Father Alagna really lays out the current state of affairs in The Episcopal Church and our relationship with the Anglican Communion. Like her or hate her, our Primate, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori really put TEC in a pickle. She went over there and signed off on things that our denomination has NEVER agreed to. She didn't take the time to take a deep breath before signing that blasted Communique, and say, "I need to take these issues up with the House of Bishops and House of Deputies back home. Our church functions as a democracy and I cannot in good conscience sign this document without the approval of The Episcopal Church." And now we face the consequences for that decision. Read what Father Alagna has to say about it...a great read.
The following letter by Dr. Frank Alagna, a priest of the Diocese of
New York who lives in Hong Kong, was sent to the Presiding Bishop. It
is posted with his permission.
The Reverend Frank J. Alagna, Ph.D.
Hong Kong, PRC March 1, 2007
The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop
New York City, NY 10017
Dear Bishop Katharine,
As I read and ponder your post “primates summit” comments and
reflections, I am deeply disappointed, rather discouraged and, to be
perfectly honest, genuinely outraged. I believe that not to be
outraged would be tantamount to being unconscious. Your words convey a
not so subtle agenda and appear rather manipulative toward its
execution. Using church speak and religious rhetoric, it clearly
seems to be your intention, if you could have it your way, to deliver
the Episcopal Church and gay and lesbian people into punishing hands.
In recent years, the British press and public have seen fit to
caricature Tony Blair as a “lap dog” of the American president. He
has transparently colluded in our administration’s distortions and
thereby devolved into being perceived and judged a failed leader.
As with a British Prime Minister so, I guess, it can be with an
American Presiding Bishop.
You went to Dar es Salaam as Primate of the Episcopal Church. You
carried the dignity and integrity of our church in your person. We
sent you because we had perceived you to have the strength of
character, the intellectual acumen, and the prophetic courage to hold
“our own” at this meeting. Only a fool would have imagined that you
could have possibly made some headway given what you were facing. But
you could have simply stood your ground, drawn your own line in the
sand relative to respectful boundaries, and walked away with your
grace and our dignity intact. Sadly, it seems, you have returned
home appearing to be, dare I say, a lap dog of the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the other Anglican Primates.
How could you have ever agreed to carry back an ultimatum to be
responded to in six months when you know full well that our convention
(the only organ in our polity with jurisdiction to respond to such a
communiqué) does not meet again for two years? A simple, “As much as
I would like to promise you guys an answer in six months, we don’t
work that way”, it seems to me, should have sufficed. Or possibly,
“Mail your ultimatum to us in two years and we will make it our
convention’s first order of business.”
But why should the primates respect our process when some of them,
with the apparent indulgence of others among them, have yet to learn a
basic respect for the dignity of the human person, not to mention a
respect for the integrity of a sister church’s polity and boundaries?
Apparently you did accept the ultimatum and its deadline because you
seems to think “that the House of Bishops,” flying solo, “can answer
the demands made by the primates”. Hello! When were they given
this jurisdiction?
On another note, what would ever lead you to believe that you can have
it both ways, as your recent comments would have us understand. That
you can maintain communion with churches who reject the human rights
and sacramental dignity of the gay and lesbian members: lay, priestly
and episcopal of our church, and at the same time maintain communion
with these very members and all those Episcopalians who share a bond
of affection with them? Ecclesially, how can you propose to maintain
communion with churches who do not respect the canonical boundaries of
our church and, at the same time maintain the integrity of our
Episcopal household of faith?
And please spare me your “ache for the pain that this communiqué is
causing to people in our own church who see issues of justice as
absolutely central”.
First, this is not about you, Katharine. Your “ache” is of little
import. Such shallow empathy mocks and trivializes the excruciating
experience with which persons of same gender affection have lived for
millennia. If you really want to partner with us in the pain that
you ask us to continue to accept, then, I suggest you add to the
ultimatum a moratorium on any future consecrations of women.
Partner with us in the personal and eccesial impact of discrimination,
and show us by example how to step back into the pit from which we
escaped in 2003. I learned long ago never ask others to do what you
are not prepared do yourself.
