"Catholic" means universal. The Christian Church is meant to be universal. One way to fulfill that is by being a church that exists across the entire world. In that sense the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, can be said to be universal.

To be universal can and does also mean being embracing of all peoples, in keeping with God's intention expressed to Abraham in Genesis. To be catholic and universal in this sense means the church is made up of all strata and class and race of people. Ethnicity should be represented in its entirety, as well as should all levels of economic realities, social class, and all strata of education and culture. Again, the Anglican Communion as a whole does fairly well in this regard. It is, however, a real question of whether the Episcopal Church in the United States fulfills this criterion.

While the Episcopal Church is less British, less upper and upper-middle class, less the church of the Presidents and the elite of American society and culture, and has improved to some degree with regard to be less elitist, it is still far from being a truly catholic and universal church in this also important sense of being catholic and universal. Compared to the increasingly typical Roman Catholic Church, and to many other Christian denominations in the United States, the typical Episcopal parish is still more often white, upper-middle to upper class, white-collar, professional, and more highly educated than the United States population on average. The incomes and socio-economic status of the greater portion of members of the Episcopal Church are still significantly higher than those of the average middle class American, and vastly beyond the incomes of the normative working class people of the United States.

The result is, despite attempts of Episcopalians to engage in social outreach and social-justice ministry to the greater part of the American culture, they largely fail because 1) they do not have the ability to really understand life as it is actually lived and experienced by middle-class and working class Americans, and 2) because they tend still to approach such ministry with an attitude that still reveals their sense of superiority, entitlement, and seeing themselves as better than these others whom they largely regard as the "unfortunates." Being isolated from the real world of the greater part of American life as it is lived by more common numerically and ordinary people, much of the membership of the Episcopal Church and its leadership are simply out of touch with a world that is not as privileged and comfortable and prosperous as their own.

Thus, it is no wonder that the average Episcopal Church in the United States, or the typical diocese of the Episcopal Church, is vastly under-represented by the lower middle class, the working class, the poor, minorities and non-white ethnic groups. And, from where I view the Episcopal Church there is both little recognition on the part of the vast majority of the church's membership, and especially its leadership, clergy and lay, of the problem nor is there any real desire to address the problem and change the dynamics they are quite comfortable with.

In practical terms, no only are large groups of people, significant segments of humankind not included but excluded, making the Episcopal Church far from being authentically catholic, it also translates into a variety of areas of practical ministry. For just one example, when it comes to pastoral care and empathy for the sick and the suffering and the dying outside of their own elite circle, many Episcopalians, and especially certain of the clergy, including amazingly bishops, do not know how to actually minister to people who are sick and suffering and dying and fail to understand the stressors, the life circumstances, the social, economic, education, and work challenges that contribute to people in lower social status and classes to their own not living as long, being as healthy, not being as fulfilled in their work, and that people who live beneath their social status and class have less time to know personal fulfillment as they have to work hard for a living and are tending to live at the margins of life. Thus, it is to that Episcopalians, bishops and priest, scholars and lay business leaders, and politicians seem to be unrealistic in their approach to important issues like work and compensation for the non-professional and non-executive ranks of workers, like labor unions, like universal health insurance, like support for families, etc.

Yet, even I have observed that these failings on the part of the Episcopal Church are not true of everywhere and everyplace where Episcopalians are found. I have observed that sometimes in more liberal areas of the Episcopal Church where I have lived that there is some increasing improvement on such things. For example, some of the Episcopalians I have known in the state of Minnesota are more advanced in such regards, even though they still have a long way to go. But when I had occasion to move to the southern United States, I found the Episcopal Church to be more retro-grade, more unenlightened, more elitist, and more out of touch than what I could have expected prior to be the case. And, it seems to go hand in hand with what tends in the southern United States and the southern Episcopal Church to be both a cultural conservatism and a strange theological conservatism. From nearly a decade of observing southern Episcopalianism, at least in its Florida form, I have noted what seems to be a reading and interpreting of Scripture, the New Testament, and the Gospels that in effects tends to serve protecting the elitism and comfortable culture of the privileged upper class and upper middle class Episcopalians of the south.

Sadly I have to say and report that I have experienced directly the results of this isolated, myopic Episcopalianism, lacking a true catholic spirituality and praxis like that found elsewhere in the Anglican communion, in terms of pastoral care [or the lack thereof I should say] toward my family, myself, and my clergy spouse, and in terms of the disinterest and sometimes seeming arrogance of the church hierarchy towards my clergy spouse's rightful deployment as an Episcopal priest. Let me cite some specific examples out of my experience.

For six years, since we moved to the Episcopal Diocese of Florida in December 1999, where my clergy spouse followed me as I had taken a job with the Mayo Clinic at their hospital in Jacksonville, my husband has diligently, faithfully, and appropriately searched for a full-time call to some form of parish ministry, whether as a rector, a dean, or an associate rector, etc.

