Thus spake a moderately orthodox bishop to a friend of mine this week. The truth is that some 36 or more dioceses are suffering financially; hundreds of churches, possibly 2,000 or more cannot support a full-time rector, and it is only the bishop using trust funds that can enable missions and small parishes even to stay open.

But that is not the only crisis the C of E faces. Homosexual priests will be allowed to "marry" their boyfriends under a proposal drawn up by senior bishops, led by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury. The condition is that they must stay celibate. This apparently also applies to lesbian priests and their girlfriends.

He did it on the steps of the capitol in Hartford, Connecticut, in the company of nine other orthodox ECUSA bishops and a Ugandan bishop. The leader of the Anglican Communion Network blasted the Episcopal Church's revisionist bishops, saying they were promoting a counterfeit religion, while he lauded the "Connecticut Six" orthodox Episcopal clergy for standing for the "faith once delivered."

Griswold doesn't get it. If the church has no clear moral teaching on sexual behavior, then doing good works with our millions makes us no different from the Lions or Kiwanis Club or, for that matter, a major non-profit agency like World Vision International -- which, incidentally, is more demonstrably Christian than the Episcopal Church.