Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
August 2, 2007

MONEY.

It's the elixir that greases the wheels of The Episcopal Church (TEC) and allows them a seat at the Anglican Communion table regardless of what they believe. Consider the following:

* The Episcopal Church's largess pays most of the budget of the Anglican Consultative Council - the communion's fourth Instrument of Unity - hence the groveling before his American paymasters by Canon Kenneth Kearon, spokesman for the world's top Anglican. He recently told the liberal Anglican Church of Canada that even if they voted to approve same-sex blessings, they would not be kicked out of the global Anglican Communion.

* TEC funds the so-called "Listening Process" headquartered in London which tallies up votes for and against sodomy in the communion. You can guess where that is going.

* TEC will pay most of the bills associated with the upcoming Lambeth conference next year. Without the millions of dollars TEC will pour into Lambeth Palace the bulk of the Anglican Communion would not be able to come. That's called clout.

* TEC uses its proxy, Trinity Church, Wall Street, the richest church in the world to fund a bogus mission's summit in Spain with the objective to "listen" to voices that endorse pluriformity and diversity in mission opportunities. Only a handful of orthodox voices were present. This prompted Canon David Anderson of the American Anglican Council (AAC) to write, "When the Israelites left Egypt, fleeing Pharaoh's army they took Egyptian gold with them. Although we would advise orthodox bishops against going to lunch with the spider, if you have any of the spider's gold, get out of the web as fast as you can." As one bishop observed, it wasn't chicken dinners being bought for Africans by American conservatives (an erroneous charge made at Lambeth 1998), this time it was paella by the richest Western liberal church.

* TEC funds all 15 plus provinces of Central America, which keeps them firmly in TEC's back pocket. Not one of them will bite the hand that feeds them for fear of losing the largess of The Episcopal Church's deep pockets. You can add Mexico to that list, a province that has seen about as many converts to Christ as there are straight employees at the church's national headquarters.

* When homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson was in the UK recently bemoaning the "hypocrisy" of the Church of England for not letting its obviously homosexual priests and bishops declare their homoerotic activities he said this: "And even if The Episcopal Church were to be expelled, [from the Anglican Communion], the U.S. branch has deep roots and connections with bishops in the Global South and that those are not likely to change." He should have added deep pockets. INTERPRETATION. We have the money to buy and keep our friends.

* The Rt. Rev. William Wantland (ret. Eau Claire) told the Anglican Communion Network conference in Dallas recently that the Church of England will never forsake the Episcopal Church because it has money, which the communion office desperately needs.

* Then there are the millions of dollars needed by the national church to pay David Booth Beers' law firm so he can sue anyone who dares to think they can leave The Episcopal Church with its properties. Where's the money coming from? This past week the American Anglican Council decided to up the ante and ask that question publicly and put out a Legal Transparency Petition.

"The Episcopal Church's (TEC) continued litigation against parishes and vestries is a great concern to many in the Anglican Communion. These lawsuits come at a high price emotionally, spiritually, and financially. Of special concern is the source of TEC's funding. Where are they getting the money to sue these churches? Should TEC be open about the amount spent and the source of their litigation funding? If you are concerned about this issue and want to do something about it, then click on the provided link and sign the American Anglican Council's on-line petition. Help us bring this issue into the light! Click here to sign the TEC Legal Transparency Petition (www.showmethemoney.kintera.org) Do it."

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THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION NETWORK held its annual meeting at St Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford Texas this past week. Present were bishops John-David Schofield, San Joaquin; Jack Iker, Fort Worth: Bill Cox, Southern Cone/Asst. Oklahoma (ret); Gregory Venables, Primate Southern Cone; Robert Duncan, Pittsburgh; William Wantland, Eau Claire (ret); Keith Ackerman, Quincy; James Stanton, Dallas; William Ilgenfritz, Forward in Faith bishop elect; Bill Atwood, suffragan bishop elect of All Saints Diocese Kenya; Bishop Ray Sutton, Reformed Episcopal Church; John Guernsey, suffragan bishop elect of Uganda; Richard Boyce, Anglican Province of America; Jeffrey Steenson, Rio Grande; Don Harvey, Western Newfoundland (ret); David Bena, suffragan Albany (ret) Asst Bishop CANA; James Adams, Western Kansas; and William Love, Albany.

They announced the formation of a new Federation that hopefully will draw together all orthodox under one umbrella to (a) make it clear that there is an alternative to The Episcopal Church and (b) to make it clear to Dr. Rowan Williams that he must recognize them or face the real possibility that the Anglican Communion will split with him on the wrong side of the great divide.