Second, this is not about issues of justice and inclusion as opposed
to the maintenance of a traditional ethic of human sexuality. To pose
it in this way or to accept its being posed in this fashion is neither
the deepest, nor the most honest , and certainly not the most useful
statement of the conflict.
Can it really be “a choice between the requirements of justice and
inclusion, on the one hand, and fidelity to a strict understanding of
the biblical tradition and to the main stream of the ethical
tradition, on the other?”
(By way of parenthesis, it should be noted, and noted as often as
necessary, that a commitment to the requirements of justice and
inclusion represent no less a strict understanding of the biblical
tradition and the main stream of its ethical tradition. Justice is,
in fact, the overarching ethic of the Judeo-Christian tradition. We
are biblically taught, and similarly schooled by the best of the
church’s tradition, that there is no love without justice, there is no
peace without justice, and there can be no real union or communion
without justice. The fact that Jesus had much to say about justice
and inclusion and was relatively silent about sexuality should always
give us pause as we presume to articulate the gospel’s
non-negotiables.)
Returning to the argument, I find it hard to believe that the Spirit
would ever lead the Church to such an impossible choice. I think we
do a disservice to Her movement among us by allowing it to be
articulated in such a fashion. Any articulation that would have the
Spirit appear to be doing so, must be rejected as outside of our
understanding of a loving God. That we can cast it as such, is
undeniable. That the Spirit would have us do this, is unthinkable.
Some, even the majority, would like to have it posed in this way and
if we continue to allow them to do this, we collude in not identifying
the real polarity that is at issue in this controversy.
Conservatives across denominations will always try to lay primary
claim to authentic, traditional faith. We, daily, see ample evidence
of this penchant of the religious right to co-opt the rhetoric of
faith, while failing to grasp its heart, and to make this preemptive
claim so as to discredit those who believe other than they. The end
result of this usurpation is to parade before the eyes of the thinking
world, a church that is rendered an object of incredulity rather than
a sacrament that invites faith.
Yes, I agree, Bishop, the world, at its best, has moved beyond
intolerance, beyond the acceptability of “hate talk” and beyond
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The future does belong to acceptance, inclusion and celebration. Faithfully and
courageously, the Episcopal Church has embraced, in recent years, a
series of resolutions that resonate with both the best instincts in
the human community and the most faithful reading of our scriptures
and most faithful understanding of our evolving tradition. I, for
one, want the Episcopal Church to continue to be on the forefront of
proclaiming the good news of God’’s all-inclusive love and never to be
perceived by a more hesitant world or church to be retreating from
this proclamation.
I propose rather that the polarity be expressed as being between
faithfulness to an enlightened (by science and human experience)
understanding of the gospel (one that recognizes that justice and
faithfulness are handmaidens to each other - never to be posed as
opponents) and “sham” fidelity, representing not so much faithfulness
to the best traditions of faith, as mindless adherence to a calcified,
literal reading of the scriptures and an equally calcified
articulation of the tradition.
The choice is between fidelity to the Spirit Who, by Her promise, is
always leading us into a deeper understanding, apprehension and
articulation of the truth and a rigidity of mind and hardness of heart
that serves only to confirm us in our unquestioned projections and
biased assumptions. The later leaves the Spirit little room to lead
in the ongoing unfolding of the Mystery of God.
It seems that no matter how much experience we have of the goodness
and grace-filledness of openness, movement and change, each invitation
is always met with the same hackneyed resistance, on the part of those
with an infantile or pathological need to lock God in their time
limited expressions and idiosyncratic experiences.
As a priest, who happens to be gay, I am beginning to feel very untrusting
of you. I am not interested in hearing, “Suck it up for the
sake of the unity of the communion.” That’s history. Been there.
Done that. Gay people do not want to be merely listened to any more.
We want to be heard. And you need to hear, that offering our lives,
our dignity, our integrity, our very flesh as a sacrifice on the altar
of ignorance and hate is no longer an option. I have served the
church for 35 years. Surrender to this unconscionable ultimatum and
I am inclined to walk. And I do not believe that I will be alone in
walking away.
