area to repair churches and provide housing, but millions more will be needed to restore the churches and bring back the faithful.

A moratorium on bishops being consecrated because of the absurd notion that if the church can't consecrate sodomists it should not be allowed to consecrate straight white (or black) males, still found four bishops donning miters before the HOB moratorium went into effect. They included the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson, Bishop of the Rio Grande; (orthodox); the Rt. Rev. James R. Mathes, Bishop of San Diego; (liberal who will see at least nine orthodox parishes delivering him ultimatums of departure ere long); the Rt. Rev. E. Ambrose Gumbs, Bishop of the Virgin Islands; (Evangelical) and the Rt. Rev. Bavi Edna Rivera, Bishop Suffragan of Olympia, a fatuous woman who said, "I won't marry anyone straight or gay," until the church officially authorizes the marriage of queers. Being Hispanic gives you even more leverage for getting away with stupid statements. At the consecration of Bishop Steenson, PB Frank Griswold got an earful from an orthodox priest telling the fey PB that he was little more than a theological charley horse.

The House of Bishops saw several of their number die this past year. They included Bishops Scott Field Bailey, Robert J. Hargrove, James R. Moodey, Steven Tsosie Plummer, (a bishop who had sexual relations with his nephew) William C.R. Sheridan, William E. Sterling, and Richard M. Trelease (a serial adulterer).

IN OTHER NEWS, Anglican Roman Catholic talks on Mary got a wide airing. The (ARCIC) Commission on Mary was talked about but it didn't affect most Episcopalians as they watched their churches decline in numbers. The bodily Assumption of Mary and the Immaculate Conception, part of Rome's pantheon of dogmas, seem doomed for most Anglicans.

A Joint Nominating Committee was set up to elect the next Presiding Bishop once Frank Griswold's nine-year term expires in 2006. A moderate bishop told VirtueOnline that Griswold is engineering this whole procedure and would like to see his close personal friend Tom Shaw, Bishop of Massachusetts get the nod. But he doesn't have a wife, oh dear. Fr. David L. Moyer, rector of Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pa., was consecrated bishop in the Traditional Anglican Communion by a bevy of bishops from the Anglican Church in Australia and TAC Archbishop John Hepworth himself. Fr. David Chislett from Australia also got a miter on the same occasion.

And the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey crossed the pond and joined the staff at All Saints' Church, Chevy Chase, Md., in November for a year while researching a book in Washington DC.

ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE, Nigerian Primate Peter took center stage among the orthodox Primates and castigated the Church of England over Civil Partnerships, suggesting that the C of E itself should exit the communion if it could not uphold its theological end on the sacredness of marriage between men and women. He then changed his own province's constitution to reflect this new relationship.

The Church of England itself continued in free fall over Civil Partnerships, the possibility of women bishops, and hundreds of traditionalist clergy threatening to go to Rome if they ever became leaders in the church. Dr. Rowan Williams found himself pushed to the wall over the Diocese of Recife getting bumped by its Primate, but he deferred it to the Panel of Reference which had produced nothing by the year's end.

A group of Anglicans meeting in Egypt issued a letter critical of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it got a number of Primates up in arms. Archbishop Akinola, the prime mover, defended his action but it left a bad taste in a lot of mouths in what was described as a 'hectoring' letter put out by the Nigerian Primate.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's design team concluded that Cape Town, South Africa was not the place to hold the next Lambeth Conference so it was back to Canterbury we go. According to one report about $3 million is needed to pay everyone's way with suffragan bishops now apparently included.

As realignment slowly takes place many believe it is time for North American Anglicans to ask where they want to be after the religious map is redrawn following the next General Convention in Ohio in 2006. For Episcopalians there can be little doubt that most will remain Anglicans, though some will go to Orthodoxy, other Continuing bodies and Rome. Even Anglo-Catholics who believe home is Rome want to maintain an Anglican identity. Evangelicals are coalescing under different banners. Time will tell.

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