2. In doing so, the Church of Nigeria has not pre-empted Canterbury's seat of honor in the Communion, but it has made "communion with the see of Canterbury" a second-order matter -- as it always should have been. Combined with Abp. Akinola's other statements about the Church of England, it seems clear that the Church of Nigeria is prepared to break communion with a mother church that has compromised the substance of the classic Reformation faith.

3. In establishing officially the "Convocation of Anglican Nigerians in America" (CANA), the Church of Nigeria recognizes at least temporary parallel jurisdictions in areas where the territorial Anglican body has become heretical. The "convocations" are defined in confessional terms of "like-minded faithful." They are also likened to "chaplaincies," perhaps like the Convocation of American Churches in Europe. The original announcement on April 7, 2005, by Abp. Akinola (www.anglican-nig.org/prlttr_northamerica.htm) makes clear that CANA is working cooperatively with the Network of Anglican Communion Parishes and Dioceses.

"As I have commented before, Peter Akinola and his colleagues talk straight," Noll comments. "Now the other members of the Communion will have to come out of the shadows and define themselves." According to reports out of London the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, faces a recurring nightmare trying to stop Anglican liberals and conservatives heading for schism over the increasingly divisive issue of gay rights.

"That is why Rowan Williams is looking so haggard nowadays," Church Times editor Paul Handley said recently, as the spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans worldwide fought to keep the church united.

"The longer this sort of rhetoric goes on, the less people will make the effort to stay together with people they disagree with," Handley told Reuters. "I can't see them wanting to leave each other alone."

We are clearly reaching a crisis point in the Anglican Communion, and the man on the hot seatwho must make up his mind which way he will roll is the archbishop of Canterbury. You can read all these stories in today's digest.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND dominated the news this past week. A number of Church of England bishops suggested apologizing to Muslims over the war in Iraq, while Anglican Mainstream urged clarity on civil partnerships, and Church Society said the bishops' pastoral statement undermined Christian teaching. Yet another organization, Fulcrum, had its own response to the bishops' Statement on the Civil Partnership issue.

This got one British writer to opine that what's left of the English Church is indistinguishable from a lunatic asylum.

Another report says Britain's churches will be well on the way to extinction by 2040 with just two percent of the population attending Sunday services. If current trends continue, churchgoing will plummet by two-thirds over the next three decades while Islam will mushroom, a statistical analysis by the Christian Research organization says.

And to top off the madness the C of E is hiring a public relations firm to improve its image.

There can be little doubt that the Grand old C of E is in not much better shape than the U.S. Episcopal Church, or the Anglican Church in Canada for that matter, and it seems hell bent on heading into extinction with no one's help but its own. If you don't have a clear, unalloyed message to proclaim and you offer more doubts and questionings than answers and your mission statement is ambiguous, people will walk away.

The Church of England has resisted pressure from fellow Anglicans to sell investments in a company accused of profiting from Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. The Church's ethical and investment advisory group said that it had decided not to withdraw its £2.2 million from the Caterpillar group, which makes bulldozers used in Israeli clearance projects. This is something of a slap in the face to the Episcopal Church, which advocates disinvestment.

ON THE HOME FRONT there is continued betrayal and anger everywhere.

In the DIOCESE OF CENTRAL NEW YORK Fr. David Bollinger, who for 20 years has been the rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Owego, N.Y., deeply loved and respected by his congregation and vestry, had his inhibition extended by his bishop, the Rt. Rev. Gladstone "Skip" Adams after Fr. Bollinger had received an affidavit from one of 16 victims of his parish charging a former parish priest with sexual abuse. Bollinger states that he was inhibited when he sent the signed complaint to the bishop and pastoral response team because he blew the whistle on the former parish priest. The bishop turned on Fr. Bollinger and inhibited him and then accused him of misusing his Discretionary Fund! There will be more on this story at a later date. Stay tuned.

In the DIOCESE OF OHIO a VirtueOnline reader wrote to say that Bishop Mark Hollingsworth's "Pennsylvania Eucharist" was his Youngstown Deanery on retreat. He accompanied them, thus celebrating the Eucharist, and it was joked about as the "illegal Eucharist" at the deans' meeting because it was conducted in the DIOCESE OF PITTSBURGH without the consent of Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan.

But what is more revealing is that his diocese is in free fall. Out of 107 parishes in the diocese 75 cannot support a full-time priest! Furthermore there is a quiet, slowly growing recognition that the election and consecration of V. Gene Robinson has resulted in a downturn in Ohio. "Denial is strong," said the source. We need to work together for unity is Hollingsworth's mantra. It's amazing that Hollingsworth, who lives a home valued at nearly $2 million, has no ability to make parishes grow, he excoriates the orthodox in his diocese and wonders why, with no gospel to proclaim, he can make anything work at all.

If trendy and funky is what you are looking for go to the DIOCESE OF MICHIGAN Web site. It opens with a new flash play intro featuring a punk rocker. When you get into the Web site more fully up flashes a young lady sitting with an open Prayer Book with the Collect for purity followed by "MY GOD IS MOTHER ... IAM AN EPISCOPALIAN." God's Love is a photo of a car with a gay-rights rainbow and a blacked-out human rights campaign sticker. You have to wonder what spiritual lunacy drives these fools of bishops to think that being trendy and "with it" will drive ordinary folk to becoming Episcopalians. It's the message, stupid, and Bishop Wendell N. Gibbs just doesn't get it.