You need to consider that if you would end our conflict with the
primates by acceding to their demands, you run the serious risk of
engendering far greater conflict within our own church.
If you think we have a few problems with a few conservative
dioceses and parishes, wait until you see the fall out from any
capitulation to Dar es Salaam. Akinola does not support the
National Church. A host of gay and lesbian people do.
Yes, no part of the body can say to another part, “We have no need of
you.” But you seem to have made your application of this scripture
to the present situation somewhat backward. It is not we who are
giving disowning ultimatums to our sister churches of the Anglican
communion, rather it is certain of these churches who are saying to
the Episcopal Church, “We have no need of you.” We have literally
been bending over backward to stay at the table with them. The last
convention saw us take an ill conceived and odious action for the very
purpose of keeping the conversation going.
Have you forgotten that the House of Deputies twice turned down that
highly problematic resolution? Have you forgotten that the former
Presiding Bishop Frank Griswald, with you at his side, had to plead
with the Deputies to accede, against their best instincts and judgment
to your request that this discriminatory resolution be passed? The
“compelling” reason given was that you would thereby be able to
attend the Primates meeting. Given what happened at that meeting -
some might say that it would have been better if you had not gone.
That questionable resolution was presented as temporary and non
binding. You journeyed to Dar es Salaam and returned with some clear
and apparent conviction that the resolution should be made permanent
and binding for the sake of being able to keep the conversation going.
And now, the mythical terminus ad quem, is until certain of the
churches in the Anglican communion can integrate “reason” into their
theologizing. Well, I was always taught that reason was already one
of the foundational sources of authentic Anglican theology. Maybe
some of those Primates are not as Anglican as they would like to have
us all believe?“
The “container”, as you call it. “in which the Anglican Communion can
continue to discuss issues that many Anglicans would rather avoid.” is
nothing less than a prison for gay and lesbian people. Should we make
sure that you take at least one of us, as a bauble in a cage, to any
future meetings of the communion you will attend to make sure we are
kept as an issue to be discussed? I, for one, have little interest in
continuing to be discussed as an issue. That in itself is
objectifying, depersonalizing and grossly disrespectful.
I am tired of having straight people discuss us as if they were the
experts in healthy sexual living who play with a full moral deck,
especially when they are prepared to allow “low points” like the one
to which you made reference, ”when one primate equated homosexuality
with pedophilia and another said he couldn’t see why the Anglican
Communion should study homosexuality if it doesn’t need to study
murder”. When will a disavowal of hate speech be made a litmus test
for membership in the Anglican Communion? I would suggest that an
even lower point was reached at this recent meeting, when the
remaining primates revealed themselves to be tolerant of the
expression of such hate inflaming and ignorant talk. If such would
be the tenor of the desired ongoing conversation, then let it end
yesterday.
It seems once again that while the Episcopal Church is being called to
Anglican orthodoxy, other churches in this communion are free to do
whatever they please, e.g., cross jurisdictions; be as noncompliant to
certain Lambeth resolutions as they choose, e.g., supporting laws that
violate the human and civil rights of persons of same gender
affection; and be as un-Anglican as suits them, e.g., theologize
without the support of reason.
Contrary to your advice, this is not a time to be quiet. The
physical, psychological and spiritual well being of gay and lesbian
persons is back on the chopping block. Again, I say, this is not a
time to be quiet. This is a time to speak out as loudly as we can
that we will not tolerate renewed discrimination in our church. No,
Rosa Parks will not give up her seat because some believe she should.
No, Katherine will not resign as Presiding Bishop because some
churches do not recognize the validity of her ministry even as a
priest, much less as a bishop. No. Gene Robinson will not be
relegated to the ecclesialical dust bin because some object to his
manner of life.
While the Anglican communion has its merits and while it would
certainly be a noble idea to sustain it for whatever its value in
advancing the priorities of the Kingdom of God, must we not face the
hard facts that most Episcopalians do not live their lives with much
reference to it. Gracefully and gratefully, most Episcopalians live
their lives with far more reference to personal dignity and communal
integrity.
