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US Church ordains lesbian bishop Mary Glasspool

Mary Glasspool has been with her partner since 1988
The US Episcopal Church has ordained an openly lesbian bishop in a move likely to increase the turmoil in the Anglican Communion.

Saturday's ordination came despite warnings from the Archbishop of Canterbury that it would deepen an already bitter dispute on sexuality.

Mary Glasspool, 56, became an assistant bishop at a ceremony attended by 3,000 people in Long Beach, California.

Gene Robinson became the first openly gay US bishop in November 2003.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says that since then the Anglican Communion has been on course for a permanent split.

'Snub'

Mary Glasspool was ordained with another woman bishop, Rev Canon Diane Jardine Bruce.

Both were elected last December and become the first two women bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles's 114-year history.

Church spokesman Bob Williams told Associated Press that those attending burst into applause after the ordination.

The election of Mary Glasspool - who has been with her partner Becki for 22 years - represented a snub by the liberal Episcopal Church to other Anglican Churches around the world, our correspondent says.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had urged the American Church not to proceed with the ordination, warning that it would further alienate traditionalists who believe active homosexuality to be a sin.

Our correspondent says the latest ordination is likely to accelerate the gradual marginalisation of the Episcopal Church within a two-tier Communion and increase tensions between Anglicans elsewhere.

Gene Robinson was elected as the first openly US gay bishop in November 2003 in New Hampshire.

The Episcopal Church at first agreed to suspend the creation of gay bishops but reversed that decision last July.

www.bbcnews.com [bbcnews.com]

This will accelerate the return of Traditional Anglicans to Rome through the Pastoral Provision.

I also look for strengthening of the conservative movements within the Anglican Communion, such as the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

I defend all religions' rights to govern themselves and to their property. The Episcopalians have integrity/are being internally consistent.

What strikes me though is the passive-aggressive way they're changing doctrine on this. It would make more sense to me to have their General Convention approve homosexuality rather than play games based on who you promote.

Many 'traditional Anglicans' are Protestants so they believe in a fallible church (like their liberal opponents among the Episcopalians) and that Rome is unbiblical etc. so they won't convert.

Oh, yes, little conservative breakaway churches both recent (the Anglican Church in North America - not actually Anglican as the Episcopalians are America's official Anglican franchise) and of long standing (the Reformed Episcopal Church which I think is now part of ACNA) will see a small uptick.

To be honest, every time one of these horror stories comes out of the Anglican Communion, the constant refrain is "it's gonna make for a huge rupture!"...but the truth is, it almost never does.

Sure, some small groups break away Romeward. And sometimes prominent bishops or priests choose to convert.

But by and large, I think even the people who consider themselves "traditional Anglicans" or "Anglo-Catholic" and who are still within the Anglican Communion just don't care quite enough to actually leave.

Really all of modern-day Anglicanism, from the liberals who want lesbian bishops to the "traditionalists" who constantly threaten but rarely take action, is a complete conundrum to me. I find myself less and less inclined to suffer hearing anything about them at all.

Even the most basic tenets of Christian belief have been so raped and violated in that "ecclesial community" that it's hard to hear any news coming from them without reflexively cringing.

Alexis

Truth is, there aren't enough Episcopalians left to make a huge anything. The disintegration of the Episcopal Church proceeds at a fairly constant rate along several distinct tracks, which events such as the ordination of the first practicing lesbian bishop serving as nothing more than punctuation marks.

Here in Virginia, the largest and one of the wealthiest dioceses in the Episcopal Church, more than a dozen parishes, including six of the largest, richest and most historically significant (e.g., Falls Church parish and Truro parish) have bolted from TEC and been placed under the pastoral care of an African missionary diocese. The Diocese of Virginia is suing to hold onto the ecclesiastical properties, but thanks to an obscure Virginia law dating to Reconstruction, so far the "dissidents" (but how can they be dissidents when they outnumber the "loyal"?) have won every court case.

The diocese is well on its way to bankrupting itself, and even if, in the end, it wins, it will lose, since the membership of these parishes will simply move elsewhere, leaving the diocese with a bunch of white elephants it can neither maintain nor sell (all of disputed churches being on the historic preservation register). It's not like there are tons of Episcopalian missions opening everywhere and looking for places to worship.

As for TAC and ACC and the other Anglo-Catholics, they bolted the Episcopalian ship years ago. Most of their parishes are microscopic, and the various groups are too small individually to form a critical mass unless they join together. But they have a variety of disagreements on obscure points of theology and ecclesiology that keep them apart (or maybe its just the big fish/small pond syndrome), so it is unlikely either that these groups will combine to challenge the Episcopal church or move en masse to the Catholic Church. The Episcopalian mainline will continue to wither slowly, the end delayed only slightly be the small but fairly constant influx of disgruntled Catholics, most of whom have marital irregularities.

This is how their church shall end,
This is how their church shall end,
This is how their church shall end:
Not with a bang, but with a whimper

I agree with Stuart. We wait for the mass exodus and it never happens, no matter what goes on in the Angligan Church. The break away groups also took their child sex abuse allegation with them here in Australia.

The Anglicans are in an odd place... they have a strong dogmatic constitution that they keep subtracting from, a diverse set of ritual praxises (sp? Is that the correct plural, even?) ranging from "Looks like 1950's roman in English" through nearly non-sacramental "full-gospel" approaches...

It's not surprising they are disintegrating.

I've seen some inquiring at St. Nicholas. We've got one attending regularly, tho' his wife is Roman. The ones I've met coming to the Catholic church are in doing so because they believe the Anglican Church has become unbiblical due to women's ordination and/or the acceptance of openly homosexual clergy of both genders. Those same folk are unwilling to go Lutheran for the exact same reasons...

