ORTHODOX RECTOR REBUKES COLORADO BISHOP

By David W. Virtue

COLORADO SPRINGS—An orthodox rector in the Diocese of Colorado challenged Bishop Robert O’Neill this week over a wrist slap he gave to a lesbian priest after she participated in an illicit “blessing” of her relationship with another woman.

The Rev. Don Armstrong of Grace Church and St. Stephen’s in Colorado Springs took issue with the bishop following what he described as an “unsatisfactory meeting” with some 20 other conservative diocesan clergy over the matter.

In a letter to Bishop O’Neill, Armstrong said the blessing of same-sex relationships had no basis in the Prayer Book formularies and defies canonical prohibitions against sex outside of marriage. He went on to say that this “new thing” will never be accepted because it is an aberration, diminishes the church’s witness, and makes it look profoundly sick and silly.

Armstrong also criticized the bishop over the diocesan Task Force set up to examine current divisions in the Diocese, concluding it was on the wrong track by trying to find common ground for continued diocesan life.

Armstrong told the Rev. James Harlan, rector of the Church of the Ascension in Denver and head of the Task Force, that the situation was hopeless given Bishop O’Neill’s commitment to same-gender relationships. “What we need is direction on how to divide the assets, how to give everyone title to their property, because we are certainly not going to live together if these fundamental disagreements are left in place,” he wrote.

“There is no common ground that transcends the kind of thinking process that arrives at same-sex blessings. We are truly divided between those operating from a concern for rights and choices and those holding the faith of the prophets and apostles,” Armstrong wrote.

He then sharply rebuked the revisionist bishop: “I would certainly consider joining with others in a pastoral/spiritual relationship stoppage until such time as we have a commitment from you to uphold Communion teaching in all things, and to maintain Communion membership without equivocation. Your fine-tuning of how Communion authority might be understood is nothing more than a dodge—being too smart by half, putting your personal discernment above subjection to the body.”

“Rob, as I have said many times, we don’t care what you think—we care what the church (defined as the larger Body of Christ—certainly greater than merely ECUSA but no less than the Communion) teaches. You weren’t elected to make personal decisions about either teaching or Communion membership for us, but to uphold and protect both the teaching and membership already given.”

“To even have the reservations you seem to hold—to have such ambiguous answers to some of the questions we asked you yesterday—was in itself distressing. Do you know that the only position you took with any energy was that you would not further discipline Bonnie Spencer (who continues to live in a sexually intimate relationship outside of marriage)?”

“I am discouraged and exhausted after such a dismal meeting with the 20 orthodox rectors. That we now have established—as seemingly irrevocable—a large group of practicing homosexual clergy; that same-sex blessings are occurring with impunity in our diocese; that you merely shrug in a false display of powerlessness at the liberal disobedience is a real sign of spiritual and communal decay.”

“Of course I am not persuaded that what is happening here is anything less than what you want. It is clear to me that your overt ambiguity is merely designed to placate the conservatives while the revisionist agenda moves ahead and becomes firmly entrenched—completing the shift from orthodox to secularist begun by the failed and faithless Winterrowd.”

“Nothing less than repentance will bring healing to the Diocese of Colorado,” said Armstrong. “We will not bargain with ‘the pressures of well-meaning people from the other side.’ There is truth and there is error—and one must simply choose.”

Which will you choose, Rob?

Armstrong said the Diocese of Colorado was in free fall—into a new religion of rights and choices—now rejecting the faith of the prophets and apostles. “Lord Carey was right—we are becoming an American Sect—a religion in which it is no longer Christ who lives, but me, my partner, and whoever will bless us.”