In the DIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES the insanity continues. Trinity Parish in Santa Barbara will host "Rumi Circle," a series of sessions focused on the storytelling and poetry of Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a famous 13th-century Muslim poet born in what is now Afghanistan. Clearly these loons have been listening to Frank Griswold, who believes Sufi the Rumi will lead us all to a plain beyond good and evil. If only.

In the DIOCESE OF FLORIDA Bishop John Howard made it official. The full-time summer camp director at Camp Weed, which for years been one of the cornerstones of the diocese, has been fired. Howard blames six of his congregations for not contributing to the common ministry of the diocese, so out the door the camp director goes. Bishop Howard forgot to mention the huge salaries he is paying himself and his own staff. Perhaps if he had bought a home for about $250,000 instead of $1 million he could have donated the balance to the diocese to keep this splendid man and his ministry afloat. After all, former Bishop Stephen Jecko managed to live comfortably in a home for just over $100,000! Paul Van Brunt, who has been serving as youth ministries officer and as communications director, will be taking on this position full time and giving up his communications responsibilities. The fact remains that financial resources for our diocese are very limited, says Howard. Why are we not surprised?

The wife of a priest in the Florida diocese, after reading about the high life of Howard, wrote VirtueOnline and said, "It just makes me sick to see how hard my husband works to bring the Gospel and Christ's love to those who don't know the Lord and to try to keep together a church in the midst of all the ECUSA mess. We have 3 children and live in a modest home that is fairly small and we could definitely use more space, but it was in our price range and all we could afford. It doesn't seem fair that Kurt Dunkle can make such a big salary fresh out of seminary and has never been a parish priest. I know our reward is not on this earth but in heaven but it would be nice if the bishop could see the needs of lowly priests whose only agenda is for people to have eternal life with Christ. I guess if my husband had been a lawyer before he became a priest we would have a bigger salary, and home."

In the DIOCESE OF CHICAGO last week the boycott of heretical Bishop William D. Persell was a smashing success, according to a VirtueOnline reader. Persell was scheduled to make a much-ballyhooed "pastoral visit" to St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church, Chicago's second oldest Episcopal Church. Persell had not been there for years. The orthodox parishioners didn't want him to come but couldn't stop him, so the congregation staged a no-show of its own. Persell had enraged the congregation by saying he did not believe the Bible was the Word of God and did not believe in the Nicene Creed. A mail campaign was sent out with hundreds of cards urging, "Shun the Wicked Heretic -- Boycott Bishop Persell's September 18 Visit." Posters were placed around the neighborhood near the church asking members to boycott Persell's appearance.

The parishioners -- some 1,500 members, 400 families -- chose to boycott the liberal heretic's appearance, rather than let him think that they approved of his conduct.

A party scheduled for Persell's visit with picnic tables set up outside the church remained vacant, as virtually none of the congregation, save for a few ultra-liberal vestry members and their socialite wives, showed up for the bishop's pastoral visit. Some gays did show up to support the bishop and were seen in pairs, wearing green shirts and white shirts as they minced up the stairs, said the source.

"It was a stunning rebuke for the homosexual heretics -- right in the heart of supposedly liberal Chicago," reported an ecstatic VirtueOnline reader. Bishop Persell, of course, was one of the liberals who voted for Gene Robinson's consecration. "There has been a lot of dissent over his leadership -- so called -- since he took command of the Chicago diocese after Griswold was elected Presiding Bishop," the source reported.

"Persell has been pushing very hard on the churches here to adopt a liturgy that describes Jesus as a 'metaphor' for wisdom. Persell rejects not only the 39 Articles of the Faith of Anglicanism; he also rejects the Nicene Creed and other historic creeds of the church."

"The church has historically been very conservative -- until the revisionist priest installed by Griswold and priestess installed by Persell took over the parish. Now they want to teach that homosexual lifestyles are "okay" to children in the Sunday school, bless gay weddings, and do other strange things."

By boycotting Persell's appearance, a clear signal was sent that his presence -- and policies -- was not wanted. "This is a win for the orthodox -- right in the heart of downtown Chicago," the source commented.

IN CANADA the national church reported that money was drying up, prompting a review of fund-raising programs, reports the Anglican Journal. An audit showed that donations have steadily declined in recent years. In 2004 the Anglican Appeal exceeded its 2003 contribution level but still fell short of projected revenue. It did not reach its goal of $850,000, taking in only $760,000. The Anglican Journal Appeal declined by seven per cent in 2004, raising $460,119 compared to $490,976 in 2003. The drop in donations has been attributed by some General Synod officials to the controversy surrounding the same-sex blessings issue and year-end payments by dioceses to the residential schools settlement fund. All dioceses are contributing to a $25 million fund that will compensate natives who attended Anglican boarding schools and can prove they suffered physical and sexual abuse.

TODAY'S DIGEST STORIES include the presiding bishop's stacking the deck with revisionists on a Special Commission to examine the Windsor Report. It's a clean sweep; the orthodox don't have a prayer of making any serious headway here. Also this week Washington Bishop John Chane blasted Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola over sexuality issues. You can read my response to that. The Roman Catholic Church has thrown down the gauntlet on gay priests with the pope saying he doesn't want priests who say they even have a homosexual orientation in the priesthood! And last week found your scribe in Atlanta at the invitation of Light of Christ Anglican Church. I have written an account of my time there. I have also posted some more stories on Hurricane Katrina and what some Episcopalians are doing.

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