Spirit
Episcopalians choose woman to lead
From Neela Banerjee of The New York Times comes this ray of hope and specter of controversy:The Episcopal Church elected Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada as its presiding bishop on Sunday, making her the first woman to lead a church in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Bishop Jefferts Schori is a controversial choice by the Episcopalians, not just for her gender (pockets of the Anglican union, of which the Episcopal Church is a part, still reject the ordination of women), but for her support of the ordination of Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who is gay, as bishop of the church's diocese of New Hampshire.
Addressing the controversy surrounding her selection, her eminence offerred this, according to Banerjee, at a press conference:"Alienation is often a function of not knowing another human being," she said at a news conference after her election. "I have good relations with almost all the other bishops, those who agree and those who don't agree with me. I will bend over backwards to build good relations with those who don't agree with me."
Your blogstress still remembers the thrill she experienced when, in 1982, The New York Times Sunday Magazine featured a cover story chronicling the journey of one of the Episcopal Church's first women priests, Rev. Martha Blacklock. The magazine's cover showed the reverend in full vestments, standing in a church.
The rites, rituals and vestments of the Episcopal Church cling so closely to the those of your cybertrix's native Roman Catholic faith that her experience of the photo was visceral; it remains engraved upon her brain. In fact, your écrivaine recalls the longing with which she viewed herself in the foyer mirror of her parents' home in Clark, New Jersey, as she sneakily tried on the cassock and surplice assigned one of her brothers, two of whom served as altar boys at St. Agnes's parish.
The election of Bishop Jefferts Schori brings a lump to the throat of your grateful cyberscribe.
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