The thing is, the Lutherans are having the same issues as the Anglicans, but because of their synodal system, it's been less divisive so far...

The potential for the Catholics to attract Anglicans by the new system is great... but it needs the initial burst of clergy into the ordinariates...

And a similar system for Lutherans would probably be pretty darned effective as well. (I know of a Lutheran parish that, if able to keep the basic pattern of the LCW adjusted minimally to bring it in line, would have become Catholic right off... three times in 8 years, they voted to do so! Ad Orientam LCW mass... Sadly, the AB had to say no, because of their wishing to retain a basically Lutheran Mass.)

If they come to the Catholic Church it has to be the faith of that Church that attracts them. Otherwise they will stay out at sea and just ride out the latest storm as Protestants awaiting the next crisis.

If I am not mistaken, the first such "bishopess" in the USA was Barbara Harris.

Fr. Serge

Their children, however, would be being indoctrinated with the use of the CCC, and thus be more orthodox than they in many cases.

Not unlike many of the WRO...

I'm sorry, Aramis, but my guess is exposure to the religious education programs in most Latin dioceses will definitely make the children of Anglo-Catholics a lot less orthodox than their parents. That's one of the reasons so many Latin bishops have not been very accommodating to Anglo-Catholic parishes desiring admission under the Anglican Use Dispensation--they tend to be more Catholic than those born into the Church, and take doctrine seriously.

But they won't be exposed to that. That's the point of the ordinariate system: they will be separate from the local dioceses.

Separate in praxis and hierarchy from the Roman bishops, but still nominally of the Roman Rite, but of the Anglican Recension.

I sincerely doubt that the ordinariates will attract more than a handful of traditional Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics, and I sincerely doubt that the system will work as well as some people seem to think. Just as the bishops were able to impede the indult for the Tridentine Mass (and still make it difficult to find one today), so they will manage to impede the ordinariates, which depend upon the local diocese for facilities and other logistic support.

Stuart,

The first wave of this latest movement will certainly be an experiment--something attempted only by the bold and reckless--or by the desperate. The success of this first wave will determine whether the second and subsequent waves will ever happen.

The fact that these are personal ordinariates, however, might be what makes the difference. Pope Benedict appears to be taking this matter out of the hands of the local bishops to some extent, aware of how things went with the "Pastoral Provision" some 20 years ago.

It can be good to have a "healthy skepticism" about matters like this, being careful to evaluate the issues involved when something *sounds* like good news and avoiding the tempation to get naively optimistic as long as the outcome is still uncertain. However, excessive skepticism can bring its own problems ...


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Well, in the United States, TAA has, at most, 2500 members. A lot of my friends and acquaintances either are or were members, and they tell me not very many are interested in becoming Roman Catholics, ordinariates or not. As to whether the bishops will help or hinder, let's just say they never fail to live down to my expectations.

The US is NOT the heart of either the Anglican nor Catholic world.

The Ordinariates being erected as quasi papal right personal ordinariates (with the potential to be fully personal prelature dioceses once they generate some celibate Anglican Recension priests) puts them in an entirely different place from the EF... only for ordination does the local bishop matter at all, and if he's not willing, it's perfectly possible for the ordinary of the ordinariate to go shopping for cooperative bishops, especially since they can grant the needed permissions for even an auxiliary to do so without the axiliary bishop's ordinary's involvement.

(The episcopal conference of the country has to approve their existence, at which point they cease to be subject to local bishops except by membership of the Ordinary in the Episcopal conference.)

For me it looks like the approval or disapproval of the Bishops Conference is irrelevant. Anyway, local ordinaries can cause trouble because of of their power over "facilities and other logistic support", as StuartK said.

One must remember the post-conciliar Church is collegial, and the CDF must be confronted with a real crisis before it will go against the desires of a conference of bishops. And even when they do, the bishops can usually weasel out of compliance.

Fr. Serge:

I take exception to your title for Mary Glasspool. She is not a "bishopess", she is a bishop. Whether you agree or not with what the episcopal church has done, there is no need to demean people. This is as bad as some priests referring to woman priests as "priestess".

God be with you.

Fr. Mike

No, she's not. A bishop must be a man, and unless you know something about Mary Glasspool that you would like to share with the rest of the class, there is no way she can be a bishop.


What word would you use, Father Mike? And before she was elevated, just how would you address the priestess Mary? I always used to address the chaplain at my daughters' Episcopal day school as "Father Meg". No use in pretending that something absurd is not absurd.

On another forum very liberal female clergy have sometimes been referred to as "pastorettes".

Despite current wishful thinking to the contrary, English words often convey gender. The words, "priest" and "priestess" are examples of that. I don't care what the Episcopal church chooses to ordain, but I do care about the English language. I see no point in making it less clear and precise for the sake of political correctness.

So, technically, she'd be a "presbyterix" elevated to the rank of "episcoprix"?

It's threads like this that make me wish Papa Beni would just anathematize "political correctness" as a danger to the faithful...

I couldn't find the word "bishopess" in any online dictionary. Interestingly enough, Google gave Byzcath.org as the second place when I searched for bishopess using it. Looks like a new word was coined here on the forum, organically no less. And who says English isn't evolving!

Congratulations!

Whatever and whomever she is, she is neither a priest or bishop. Period!
Stephanos I

In fact, English is practically unique among languages, insofar as some words do not convey gender. Many languages do not have a neuter gender at all, while others, such as German, use the neuter gender very differently from the way English does.

Furthermore, I am not aware of any other language even attempting to "correct" itself according to a feminist agenda.