As he was escorted by the deputation from his diocese, (Chicago) Griswold greeted both houses in a joint session and drew on a quote from Roman Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara of South America: "The bishop belongs to all...Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone."

At the time of his consecration Katie Sherrod, a liberal woman activist from the Diocese of Ft. Worth and vice president of the Episcopal Women's Caucus, said, "I think he will continue the philosophy that there are no outcasts in this church." She called him someone capable of providing the "kind of balance that is sorely needed in the church."

Bishop John W. Howe of the Diocese of Central Florida said at the time Griswold has "as his first order of business reaching out to those on the other side of the great divide. If he does not do that, it is hard to see how these two constituencies will continue under one roof."

In his sermon at his installation, Griswold called on Episcopalians to be better listeners, to treat each other with respect, and to have a "compassionate heart ... capable of rebuilding the church in the service of the Gospel for the sake of the world."

At his first press conference, Griswold said that "the ministry of the presiding bishop is to stand at the center." When asked whether he would offer some hope to conservatives who feel marginalized, he said, "I hope I am orthodox in my theology. All of us have truth to tell." He said that "the church is destined always to contain diametrically opposing views" and part of his task is to "help the different voices hear one another" through continuing conversation. "I see myself as an Anglican with the breadth to live with ambiguity and contradicting perspectives and stay grounded."

"Discovering truth and catholicity is what I commit myself to as presiding bishop," he said. Pointing out that conversation and conversion have the same root, meaning to turn or be turned, he added, "We are designed to discover truth together through conversation."

"Conversion is a sacred enterprise in which I am turned around, I am changed by making room for, by considering, by being hospitable toward the opinions, the word, the lived and incarnate truth of another." Griswold said later in a sermon at the closing Eucharist, "Left to our own devices, we are critical, fearful and protective of our own take on truth." Through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, he said, we can "welcome the paradox, complexity, ambiguity and outright contradiction, which is where real life is lived and the grace and peace of God are truly to be found."

His first major statement that "the Episcopal Church is in basic conflict with Scripture" was a statement that would come to haunt him over the years. It would grow, reaching its apogee in the formal consecration of V. Gene Robinson, the openly homoerotic, non celibate Bishop of New Hampshire. It was, for Griswold, the triumph of pluriformity. It also signaled the beginning of the end of The Episcopal Church, the final 100-yard dash in the pursuit of 40 years of pansexual acceptance.

Now in 2005 as his tenure as Presiding Bishop draws to a close and the Episcopal Church comes apart at the seams with thousands of laity fleeing the church and with orthodox rectors in one diocese after another fleeing their revisionist bishops, Griswold is now being viewed as a leader with shredded theological clothes. Like Richard Nixon, Griswold does not exist outside his role, apart from The Episcopal Church: take his clothes off, he would be invisible. There is one Griswold only, trying desperately to be all things to all people, trying to be what people want. At the same time, he lacks the stamp of place or personality because at some level he is a fictional person, made up of many invisible parts, emerging from the ecclesiastical ether that no theological tradition in church history has ever or would ever recognize. What, after all, IS an Affirming Catholic? It's as though he had been sucked out of a car by a giant vacuum cleaner only to discover, when opened, that the vacuum bag was empty.

And now as the church unravels Griswold sends a belatedly modified message. "My basic task is to keep as many people at the table as possible, and to remind everyone that though they have their own particular point of view, there are others who have another point of view, and they are equally members of the church, loved by God, members of Christ's risen body, and therefore must be taken with full seriousness. And it's in the tension, often, that the truth, whatever it may be, gets more fully revealed."

It was at the 1998 Lambeth Conference when Griswold uttered his now famous line that he (Griswold) believed in "pluriform truths" startling the then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and causing the media to scratch its collective head and ponder what he meant.

Over time it became horribly apparent. Griswold would never settle for any one truth, or one particular interpretation of the truth, rather there were many truths, even contradictory "truths" that could and should be held together in tension, without the need to come down absolutely on any one side or the other. To hold things in tension was to live comfortably with ambiguity, even doubt. To say you knew or that Jesus was 'the way, the truth and the life' was to demonstrate an arrogance that he could not support or condone. What might be true for you might not be true for someone else, and one should be prepared to absorb the other truth or simply to live along side it because one might encounter the mystical 'other' in another person, and to miss that might be sin. Conversely to say Jesus is the only way might be true for us as Christians but we should never suppose that God had not spoken in other ways, through other persons and we should be "humble" enough to accept that.

