Elizabeth Kaeton's question is valid. The response of the Primates has said nothing new, has not taken into account the polity of TEC, has not shown any understanding that there is a major issue of morality being addressed by TEC in the actions of GC2003 nor it has dealt with the issues of violation of pastoral oversight. We are still dealing with those who would impose their cultural understandings upon us. Perhaps in the light of American foreign policy, it might be "turn about is fair play." But it doesn't do anything for healing the breach that the Primates' meeting was supposed to address.
We are no farther along in this debacle than when we went to Gen. Conv. last summer. We hear nothing of the Primates who find this whole fiasco a tempest in a teapot-- an American church issue that needs to be worked out within our own culture and with the tools of American democracy at our disposal.
I was interested when talking to a Primate of a Latin American Church who said that his people saw this whole issue as one more way that the right-wing of the Bush administration was trying to assert its authority. If they could not assert their authority in the politics of their small country, the right-wingers would assert their authority in matters of faith. Sigh! That is one way of looking at the international fear campaign that the Neo-Puritains mount.
I am not shocked with these events. Grieved, yes. But shocked, no. It reminds me of GC1973 when women's ordination was voted down--not by majority but by the way the voting procedure upheld the negative vote. It may be just one of those points where we must be willing to see that 'God works in mysterious ways.' ( I hate that when someone says that to me!) But I also have to recognize how many times in my life that is what happens.
After GC2006 I came away believing that Episcopalians really did support what they have said for the last 30 years that the GLBT community is not only accepted but desired despite the last minute fear that we weren't going to be liked by the ABC. It is clear that TEC is not going to make the Windsor Report the litmus test for being an Episcopalian. The polity just won't support it.
