The strategies listed were intended to restore the full trust of our bonds of affection across the Communion.The House of Bishops in responding as it has by this Covenant leaves this basic question still unanswered.

In my judgment, both the above decisions and much of the reaction to them point to our central problem, of which most of our "issues" are merely symptoms. The Episcopal Church appears to be losing her sense of what it means to be the Church and is degenerating into an American denomination or,worse, a Protestant sect. Our social prestige, entre to elite culture and our "establishment" past have blinded us to this problem and, indeed, have contributed to it.

The authorities of the Church are insisting on the formalities, in the external matters, in the legal procedures, but the reality is that those things are not central, are not essential. The Cross of Christ is the Center. The Words of Christ is the center. The demands of Christ is the center. We are today just a week from Holy Week. We are following the steps of Christ, listening to His message, watching his miracles on the way to the Cross, but also on the way to the empty grave.

The way that the Bible is read in Church has driven him to despair: “I am often saddened by the inattention with which the Bible is read in worship.

“Only rarely, I am tempted to say, do I gain the impression that the person reading the Scriptures actually believes that what is being read means something.”