Griswold had a way of making one feel guilty even "fundamentalist" to say that we could know the Christian Faith to be true at all times, in all places. For Griswold this denied the essential character of the "other" that he was and is so fond of.

His spiritual hero if not his mentor became the famous 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi whom he quoted freely when caught in situations that demanded an absolute response. When Fr. David Moyer a traditionalist priest on Philadelphia's Main Line appealed to him to intervene in his battle with revisionist Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison, Griswold said, "I think here of the words of the Sufi poet Rumi: "Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there lies a field. I'll meet you there. It is my fervent hope that some modality can be found acceptable both to you and the Church of the Good Shepherd that will allow you to meet in that field."

Griswold was powerless to resolve their dispute because they had mutually contradictory positions that could not be reconciled. To find that point of reconciliation, Griswold would have had to admit that Bennison's actions were wrong and Moyer's right. So deeply conflicted was Griswold about the issues that to find a "solution" he wandered off into a spiritual no man's land.

Theologian Robert Sanders has correctly diagnosed Griswold's thinking and theology as little more than "mystic paganism".

As pansexuality became the consuming preoccupation of the church; its House of Bishops, clergy and laity, Griswold slowly sank into a sort of cosmic despair telling one reporter, "I find the endless fixation on sexuality, and more specifically homosexuality, a distraction from other areas that, quite frankly, are matters of life and death. When I retire as presiding bishop, I hope that I'm known for something other than this issue."

Regrettably that will not be the case. Homosexuality has become the defining issue and Griswold its eminence grise, later emerging from the shadows becoming its most outspoken ecclesiastical advocate, even, at one point, filing an amicus brief on behalf of two gay men caught in flagrante delicto in the state of Texas.

What was initially a nominal acceptance of Griswold became for many, over time, a hardening hatred for the man. Canon David Anderson of the American Anglican Council expressed it for many when he said that while he recognized Griswold's leadership, "We acknowledge it to have been a fairly disastrous leadership so far, and we are hoping that there might be some changes in the course of direction of the Episcopal Church. We'd love for him to step down and recognize the damage he's done." Consciously or subconsciously Anderson spoke for tens of thousands of orthodox Episcopalians. The lines had hardened perhaps forever. In March of this year, before she died, Diane Knippers president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy called on Griswold to resign. She said he was succumbing to anger "melt-downs".

At Dromantine, Ireland where the Primates met last year, Griswold finally got the message; the Global South primates would not back down in his efforts to legitimize sodomite relationships prompting Griswold to respond that he discerned "the father of lies and the devil" moving about Dromantine aka orthodox Primates like Peter Akinola et al.

Before he departed Dromantine, Griswold lit into his friend and only ecclesiastical savior Rowan Williams telling him that he "lacked leadership," then Griswold went on a speaking tour spinning the communiqué to make it mean what he wanted it to mean with such choice lines as "the communion needs more space to listen" to the plaintive cries of activist gays and lesbians - favorite words of his. Griswold told the leftist Guardian newspaper, "I can't imagine a conversation saying we got it wrong. I can see a conversation saying we should have been more aware of the effect that the decisions we took would have in other places." And this: "It does not mean that our point of view has fundamentally changed." He also said that he could not guarantee that his church would honor a moratorium - "how ultimately these questions will be answered remains with the community itself" - and he made it clear that gay blessings would quietly continue.

And they did. Griswold had no intention of stopping or repealing his church's drive towards full pansexual acceptance. On National Public Radio Griswold made himself perfectly clear again by "contextualizing" the debate. He said that homosexuality was not unique to the US and Canada! Adding that the issue was really a cultural one, avoiding any mention of what the Bibles said, and deflecting a statement by Rowan Williams who said that ECUSA's "actions have fractured the Communion." Williams went on to say that someone is going to have to say "Yes, we were wrong." Not Frank Tracy Griswold.

Griswold's sermons too, became homilies of ambiguity and obfuscation, capable of multiple interpretations. A one time rector of Grace Church, Massachusetts said of Griswold's sermons that it was like walking through a horse stable and being reminded not to step on a Griswold.