Describing the federation Articles, mid-Atlantic Network Dean and Bishop-elect John Guernsey said, they are "a step forward for Common Cause that allows the constituent partners to retain their identity and autonomy while forming a more coherent and accountable structure. None of the groups disappear and none of the groups stop their gospel mission...Yet we are forming a more coherent whole."

The Jurisdictions and Ministries of the ten Common Cause Partners included are: the American Anglican Council (AAC); the Anglican Communion Network (ACN); the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA); the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC); The Anglican Coalition in Canada (ACiC), the Anglican Province of America (APA); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); the Anglican Essentials Federation (AEF); Forward in Faith, North America (FIF/NA); and the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).

The ten groups that make up Common Cause must now go back to their constituencies and ask them to ratify the Federation articles.

"What is needed is a completely new structure. Lambeth is failing, Canterbury is failing, the Anglican Consultative Council is prejudiced in a Western way and the primates are sadly divided north and south. We'll leave and they can take the stuff with them to hell, because that is where they will take it. This is Good Friday and we have to face it," said Bishop Robert Duncan, ACN moderator and convener of Common Cause. You can read the story here or in today's digest: http://tinyurl.com/2sr2kn

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ARCHBISHOP DREXEL GOMEZ, Primate of the West Indies had some choice words about the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church when he was at the Forward in Faith Festival in Bladensburg, Maryland on Saturday. Your reporter was present and had some time alone with the erudite archbishop. (On a personal note please pray for his wife, she has had a stroke and has breast cancer.) The event was well attended was well executed. The real concern by those present was that it could be the last hurrah of Anglo-Catholicism! Archbishop Gomez's primary message - the one he kept coming back to all day -- was that the Primates are financially constrained because they do not have a dedicated funding source to support their meetings. Gomez said this unfortunate reality "turns the Archbishop of Canterbury and his colleagues into beggars." Therefore, he predicted that the Primates will not meet again this year to consider The Episcopal Church's (TEC's) response to their Dar es Salaam communique. He also said that if the Anglican Communion is to hold together in the future, the Instruments of Unity will require their own dedicated sources of funding in order to do their jobs. You can read my story/interview with him here or in today's digest: http://tinyurl.com/2amn2b

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THE AMERICAN ANGLICAN COUNCIL called on its subscribers to sign a legal transparency petition asking the national church where it is getting the money to fund the outrageous lawsuits against orthodox parishes and priests. Canon David C. Anderson put out the following statement. "The Episcopal Church's (TEC) continued litigation against parishes and vestries is a great concern to many in the Anglican Communion. These lawsuits come at a high price emotionally, spiritually, and financially. Of special concern is the source of TEC's funding. Where are they getting the money to sue these churches? Should TEC be open about the amount spent and the source of their litigation funding? If you are concerned about this issue and want to do something about it, then click on the provided link and sign the American Anglican Council's on-line petition. Help us bring this issue into the light!" Click here to sign the TEC Legal Transparency Petition (www.showmethemoney.kintera.org) You can read the full story here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/2ghz3e

*****

THEOLOGIANS FIGHT AMONG THEMSELVES. It would be amusing if it weren't so sad. Orthodox theologians in the Episcopal Church can't agree on whether we should all stay together or leave. The level of academic give and take, usually mild and done with high-sounding phrases that won't ruffle the unwashed feathers of the laity, got downright nasty this week.

First off, the Rev. Dr. Stephen Noll, formerly a professor at TESM and now V-P at the Christian University of Uganda said in An Open Letter to Network Bishops and Common Cause Partners that there was now no hope or a future for any diocese or parish that remains connected to TEC. "The Mark Lawrence case and various abuses of the canons should make this clear. This is a spiritual fact: TEC is terminally ill and the cancer will eventually spread to every part of the body. Network bishops must prepare for separation as best they can and stay united in fellowship with each other and their Common Cause partners."

This prompted another theologian Dr. Philip Turner of the Anglican Communion Institute, a life long priest (his wife is also a priest) to fire back a letter to Noll that one should make a distinction between "apostate" and "heretical" and then say that the phrase "hold a false gospel" to refer to our common opponents is a better way to put the matter. He then cites the OT prophets. "Their job was to call for repentance and place their lives in the service of God's way for his people. Their job was not to start another Israel. It was to suffer for and at the hands of Israel in hope that God would vindicate their faithfulness. My plea is that we remain open to the voices of those who struggle with us for the reform and renewal of Anglicanism within North America, that we avoid dismissive statements about those who see things differently than we do, that we do not rush to judgment, and that we seek together a Godly response to the challenges with which we will most certainly be presented."

