Harold Meyerson looks at the breakup of the Episcopal Church and gets it completely wrong:
Don’t look now, but Virginia is seceding again.
On Sunday nine Episcopal parishes in Virginia, including the one where George Washington served as a vestryman, announced that they had voted to up and leave the U.S. Episcopal Church to protest its increasingly equal treatment of homosexuals.
In 2003 an overwhelming majority of the nation’s Episcopal bishops ratified the selection of a gay bishop by the New Hampshire diocese. This past June the church’s general convention elevated Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to the post of presiding U.S. bishop. Jefferts Schori is the first woman to head a national branch of the Anglican Church. Worse yet, she has allowed the blessing of same-sex couples within her diocese (which includes the ever theologically innovative Las Vegas).
Whether it was the thought of a woman presiding over God’s own country club or of gays snuggling under its eaves, it was all too much for a distinct minority of Episcopalians. The dissident parishes in the Virginia diocese contain only about 5 percent of the state’s parishioners. But it’s the church the defectors have latched on to that makes this schism news.
Does Meyerson not believe in freedom of conscience ? Does he not for a second consider the fact that, just maybe, the members of these breakaway churches truly believe that the American Episcopal Church has strayed what they think is the truth faith ? And, in the end isn’t it their right to do what they want ?
Of course, Meyerson doesn’t just limit his animosity to traditionalist Anglicans, he also takes aim at Catholics:
The alliance of the Fairfax Phobics with Archbishop Restaurant Monitor is just the latest chapter in the global revolt against modernity and equality and, more specifically, in the formation of the Orthodox International. The OI unites frequently fundamentalist believers of often opposed faiths in common fear and loathing of challenges to ancient tribal norms. It has featured such moving tableaus as the coming together in the spring of 2005 of Israel’s chief rabbis, the deputy mufti of Jerusalem, and leaders of Catholic and Armenian churches, burying ancient enmities to jointly condemn a gay pride festival. The OI’s founding father was none other than Pope John Paul II, who spent much time and energy endeavoring to reconcile various orthodox Christian religions and whose ecumenism prompted him to warn the Anglicans not to ordain gay priests.
John Paul also sought to build his church in nations of the developing world where traditional morality and bigotry, most especially on matters sexual, were in greater supply than in secular Europe and the increasingly egalitarian United States, and more in sync with the Catholic Church’s inimitable backwardness. Now America’s schismatic Episcopalians are following in his footsteps — traditionalists of the two great Western hierarchical Christian churches searching the globe for sufficiently benighted bishops.
I don’t count myself among the world’s most perfect, or even most devout, Catholics. But there are few persons in my lifetime that I have as much respect for as Pope John Paul II. Meyerson’s characterization? of him is not only insulting, but deeply flawed and reflects an inherent misunderstanding of Catholic belief.
[...] I’m not sure why Doug at Below the Beltway thinks that Harold Meyerson gets it completely wrong in this op-ed. The churches that have voted to separate from the Episcopal Church, USA are opposed to equality for GLBT people in the church; they are opposed to women having leadership positions in the church; they are aligning themselves with the fundamentalist presiding Nigerian archbishop, Peter Akinola; and they do represent a distinct minority. These things are all factually accurate. [...]