Bishop Griswold became the embodiment of his own pluriform thinking. Tragically the Pluriform One has been diminished by his making it, and, as one thoughtful observer noted, he has by doing so become the least authentic bishop alive, the late mover, tester of responses, submissive to the discipline of consent.

Typical of Griswold are statements he would make that, when taken at face value, were contradictory and shallow and when called upon to answer his critics fudged his response blaming a newspaper, the Boston Globe, for misquoting him.

Said Fox, "An honest man would either affirm or deny the quote from the Globe, but he (Griswold) does neither.

A classic example was Griswold being quoted as saying: "Please pray that the spirit of truth will carry us beyond the realm of logic and of agreement and disagreement into that deeper place of love."

The Rev. Dr. Earle Fox, an orthodox Episcopal apologist, said that it verifies the charge that he (Griswold) has left the Christian faith. "One cannot believe truth to be relative, or essentially ambiguous, one cannot reject the law of non-contradiction, and remain a Biblical believer. It is nonsense to talk of a place beyond logic and beyond agreement and disagreement. (What else could the word 'nonsense' mean if not 'in violation of the laws of logic and of fact"?) No one can act that way, including Griswold. It is precisely our personal, relating, acting nature which forces us to be logical. The law of God is not meant to be ambiguous, any more than any other law. Laws are about enforcement, which is one-way, either/or, not both/and."

Fox went further saying Griswold might make a good Hindu or Gnostic, but he is not a Christian, not in his teaching and behavior. "He cannot say that he is faithful to Christ. The very claim is meaningful only if it has logical and factual consistency."

A statement he made to the Boston Globe stating that a large body of scientific evidence had concluded that sexual orientation is innate got him into hot water with a Christian apologist, a bishop and a psychiatrist.

"You were represented as saying that there was a large body of evidence supporting the notion that homosexuality was innate, when in fact no such body of evidence exists," they wrote to Griswold.

When told that the public relations campaign by gay activists in recent years had convinced many Christians to believe in scientific evidence that, in fact, did not exist and that such false information placed millions of people at increased risk for moral and spiritual compromise as well as for major disease and significantly shortened life span, Griswold responded; "Suffice it to say that the article in the newspaper report to which you refer was an interpretation of my views emerging in a long interview. I said that the biblical passages about sexuality must be looked at from the context of what was known about human sexuality at the time of their writing. Our understanding of the complexities of the human mind and body has grown enormously over these centuries. We have learned much from science about the origins of sexuality, and I venture there is more to be discovered."

Griswold capped his remarks saying that the contemporary understanding of human sexuality is much more advanced than it was in Biblical times. "A large body of scientific evidence has concluded that sexual orientation is innate, not chosen. Scripture has to be put in its own historical, social context."

In his travels to dioceses around the country, Griswold opined about how impressed he was by "how healthy the church is, how very much alive it is, and how much is going on in ministry and in witness." But the truth is Griswold saw what he wanted to see, and refused to acknowledge the deep, underlying fissures that were beginning to open before his very eyes. Now almost every diocese has dissenting parishes and litigation costs mount daily as revisionist bishops fight orthodox parish priests for their properties. Griswold's "gospel" was coming home to roost.

Griswold repeatedly called on Episcopalians to listen to each other, but he never truly listened to the orthodox with a sufficiently compassionate heart to respond to their concerns. Listening was always one-sided, in the end when confronted by the obvious contradiction that homosexual practice could not be reconciled with biblical revelation he resorted to "justice" as a means to impress those of orthodox persuasion. That, too, failed.

As early as 1994 Griswold was one of 80 bishops who signed a statement arguing that sexual orientation is "morally neutral" and that "faithful, monogamous, committed" gay relationships should be accepted, thus undercutting the very centrism he so loudly proclaimed.

A confidential letter he wrote to a bishop in 1997 as Bishop of Chicago revealed that he had no problem with active non-celibate homosexuals acting out their sexuality as priests in The Episcopal Church.

Griswold's out and out support of homosexuality only deepened the widening rift in the ECUSA and he acknowledged the seriousness of the debate, saying he understood why passions run so high on both sides of the issue. "Those who believe that gays and lesbians should be ordained and have their relationships blessed by the church believe the gifts of the spirit are present in the lives of many homosexuals."