THERE are now three groups of orthodox theologians within TEC. The first group represented by Dr. Noll says that it is now time to go, TEC is beyond hope and it is finished as an institution and anything recognizable as Christian. The second group, represented by theologians like Dr. Chris Turner, Dr. Chris Seitz and Dr. Ephraim Radner say no, we should not leave TEC.

In fact Radner got so fired up about where the Anglican Communion Network is heading that he resigned from the CAN and wrote a blistering letter this week to say why. Here in essence is what he said: "The recent statements by the Moderator of the Network, Robert Duncan, however, so contradict my sense of calling within this part of Christ's Body, the Anglican Communion, that I have no choice but to disassociate myself from this group, whom I had once hoped might prove an instrument of renewal, not of destruction, of building up, not of tearing down. Bishop Duncan has now declared the See of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference -- two of the four Instruments of Communion within our tradition - to be "lost". He has said that God is "doing a new thing" in allowing these elements to founder and be let go. I find this judgment to be dangerously precipitous and unfair under circumstances when current, faithful, and hard work is being done by many to bolster these Instruments as servants of our common life in Christ."

A third group of orthodox theologians are people like the Rev. Dr. Rob Sanders and the Rev. Dr. John Rodgers, former Dean of TESM and now a bishop in Anglican Mission in America (AmiA) who have left TEC for groups like the AMiA. Other sympathetic theologians include Dr. C. FitzSimons Allison, the retired Bishop of South Carolina who has consecrated AMiA bishops and has come out strongly against the theological drift of the US House of Bishops.

You can read all three statements in today's digest. VOL will keep you posted as the theologians continue to duke it out in the public arena.

Radner concluded with this blast against Bishop Duncan: "In the end, [you have] decided to start a new church. You may call it "Anglican" if you wish, though I do not recognize the name in these kinds of actions that break communion rather than build it up - for such building is what I have long perceived to be the "thing" God was "doing" with the earthen vessel of our tradition.

"Enough of this. I cannot follow him in this way," ripped Radner who is now Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto.

*****

In the DIOCESE OF VIRGINIA Bishop Peter James Lee announced he was defrocking the fleeing clergy from his diocese. While Lee has no jurisdiction over clergy in another Anglican province, he attempts to scare clergy in his own diocese by saying, "You'll be next!" It is clear he is no longer in communion with the Anglican Church of Uganda and the Anglican Church of Nigeria. They are toast along with the clergy. You can read that story here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/yoxzrx *****

VOL has learned that the DIOCESE OF LONG ISLAND is without leadership. Bishop Orris Walker is in a rehab facility in Connecticut. Canon Diane Porter, deputy for Episcopal Administration for the diocese is also out sick and many doubt she will return. She had major surgery a few days ago. Said the source, "the diocese is currently on auto pilot. There is no suffragan for the LI diocese. The retired bishop of Panama, Bishop Ottley is in office in Garden City two days per week...they got him to fill the gap and he himself is not well. He's only to do pastoral work but no one is calling on him as he is so frail. The plan is that come November at convention Walker plans to call for a coadjutor. The general feeling is that the convention will be run come November by the chair of the standing committee. In other news VOL was told that Walker is in debt way up to his neck. He and Porter are holding onto the Rev. Howard Williams because St. Augustine's where Williams is rector makes the greatest contribution to the diocesan budget. If they lose him then things will fall apart as other clergy refuse to send more than a fraction to support the diocese. They are very disgruntled especially the West Indian contingent.

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In the DIOCESE OF CHICAGO, in defiance of the Windsor Report, a lesbian priest will lead a local church. The wardens and vestry of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Chicago, announced that the Rev. Sarah K. Fisher, a partnered lesbian, will serve as priest-in-charge. Fisher, 36, was born in Georgia and is a cradle Episcopalian. In 2005, Fisher came to the Diocese of Chicago to serve for two years as assistant rector and lilly curate at St. Paul and the Redeemer Episcopal Church. See www.stpeterschicago.org. The liberal run diocese apparently has no sense that the Global South is watching for precisely these kinds of violations.

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It is reported that the BISHOP OF NEW JERSEY George Councell has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

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VIRGINIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY welcomed Dr. Ian Markham as its 14th Dean and President. He was elected by a unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees. Markham succeeds the Very Reverend Martha J. Horne who served as Dean and President of the Seminary over the past thirteen years. "Dean Markham brings academic excellence, an ecumenical and an international perspective to Virginia Seminary," said the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, bishop of the Diocese of Virginia and chairman of the board of trustees at VTS. "We are confident that he will lead us in fresh new ways while maintaining fidelity to the Seminary's mission emphasis."