In six years nothing has resulted and it became obvious that this was largely due to the lack of support from two bishops of Florida over the course of those six years. To try to address this, my clergy husband sought to gain an audience with the current bishop of Florida following his election. It was hoped that if the new bishop, whose churchmanship was thought to be very similar to that of my clergy spouse, could come to personally know my husband, he might obtain the support of the bishop for his search process.

The current bishop was elected about two years ago. It would take my husband a year and a half to gain a personal "audience" with the bishop of Florida. When the meeting finally did occur, it appeared it had been positive and the bishop appeared to both like my husband and offered his support to help him realize deployment. But then nothing happened.

Recently my husband sought to have another meeting with the bishop and was again met with delaying tactics. When the meeting finally occurred recently, the bishop of Florida made some rather remarkable and revealing disclosures to my husband unlike anything we have ever encountered with any Episcopal bishop previously.

The Bishop said he has never read my husband's diocesan file, had never read any of my husband's personal resumes [curriculum vitae] that he had been provided to the diocesan office annually since arriving in the diocese, had never one of my husband's CDO profiles [also kept up to date and filed with the diocesan office]. Further, he claimed to be totally unaware of my husband's qualifications for ministry in the church, unaware of any of my husband's experiences and many positive contributions to ECUSA over the years since he was ordained in 1979, and said he was even unaware of much, if any, of my husband's most recent work for five years at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Welaka, Florida, a congregation of the bishop's own diocese. During the same meeting, the bishop of Florida did confirm that he had positive feelings for my husband at the first, long-awaited audience my husband had with the current bishop of Florida. But then the bishop also admitted he could not remember any of the actual conversation or discussion he had had with my husband, nor any of the information or requests my husband had made of him during that same meeting. Yet, at this most recent meeting, the bishop of Florida did say he had a positive feeling momentarily and had thought he might like to help my husband with his deployment, but then did nothing, the implication being he had as quickly forget about my husband as the time it had taken to meet with my husband.

If what the bishop of Florida says is true of himself, and it is hard to know whether this particular bishop is being genuine or disingenuous, its strikes me as quite odd that a bishop, any bishop, or any diocese, Episcopalian or otherwise, who is charged with the knowledge and care of their clergy, would openly admit to knowing so little about any of their clergy. Yet with this bishop it could be true, and it could be true because of his rather elitist, somewhat haughty way of conducting himself as bishop in the diocese as I have observed him at some what close perspective ever since his election.

Who has ever heard of it taking an Episcopal priest a year and a half to have a one-on-one meeting with his bishop in the Episcopal Church? It was never my husband's experience prior to his residing in the Episcopal diocese of Florida, and never prior to the election of the current bishop of Florida.

When my husband, who was quite surprised by the bishop's claims and disclosures, which came with the intimation that my husband was not the only priest of the diocese in such a situation with regard to the bishop, suggested to him he thought it was both telling and an indication that there was something wrong with this picture, if true, the bishop's response was in effect to say that he did not think this was unusual, or wrong, or unwarranted, or unnatural to the office of a bishop, why was it wrong? My husband came away from that response certain that this did not bode well for either the Episcopal office in the diocese of Florida or for the diocese, a diocese already under considerable strain and division because of the crisis in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church over issues of human sexuality and ordination. Could, both my husband and I wonder, this Bishop of Florida been on the road to a quite short episcopacy, or one that will become an episcopacy over a greatly diminished diocese because of the crisis, what appears to me to be the poor handling of the crisis by this bishop, and situations like this which demonstrate that the current bishop of Florida does not understand what his actual role as bishop entails, and in this instance its his relationship to the clergy, and in other instances its his relationship to the larger body of laity whom he has been called to serve, including the families of his clergy.

The above helps to illustrate how the Episcopal Church, in the case of its hierarchy, can and does seem to fail in its claim to be authentically catholic and universal and to be pastoral, caring and shaped by the values of the Christian Gospel. This illustration provides an example that affects my husband, a priest of the church.

I can also provide a examples that involves me as a clergy spouse.

Upon moving to Florida and my husband joining the diocese, unlike anytime previously in our experience with the church, not once did the then bishop of Florida or anyone from his staff or his spouse indicate any desire to get to know us as a clergy couple, to know me as a clergy spouse, or to seek to welcome and incorporate us into the diocese. Nothing. It was known that the then bishop of Florida had spoken with my husband's previous bishop, a now past bishop of the diocese of Iowa, and it was intimated to my husband by the then bishop of Florida that the bishop of Iowa was not particularly favorable to my husband or us as a clergy family. With regard to the latter I can only conclude it has to do with the fact that I am a practicing Roman Catholic and not an Episcopalian. Living in Iowa showed me that the then bishop of Iowa was himself very uncomfortable with the idea of a clergy spouse being of another church than the clergy person. In a variety of ways he made it known he did not like this, and he also made it known that he was not particularly favorable to Roman Catholics or the Roman Catholic Church. I assumed his rather outmoded and antiquated bias against Catholics was a carryover still of his southern upbringing.

