Orthodoxy, he said, represents a theological compromise or reduction made to include diversity.

The bishop blasted orthodox bishops willing to cross diocesan boundaries saying they "willfully violated the centuries-old consensus in place since the Council of Nicea that no bishop will enter the geographic bounds of another bishop's diocese without his or her permission."

"Those violating the agreement today argue that the Episcopal Church has become apostate by its 2003 decision about the place of gay men and lesbians in our church. In our eyes these "invading" bishops are schismatic, violating the very church order that provides the framework for working through controversy. They are out, in effect, to form a new church."

Bennison then wrote that parting ways over a transitory issue is a "protestant" thing to do, manifesting lack of faith in the "one, holy catholic and apostolic church".

"The schismatic behavior of some of my episcopal colleagues gives me a sympathetic understanding of what the bishops of the Western Church must have felt when the Church of England broke with Rome. It is hard to do such a thing and claim to be the catholic church."

Bennison said the primates of the Anglican Communion compromise the catholicity of the church by inviting the Episcopal Church USA "to effect a moratorium on the election and consent to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate who is living in the same gender union until some new consensus in the Anglican Communion emerges"

Bennison said ECUSA's decision in 2003 arose out of our sense of obedience to the will of God expressed through the work of the Spirit of truth within our own communion. "It is a particular gift of our church to the wider communion as it seeks a new consensus."

He said the Episcopal Church has come to recognize that (1) some human beings are by nature homosexual, and (2) all persons who are called by God to enter into lifelong monogamous unions, including homosexual persons, should be permitted to and supported in doing so.

Bennison concluded by saying that this is exactly what the catholic church does. "It does not put a moratorium on the Spirit. It tests it."

NOW it is hard to imagine a bishop coming up with so much convoluted logic and nonsense as this "bishop's message" to the diocese.

In that the Episcopal Church is full of "fruits" might be the only truthful thing he said. He might have added "nuts" as well, but he can hardly be blamed for overlooking the obvious. What other church can lay claim to having its own unofficial "Quean Lutibelle" as the secular and lay leader of episcopal pansexuality!

Bennison the Bizarre has his own list of theological irregularities. T'was he who wrote a Visigoth Rite to be used for persons of the same sex who wanted to tie the nuptial knot in Philadelphia's cathedral. T'was he who could not affirm basic doctrines of the Christian Faith when challenged to do so by Fr. David Moyer, Anglo-Catholic rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont. And it was he who said Jesus was a sinner (not sinless) who forgave himself - becoming the first bishop in the 2,000-year history of the church to make such a statement. (Not even Arius said such a thing.) It was Bennison who said the church wrote the bible and can therefore rewrite it and it was he who said that Jesus is "a Christ" but not the Christ?

The incredible thing is that Bennison still manages to keep his job, and this is so because the Standing Committee is largely made up of priests, many of whom are dependent on him for money to keep their parishes open even though some of them have double digit congregations. Other non-clergy members of the Standing Committee wouldn't know Jesus if he turned water into Chateau neuf de pape at a straight wedding, thinking perhaps that the act was being performed by a later day Houdini snuck in for the occasion to entertain them.

Bennison's claims to theological idiocy come naturally. He was rejected for postulancy by his father's examining chaplains when he sought to go to seminary because he barely knew the books of the bible and only got in because his mother insisted and his father, also a revisionist bishop, got bullied by his wife. That should have tipped the hands of the search committee looking for a new PA bishop, but Bennison had long since replaced sound doctrine for smiles and charm, and he easily wooed the fools "examining" him. He also came from Episcopal Divinity School whose president at the time, the former Utah bishop Otis Charles later dumped his wife and five kids to "marry" a four times married man, thus leading credence to the truth that the Episcopal Church had finally elevated Sodomy above the Trinity as the primary source of ecclesiastical devotion and worship.

But it is Bennison's charge that crossing boundaries was rejected by the Church Fathers that is itself faulty historically. Historian professor William Tighe in an article "Abusing the Fathers: The Windsor Report's Misleading Appeal to Nicea" writes, "It is hard to see how this canon has anything to do with the troubles of contemporary Anglicanism that evoked the Windsor Report. The canon does uphold the unity of the local church, but the situation it addresses is the reunion of a schismatic group with the Church, not the appropriate response of bishops to the defection of one of their brethren from their common orthodoxy. However, the latter type of situation did arise in the fourth century, in the long aftermath of the Council of Nicea, and later still."

Wrote Tighe: "The main purpose of the Council of Nicea was to judge the views of the Alexandrian priest and theologian Arius, who held that Jesus was a creature-a divine being created by God before the angels, the cosmos, and mankind, but a creature nevertheless. Nicea condemned Arius's views, and its creed confessed the full co-divinity and co-eternity of "the everlasting Son of the Father."

"As time went on, the whole Church became divided over the question, with bishop opposing bishop. Athanasius was willing, as the conflict intensified-in his case, as early as the mid-340s-to INTERVENE UNILATERALLY IN DIOCESES WHOSE BISHOPS WERE ARIANS OR COMPROMISERS. The historians Socrates and Sozomen, writing in the middle of the next century, record that he ordained men in dioceses whose bishops were tainted with Arianism to serve the orthodox upholders of Nicea, and that he did so without seeking or obtaining the permission of those bishops."

So there you have it.

Bennison's views that homosexuality is hard wired or "naturally born" is a myth that has long been exploded. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover the world authority on homosexuality says that the idea of "sexual orientation" is a fiction and that the scientific evidence from a University of Chicago study of sexuality in America sampled over 100,000 individuals found that in the majority of both men and women, "homosexuality," as defined by any scientifically rigorous criteria, spontaneously tends to "mutate" into heterosexuality over the course of a lifetime. "The proportion of people who adopt a homosexual identity and the length of time they persist in holding on to it are affected primarily by environmental factors clearly identifiable in these epidemiologic studies. These factors-deemed "cultural" or "demographic"-include effects such as social networks, education, early sexual experiences, childhood sexual abuse, and cultural beliefs," he says.

Bennison's views on homosexuality are as simplistic as his views on theology and doctrine are heretical. His understanding of catholicity and orthodoxy are also wide of the mark. Catholicity as a "basket full of every kind of fruit" is offensive to Roman Catholics who see their "basket" as containing most if not all of the true fruit, while Protestantism broke with Rome over a very fundamental "fruit" concerning justification by faith. A Reformed evangelical church holding on to the five battle cries of reformation: sola scriptura, sola fidei, sola Cristus, sola gratia and solideo Gloria will have a quite different basket of "fruit".

In truth, Bennison doesn't get it. He is so far out in left field, along with Jack Spong whom he recently invited into the diocese, shows where his heart and soul is - and it is not with the faith once delivered.

He is also watching as his diocese goes into free fall with dying parishes and money drying up with only four percent of pledges to the total operating budget having been received so far this year.

If Bennison is looking for 'tests of the Spirit' he is not finding them in this diocese whose small band of orthodox priests are under siege and his liberal clergy have no ability to make churches grow.

The truth is it is Bennison who is quenching the Spirit in his own diocese, and he is watching as his orthodox clergy grow more disillusioned and demoralized with each passing day. In time they will all go, they have no future here, and as we are seeing in so many other revisionist dioceses, the orthodox and catholic remnant know it is only a matter of time and the axe will fall on them, just ask the remnant in Connecticut, Los Angeles, Central PA, Kentucky to name but a few dioceses.

The countdown for the Episcopal Church's faithful has begun; it is now only a matter of time.

END