But is dying early a gift of the Spirit? Is compulsive and lethal behavior a gift of the Spirit? Is massive promiscuity and being obsessed with sex a gift of the Spirit? Just where is this gift of the Spirit and what does it have to do with being homosexual?

The sylph-like Griswold danced ballet-like around difficult issues ineptly dodging an undodgable bullet by changing the subject and blaming the media, for what he said and for exposing his shameless "truths". It became commonplace, almost comical to hear his repeated attacks on certain unnamed Internet writers disseminating falsehoods about The Episcopal Church.

Griswold was constantly reminded by orthodox laity, bishops and primates of the need to repent of his sins, not explain them away. "We call Frank Griswold to stand up, be the spiritual leader for the rest of us which Christ is calling him to be, and to publicly repent of his evasion of truth in this life and death matter of sexuality," wrote three leaders.

I wrote some years ago that Griswold has, for nearly a decade, lived with the Episcopal Church's ambiguity and bipolar vision in theology and morals, neither condemning Spong's Unitarian 12 Theses, nor forbidding sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage. His positions only hardened throughout his tenure as presiding bishop.

A close friend who has known Griswold for most of his ecclesiastical career described him as having a sort of "Zen spirituality", a tumbler of one part Anglo-Catholicism with one part Eastern mysticism laced with a liberal splash of post modernism topped off with a twist of pluralism.

The Presiding Bishop has, in turn, dallied with the Dalai Lama, prostrated himself before the Moscow Patriarchate, pressed the flesh with the Pope, mingled with Anglican Primates, and when it was finally made public (what many of us already knew) that his church was in theological shambles with 'irregular' consecrations, he dashed across the pond to be embraced by Archbishop George Carey and affirmed in his position as putative head of the American Episcopal Church.

He has said he would never "betray homosexuals" in the Church by unsigning his name from Spong's Koinonia statement. He is also very comfortable around homosexuals like V. Gene Robinson and Louie Crew, and the church's national headquarters is filled with gays and lesbians at all levels. He also will not draw back or reprimand dioceses that have resolved to include transgendered and lesbitransgay behavior. He decries absolutist theological positions, the only absolute, apart from tolerance that he holds sacred.

Amidst it all he takes time out to slip into jeans and go off to Mass and takes Holy Communion at a Roman Catholic Church in New York City even though that violates Catholic teaching.

Frank Griswold sees no contradiction in any of this. He gives off an air of almost waif-like charm, so charming in fact that even his detractors, that is, those bishops who profoundly disagree with him about his stands on human sexuality, find him nonetheless strangely appealing, exuding an air of mystic-like spirituality that is at once both compelling and ethereal. There is an unmistakable feminine sensuality to the man when you meet him in person. True to form he abstained from voting on the Lambeth sexuality 1.10 resolution. A tight-rope walker to the end.

He is an enigma some say that has no resolution in this life. He dances, pan-like around issues. Jack Spong, in his book "Here I Stand" says of Griswold that he lacked "commitment and courage" for his stands, waffling on issues that, to Spong's mind showed Griswold lacking in character. Spong who has never been afraid to say what he did and did not believe, has no use for Griswold, who couched things in a way as to leave you wondering what he really meant and where he stood on an issue.

A case in point was the Primates meeting in Oporto, which unambiguously called for a reaffirmation of the Lambeth statement on human sexuality calling the American Episcopal Church to a stricter accountability on sexuality proscribing same-sex marriages and homosexual behavior. Returning to America and questioned on how this would translate to the Church here, Griswold said, "We have moved into a deeper place...a place of far more costly and authentic communion."

What does that mean? What deeper place, where was it? What's the roadmap for finding it? No one dare asks, no one truly knows. His answer bore no relation to the question. His answers rarely do. Griswold plunges into a faux mysticism to explain the ambiguity in himself, not in what he hears from his fellow Primates. It is the language of obfuscation that Griswold seems comfortable espousing. He lives on the frontlines of linguistic ambiguity, hedging his answers in ways that resemble the mystic rather than the rationalist. He is at once both thoroughly post-modern and strangely mystical at the same time.