Dean Markham comes to Virginia Seminary from Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, where he served as Dean and Professor of Theology and Ethics from 2001 to 2007. He also served as Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Hartford Seminary from 2001 to 2005, and directed the seminary's accreditation self-study process from 2002 to 2003. Prior to serving as Dean of Hartford Seminary he was Foundation Dean and Liverpool Professor of Theology and Public Life at Liverpool Hope University in Liverpool, England, from 1998 to 2001, where he served as a member of the senior management team and strategic planning committee. *****

Among the individual fine COLUMNS you can in today's digest is one by John Becker who has the guts to take on the liberals on the HOB/D listserv. He recently wrote this: "I have several homosexual social friends. I am firmly of the view that the church's posture vis-a-vis homosexuals has been narrow and bigoted and that the time had come to find a different approach. But to scrap the theology of centuries, and the moral wisdom and practical experience of hundreds of generations just to make a small segment of the Episcopal church feel comfortable, and to set the whole course of the church based on appeasing that segment by making the homosexual agenda the top priority, was a colossal miscalculation, which will be and already has been devastating in its ramifications. Whatever survives will be unrecognizable as Christianity, and will be doomed to collapse." Another column by catholic write Gil Bailie is also a must read.

*****

ON A MORE EARTHY NOTE, The Roman Catholic Church after nearly two millennia, officially no longer tries to convert Jews to Christianity, according to Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the Australian who became the third-highest prelate in the Vatican. Addressing a mostly Jewish audience of several hundred at the Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick Cardinal Cassidy said the Vatican II council of the 1960s ended the charge of deicide against the Jews over the death of Jesus Christ, but it took decades to work through the church. (It was rebutted in a famous Vatican II document Nostra Aetate.) "Campaigns that target Jews for conversion are no longer theologically acceptable," said the now- retired cardinal, 83, who was president of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

That news is hardly music to the ears of thousands of converted Jews in this country and around the world. Whatever happened "to the Jew first..." (Rom. 1: 16) Wrote one Messianic Jew, we would naturally ask ourselves, WHY NOT? "I believe that if you do not place "to the Jew first" in your witness, prayer life, financial support, and in your life as a believer in general; and I repeat, if you do not, you probably do not have a place at all for GOD's 'holy', 'chosen', 'special' PEOPLE, that is, the Jewish people. Even Jesus our LORD in The Gospel according to Luke 24:46-47 said, 'Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ (Messiah) to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name among all nations (Gentiles), BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM (the Jewish people)'. Please remember what Romans 3:9 tells us, 'For we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin'. Yeshua (Jesus) is the promised Messiah (Christ)." The Vatican apparently doesn't agree.

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IN CANADA this week The DIOCESE OF NEW WESTMINSTER announced that it had embraced MDG's. The goals are a set of eight targets for eradicating extreme global poverty adopted by the 191 member states of the United Nations, including Canada, born out of the conviction that humanity can build a better and safer world if it is willing to unite. "We Anglicans - the third largest Christian denomination in the world - must play a key role building this will and holding governments accountable for promises made," said a statement from the diocesan website.

A parishioner of the diocese wrote VOL with this statement. "What a bloody joke. The Diocese of New Westminster dedicated to eradicating poverty? Since when? The mayor of Vancouver is a big time member of Christ Church Cathedral. He has made decisions that have put hundreds and hundreds of poor people on the streets, because his wealthy buddies wanted the low rental buildings to develop into big money condos for the 2010 Olympics. It was reported to me that the mayor was once heard to say, 'I don't hang around with the poor, just with the rich. The rich get things done.' These guys are all social elitists and social climbers. How the bloody hell are they going to help the poor? And do you know what the mayor's answer is for housing the poor? The mayor and the provincial government are going to open up abandoned insane asylums and house the old, the poor, and the sick in them. No doubt their motto for these places will be JOY THROUGH STRENGTH." You can read their statement here: http://tinyurl.com/2zspys

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THERE are a number of good stories you can scroll through and read including one that homoerotic bishop GENE ROBINSON says the Church of England would collapse if gay clergy were ever eliminated from it. He ripped its leaders who, he said, are unable to be honest about the numbers of homosexual clergy who are in their ranks. He also said the crisis was not exclusively an "American Problem". In his latest comments, Robinson again objected to the primates' demands, arguing that they are "antithetical" to Anglican tradition. You can read the story here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/2vp9y2

AND just when you think it couldn't get any worse in the TEC, the DIOCESE OF MINNESOTA announced this week that its Episcopal House of Prayer welcomed back a defrocked clergyman who is an admitted, convicted and registered sex offender as a diocesan retreat leader! Read it here and weep. http://tinyurl.com/2pqajk

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