Despite your denial, “We’re being asked to pause in the journey. We
are not being asked to go back,” you seem to be prepared to have the
Episcopal Church, in fact, go backward for the sake of having what,
another maybe 20, 50, or 100 years to do remedial sex education?
But really I do not hear anyone asking for what you would have us
position ourselves to offer. If your presence and participation in
the primates meeting changed any hearts and minds, it certainly was
not obvious in their communiqué. The conversation seems always one
sided. Despite all the talk of a listening process, I don’t hear
much mutual listening going on. I hear rather, “You, North Americans
listen to us and you had better do what we tell you to do - or else
there will be severe consequences”. I have yet to see the” advantage
of our being at the table” where their “views” are in fact not allowed
to be challenged and where capitulation is demanded of us.
In July I came to live in Hong Kong when my partner of twenty-five
years was hired as the Artistic Director of the HK Ballet. Shortly
after my arrival I sent a letter, with my credentials from the Bishop
of New York, to Archbishop Peter Kwong. I requested a meeting
expressing a desire to put my ministry at his service and the service
of the diocese. He did not extend me the courtesy of a meeting.
Rather, simply because I was an American, (he had no knowledge that I
was gay), he wrote in a two sentence reply, that due of the crisis in
the Anglican Communion he could not accept my generous offer of
service. As he did not appear to demonstrate much interest in simple
courtesy toward a visiting priest, I have no reason to believe that he
has any interest in conversation.
For the most part the leaders of the sister churches who are prepared
to reject us, have indicated no interest in hearing about how we came
to the point of joyfully consecrating a priest, who happened to be
gay, as one of our bishops. They have no interest in hearing that it
was not some impulsive act on our part, but rather the fruit of
listening over many years to the faith stories of gay and lesbian
believers and allowing our church to be a safe place for conversation
and sharing life. They have no interest in hearing that we cannot
treat it as a mistake to be apologized for, without denying our lived
experience and without engendering an irreparable breach of trust. Do
you really believe that Akinola and company want to hear about the
experiences of gay and lesbian people? Get real, Bishop. Akinola
would rather see us put to death or at least thrown into prison.
What did they slip into your cocktails in Tanzania? You left clear in
your thinking and have returned to us rather fuzzy in your logic.
You say that you want to ensure that the conversation about the
inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church continues in the
Communion. Why must we be in communion to continue to talk? We are
neither in communion with the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox
and we talk to them, as well as to many others with whom we are not in
communion. As a matter of fact, it is often true, that more
effective communication can happen when needed boundaries are drawn
and respected.
With regard to a primatial vicar - this is another ill conceived
attempt at a solution to an admittedly difficult problem. It is a bad
dea. It is theologically unsound. Alternative episcopal oversight
hurts the church. It erodes and undermines its unity. There is ample
evidence that it has wreaked havoc in the English Church. And again,
like all else, it is one sided. How about a primatial vicar for
Episcopalians who will not accept the Tanzania ultimatum?
Finally, when will we be done with the pining and hand wringing about
schism? Is it always a bad thing to be avoided at all costs? Schism
has, after all, always been a part of the church’s life. Has it not,
in fact, served certain leaps forward? As Anglicans our own way was
born of schism. Was the reformation a bad thing or a good thing?
Yes at some level all divorces represent a certain failure, but at
another level of processing, in many situations, both interpersonal
and ecclesial, divorce can also be and often is a good and holy thing
by which possibilities are created for new life. I, for one, fear
schism far less than I fear continuing bondage to dead and soul
destroying expressions of so called tradition.
Is it clearly not time for a new reformation? A reformation that
convenes thinking members from across all Christian denominations to
lay claim to a shared identity and faith that distinguishes itself
from mindless expressions of belief and holds up a viable thinking
alternative before the eyes of an increasingly faithless world.
You say that you know where your heart lies and that it is divided.
May I commend for your meditation, a verse from the Beatitudes,
“Blessed are the single hearted for they shall see God.”
May the Lord be gracious to you and give you His peace.
Faithfully in Christ,
The Rev. Frank J. Alagna, Ph.D.
Episcopal Diocese of New York
Resident in Hong Kong