When the former president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry Dr. Peter Moore delivered a paper to a 1,000 Evangelical Episcopalians in Ridgecrest, NC he said pluralism and post-modernism go hand in hand. Frank Griswold imbibes both, moving comfortably between the two like a man carrying two drinks from which he sips simultaneously testing each for viscosity and flavor.

When he was bishop of Chicago, Bishop Frank Griswold is quoted as having said that limiting salvation exclusively to Christ is "Jesusolatry." It is a perfect Griswold line. Of course Jesus is the way but not the only way, what are we say of all the other religions in the world?" Christians are a mere two billion in a world of six billion. A Christless eternity is unthinkable. God loves all and saves all, anything less would make God bad and unloving and that would never do. When I asked him in 1997 how he planned to grow the church he openly admitted that he didn't have a clue. It would happen he thought when people came to realize the beauty of the Episcopal tradition, its historic record, its openness to the world, its inclusivity. It never happened of course, the church has slowly, and latterly is now emptying at a breathtaking pace.

Griswold deflects anger at him by consulting a psychiatrist, reading the Psalms and going deeper into his mystical self where all language and lines are blurred. But his is not the mysticism of the Desert Fathers or St. John of the Cross of a Berdayev or Dostoevsky.

In fact as you read his speeches and sermons certain words appear with monotonous regularity. Words like 'dialogue', 'diversity', 'openness', 'nonjudgmental', 'fractal harmony', 'inclusive' and, above all, 'tolerance'. His only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

In Frank Griswold's mind the life of the Church should be marked by fluidity and openness in morals and theology. Whatever you do never say you "know" something is absolutely true, it might rule out a truth somewhere else that might call into question the very truth you believe in. You are free to choose, but never choose too dogmatically, you might have to change that choice. Always be open to the winds of change or winds of the spirit wherever they might lead.

Take for example another statement of Griswold's regarding his discreet endorsement of the United Religions Initiative much ballyhooed by Bishop Swing of California (where else pray tell in a state that will see 500 new religions like IPOs spring up this year.)

Of this movement Bishop Griswold noted his gratefulness to the first bishop of California, and said that "determined farsightedness is a characteristic I particularly associate with this diocese and many of its bishops across the years...as well as your present bishop's vision of the potential force of the world's religions to bind up and bring together, rather than divide and turn the people of the earth against one another."

It is not the cross that people should turn to for faith and repentance that Griswold appeals to "to bind up the broken-hearted" or bring "release to the captives" it is religion, all religions that pose a powerful force for unity on earth. Griswold hated Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, it was too violent and bloody. Griswold could not stomach the notion of substitutionary atonement, nail pierced hands, a sweating God dripping blood, it offended his sensitive persona and his view of a more milquetoast God loving and embracing all.

Like many who crave peace and unity, Griswold sees the events of history not in linear terms culminating in "...Christ will come again" but in the repetition of cycles wherein Man will move forward and upward away from his darker self. It is not in the way of the cross but in human initiatives for peace on earth that Griswold yearns.

The Episcopal Church's current understanding of mission is not the call of The Great Commission, but the call for people of good will along with United Nations mandates and resolutions calling for peace on earth without bending the knee to the Prince of Peace.

The demons Griswold hates are of course "fundamentalists" - Christian, Moslem, Hindu, but especially Christian and those who may lurk in the bosom of ECUSA. Griswold reveals his "absolute" in those moments of outburst and frustration. For it is in those statements that Griswold's pluriformity crashes and burns. His violent outburst in the HOB reveals only the tip of his melting pluralist iceberg.

Griswold cannot face "absolute" evil. As the twin towers came crashing to the ground courtesy of fanatical Islamicists on that fateful 911, Griswold blamed American foreign policy and Western Islamophobia not Al Qaeda. He could not look evil in the face and name it.

At the end Frank Tracy Griswold is the true universalist in thought, word and deed eschewing anything that smells of particularity or exclusivity. The open heart, the open mind, the transgendered body, ever seeking but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. For Frank Griswold there is no absolute truth, and therein lies his hell.

---This story may be forwarded and posted electronically on websites and Blogs and reproduced in newspapers with the author's name and website included. No part of the story may be excerpted or changed. www.virtueonline.org.

END