This Salon article, by a young Episcopal priestess educated at Yale Divinity School, helps fill in the background to the Gene Robinson affair: So A Priest Walks Into A Bar. She’s coy and she tries to be cute, but she presents an attitude rather clearly:
But of course these men don’t want to know if I can have sex within a the confines of matrimony. What they really want to know is whether I can have sex now. And that’s a lot, um, stickier. While young Christians have recently started questioning the theology and practicality of blanket prohibitions on premarital sex, we young clerics are usually bound by traditional mores a lot longer than our lay brothers and sisters. I happen to be a traditionalist on this score (right, what else is she going to say in an article her parishioners might read?), but I would also support any priest who pushed the envelope a bit …
My present strategy, then, is ambiguity … Yet, on second thought, does the church’s current failure to act really have to mean no action for me?
On the view the Reverend Astrid Storm presents the priesthood is like any other job, being a social worker for example, and the authority of current standards, including self-fulfillment as the highest good, is taken for granted. The point is making things as satisfying as possible for everyone involved, just as they are right now. What else is possible on the current therapeutic view that puts everything on the same level and takes the self-defined experience and needs of the individual as fundamental? Once that view is granted, though, a man who leaves his wife and children, the better to “live into” the homosexual lifestyle, truly becomes a prophetic model for us all. Which is what the Episcopalians just decided in Minneapolis.
Wow! The Anglican church or
Wow! The Anglican church or Episcopalian is in real trouble. A *priestess* (whatever that might be) subtely preparing the way to be a bar pick-up hooker. That church is going down the drain really fast, at least in North America. Henry VIII most be really pleased with his creation. A church for the sexually sick. Great thing, isn’t it?
My main revionist priest being
My main revionist priest being out of town on sabbatical, it fell to our young, intelligent, highly dedicated and professional woman assistant minister to receive and respond to my demand to transfer to an AAC parish last Friday. I’m happy to report that her reply was as totally on track and worthy of her calling as all her public statements on these subjects have been over this past summer. There is still some virtue left at Virginia Theological Seminary, despite the obvious problems that are spreading in the Episcopal Church.
Good luck in the AAC.
Good luck in the AAC. Actually, the Reverend Astrid turns out to be a bit of a local girl too. She’s the assistant rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Worthington Ohio, less than a 10-minute walk from where my in-laws live.
Being an Ohio Stater, I
Being an Ohio Stater, I also have ties to Columbus, Ohio. One data point — the Communications Director and webmaster of the Diocese of Southern Ohio, Andy Figueroa, just resigned, as reported in Virtuosity. You may have run into Andy on ECUSA mailing lists in the past.
Regarding “An Episcopalian Speaks out
Regarding “An Episcopalian Speaks out (Sort Of)
The Rev. Astrid Storm is a good friend of mine and a good and dedicated priest. Your comments betray your ignorance about her and her ministry, and you even got your facts screwed up. Her M.Div. is from Yale Divinity School, not Harvard.
Just keep lashing out, we are getting used to it.
My thanks to the Reverend
My thanks to the Reverend Bruce Smith for pointing out errors, which I’ve fixed. “Harvard” is now “Yale,” and the entry no longer speculates about Astrid Storm’s state of mind regarding priesthood and moral theology but limits itself to what she wrote and the overall state of affairs in the liberal wing of the Episcopal Church.