I've just gone back and re-read the whole thread on this. Things really started to fall apart when I said
If you say that he can't be a bishop, you're a Donatist; the worst that can be said is that he shouldn't be a bishop.
Please understand that it's hard for me to keep up with the traffic on many of these topics. When there are six-plus people replying to me, if I reply even to a large fraction of them the tendency is for traffic to grow exponentially. Trying to craft a thoughtful reply takes time which I do not always have.
In retrospect, it was a mistake to say this (whether or not it reflects my views). I could have said things better. At the same time, the whole "Well, that just about wraps it up for Anglicanism" attitude was getting to me in a big way. The thread was started by someone Orthodox publicizing the Episcopal Church's troubles. It's not the only example of this; a lot of the "Christian News" threads start this way. And so do other threads. A lot of them come and go fairly quickly because there is nobody to take up the cause of whoever is being discussed. In this case there was.
I'm hearing a subtext of "well, those Anglican bishops are all scandalous heretics anyway, and those Messianic Jews are all just goofy heretics, but we in the One True Church don't have to worry about any of this because we are pure." I'll bet a lot of Roman Catholics thought that too, two years ago, and now they are faced with a torrent of scandal against which Robinson's potential consecration is a drop in the bucket. Maybe ten is the wrong multiplier, but surely there are Orthodox bishops out there who are doing in their own small, quotidian way the same sort of damage that the prospect of Robinson is doing on a larger scale. I've heard stories of Iakovos' behavior, for example, and they are quite appalling. And it's pretty likely that nothing is going to be done about them because nobody can slap an epithet like "sodomite!" on them. But they drive people away from the church too.
This is not an attack on Orthodoxy. Every church faces the same issue.
I don't think that people appreciate the one crucial sense in which Robinson's potential consecration is irrelevant. Ordination of women didn't destroy the Episcopal Church, and from a polity perspective it is a far more difficult problem. Problems which don't show up in one's home parish simply don't register on a lot of people. We in this forum are (for the most part) people who care to watch for these things; those who just go to church and commune and pray may not even see them. But priests who are indifferent, bishops who are rude, monks who give legalistic or facile advice-- these register on everyone. People leave to get away from them. Jane Dixon sent a number of people to my current parish, not because she was a woman, but because at times she was an indifferent pastor. It seems to me that these are far more serious stumbling blocks and that far more people are lost to The Church through these. That's why I'm more worried about things like "inclusive language" liturgy. The latter has the potential to put most people in the position of not being able to pray the words of the prayer book-- or worse, praying them when they are seriously wrong. A bishop in N.H. doesn't have the same direct effect on me, in the end.
I don't want to keep belaboring this. I just want people to realize that the sense of immunity that apparently some people have, because they are Orthodox, is dangerous.