Yet, it did seem to keep my husband from being supported by this bishop for further work in his diocese and this came to be stretched to Florida as well. It did mean when my husband and I were going to renew our marital vows at a significant milestone, and we wanted the bishop to be present representing my husband's side, and we wanted my Roman Catholic priest to be present and represent my side, and for them to share in officiating, it was the Episcopal bishop who declined participating and not the Roman Catholic priest. I regarded this as in keeping with this bishop's bias against Roman Catholics and clergy spouses who do not share the same denomination affiliation.

Yet this Episcopal bias and elitism toward Roman Catholics seems to persist and follow us even in Florida, if not even more so. And the Episcopal Church is a church that prides itself on its ecumenical work and its supposed striving to have good relationships with other Christian churches and even other faiths which are not Christian. So much for the effects of the Anglican/Roman Catholic dialogues at the grassroots. Episcopal elitism seems to emerge again.

In 2001, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and was successfully treated. Yet, the then bishop of Florida made no contact whatsoever with me, my clergy husband, or our family, with any pastoral gesture, support, caring, inquiry, etc. We were left on our own without any pastoral or spiritual contact or support from the Episcopal Church side of our household, that is, from the hierarchical part of the Episcopal Church in Florida. Fortunately, the same was not true of the congregation my husband was serving, they were wonderful and have through the years been continuously so.

Move forward to 2005. I am recently diagnosed with the return of the breast cancer and while it is still treatable, now the treatments will only result in possible remission and extension of my life for a few years, the number of years unknown and unknowable. But the facts are that my cancer makes my situation terminal and in time I will no longer be around to support my family as the principal breadwinner. I am the principal breadwinner because my clergy husband has as yet been unable to realize a call to a full-time ministry in the diocese of Florida where we live and where my children and I are committed to living.

Yet, again, the bishop of Florida, now the current bishop, is hardly responsive in a true and authentically pastoral way. The best he can do upon hearing of my situation is to email my husband saying he will prayer for us. Yet, given that he is a pastor, and was once a parish priest before become bishop - a pastor to a diocese, and especially pastor to his clergy - this pastor does not seem to know how to use a telephone and make a basic pastoral call to either my husband, or myself, and certainly failed to do so to both of us. Again, this is so out of keeping with all our previous experience of bishops, many of whom were much more liberal than the supposedly orthodox and conservative present bishop of Florida. The best this bishop can do is have his secretary arrange to send an artificial plant [which was all I was permitted during the hospitalization that ensued about two weeks on after the original diagnosis with the onset of life-threatening pneumonia following the first chemo-therapy treatment].

In the couple of weeks between my being diagnosed and my first treatment and then resultant hospital stay, there was nothing from the current bishop of Florida except his terse email. During my hospitalization, there was only his secretary's call to the hospital. After my release and in the month or so that has now elapsed to the present, there has been nothing at all from this bishop. Then this week, when my husband did have his meeting with the bishop of Florida and began to share my health status and his own [he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer] the bishop seemed little interested, offered no words of support or caring, did not even offer to pray for our healing or well-being, and so my husband cut short the sharing and only shared cursorily given the bishop's discomfort, disinterest, and basic lack of compassion or caring.

Perhaps both my husband and I are spoiled by the pastoral care we have known from other priests both Episcopal and Roman Catholic, and from the pastoral care my husband has given his parishioners and his colleagues in ministry over the years, and from some of the other bishops we have known, where the standard of pastoral care has meant at least checking in with a patient, a parishioner, a family, once a week and see how things are progressing. The standard being that there phone calls made or visits made to realize this checking in, and pastors actually praying personally with us whether on the telephone or in person. And, occasionally the Eucharist is brought and shared even if church rules do not permit all present to participate fully but spiritually. But in the instance of what I see as the elitism of a significant part of the Episcopal Church and its lack of pastoral realism, made manifest as it appears with the present bishop of Florida, the bishop and the Episcopal Church have a long way to go before realizing true catholicity and practice of the values and example of Jesus and his gospel. And, was it not Jesus, who said to Simon Peter three times, "feed my sheep."

And do not Episcopalians, and especially Episcopalian bishops, think of their bishops as in apostolic succession and pastors of the church commissioned with the same commission given to Peter, but where I wonder is the example of this kind of pastoral leadership to be found in the Episcopal diocese of Florida? Where can it be seen that the bishop of Florida is heeding Jesus' admonition to Peter and the bishops of the church, "feed my sheep"? But then, again, I guess I don't count as one of the sheep the bishop of Florida has any responsibility toward, even as a fellow Christian. But, nor does it appear my Episcopalian priest husband does not count as a sheep to whom he has real responsibilities. Otherwise, would not all his behaviors over the last two years up to the present been quite different?

--Joann T. Flickinger, RN/C, is a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church, registered nurse, certified cardiac care specialist, Mayo Clinic/Saint Luke's Hospital, Jacksonville, FL, and spouse of The Rev'd Bruce A. Flickinger, Episcopal Priest, ECUSA, canonically resident in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida.

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