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	Jefferts Schori Accuses Fleeing Episcopalians Who Want Their Properties of Being Like Child Abusers By David W. Virtue Virtue Online January 27, 2008 http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=7577 The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church believes that Episcopalians who flee the Episcopal Church and want to keep their properties are being like child abusers. Here is what she said; "It would be easier to let U.S. conservatives secede to join another Anglican province without a fight, but I don't think that's a faithful thing to do. Episcopal leaders are stewards of church property and assets, protecting past generations' legacies and passing them on to future Episcopalians. Allowing congregations to walk away with church property condones bad behavior. In a sense, it's related to the old ecclesiastical behavior toward child abuse, when priests essentially looked the other way. Bad behavior must be confronted." So there you have it. Faithful former Episcopalians who simply want to uphold Holy Scripture and the gospel as normative; who eschew pansexual behavior and believe sex should stay within the bonds of heterosexual marriage; who believe that all religions are not equal and who believe that Jesus is uniquely Lord of history, are being shunted to the back of the bus by the Episcopal Church's new religion because some General Convention resolution says so, or we can leave behind the buildings built by those who did believe the faith once delivered, and turn them over to Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori. The first problem with her thesis is that we are not primarily stewards of church property, but stewards of God's grace. We are stewards of a message not a piece of real estate. Nowhere in Scripture are we told that the church is a building or an asset...to the saints who were in Ephesus or Galatia or Philippi it was a call to a people not to a building on the corner of Ephod and Ahab. Secondly, those past generations she talks about were true believers who held to Scripture, used the 1662 or 1928 Book of Common Prayer and believed in such humdrum notions as sin and salvation which, if preached properly, made churches grow. No more. The new religion of inclusivity and diversity, leading to open communion and the watering down of faith and morals to the lowest common denominator; apologizing to Hindu religious leaders for alleged past mistreatment (while they slaughter Christians today in India); allowing Episcopal priests to practice Wiccan on the weekends; or becoming Muslims while remaining an Episcopal priest, is now acceptable. We old believers must simply get on board. Thirdly, the notion that properties must be held for future generations is laughable. There are some 7,000 parishes in The Episcopal Church whose average attendance is less than 70 with the average age of about 66. In little more than a decade, most will close with the Columbaria full. The larger parishes, with hundreds of members, are evangelical. They are the ones that are leaving and want the properties their people built and paid for. And why shouldn't they? Why should they pass their buildings on to a dysfunctional church that has no gospel to proclaim except Millennium Development Goals, unbiblical notions of inclusivity and diversity that saves no one and nothing? As Bishop John-David Schofield said of this kind of action, "The national church has never put a penny into any of them. So it seems like a Johnny come lately, doesn't it? To have the national church come in and say ah, well, now this all belongs to us." Why should godly priests, say in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, turn over millions of dollars worth of properties to a sociopath like Charles E. Bennison (even though he has been inhibited) when, during this reign, he allowed all manner of gross immoralities to be pursued unpunished, where he himself could not affirm basic tenets of the faith when asked to do so and watched while his brother had sexual relations with a minor (she was 14) and thought it was okay! And to top it all off, spend millions of dollars on a piece of property in another state for a handful of young people who would not hear the Good News, if Bennison's life depended on it! So who exactly is performing child abuse? Who is into bad behaviors? It certainly isn't orthodox parish priests and their bishops as Mrs. Jefferts Schori alleges. They want only to faithfully preach the gospel. It is liberal and revisionist bishops, like Charles Bennison, that people flee from, and who believe they have the right to keep what previous generations built, bought and paid for. Finally, Mrs. Jefferts Schori said, under oath in Virginia recently, that she would sooner sell such properties to saloon operators rather than to gospel driven priests, because she doesn't want another Anglican jurisdiction in her back yard. Whether she likes it or not, those jurisdictions are here to stay and there is nothing she can do about it except to whine to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who then delivers a stiff rebuke in the form of a letter to bishops who cross diocesan boundaries, which the orthodox bishops dutifully ignore. If Mrs. Schori wants to confront "bad behavior" in The Episcopal Church, she should look to bishops like Gene Robinson, and those other closet homosexual bishops she says she knows about, who are living in partnered relationships, and toss them out for behaving in a manner unbecoming a priest. Then she should toss out bishops like Jon Bruno who allow and encourage open communion to other non-Christian religious leaders, who deny the unique Lordship of Christ, and who turn a blind eye to sodomite priests, while suing orthodox priests for their properties. It is bad psychology and theology to blame the righteous while letting the unrighteous take a walk. It is immoral to depose righteous bishops and cast them into ecclesiastical outer darkness while defending bishops who no longer (if ever) believed the faith once delivered for all to the saints. Mrs. Jefferts Schori's New World Ecclesiastical Order is built on sand and is slowly being eroded with each new rising tide. The Presiding Bishop says that resolving internal squabbles is part of the church's mission, "because it's about how we live together." Nonsense. That is not part of the church's mission. It is an aspect of the church's dysfunction, nothing more. And the other truth is, we can no longer live together with tens of thousands of Episcopalians telling her that every month as they walk out the door. She's not getting the message, apparently. As things now stand there will be no new generation of Episcopalians. The old order is dying. The last generation is tottering on the edge of the abyss. Columbaria are taking over empty pews, just as all the mainline denominations are slowly withering and dying. When you have no apostolic gospel to proclaim, you forfeit the right to say you are a Christian. Episcopal bishops with ears to hear are fleeing to Rome, the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and the TAC. They have seen the writing on the wall, and they know what it means...the Episcopal Church has been weighed in the balances and found wanting.
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