Texas Hold 'Em

Brother Causticus does not generally track the machinations of the various instruments of the worldwide Anglican Communion due to the volatility of his spleen condition, but he is told something called a Panel of Reference has endorsed the Bishop of Fort Worth’s practice of sending women seeking Holy Orders down the freeway to his brother bishop in Dallas so as to avoid laying hands – in an episcopal manner, BC hastens to add – upon those possessed of a putative call, but lacking the requisite Y chromosome. The thusly benighted are then to contemplate in those somewhat more congenial environs any lingering aspirations to ordained ministry in the western Metroplex and, should they find the flaming evangel still alight, make the return trip down the interstate where they will be welcomed in manner consonant with the local understanding of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. This car-clogged thirty miles is said to be one of the loneliest stretches of road in North America.

In predictable fashion, reaction to the report ranged from hailing it as a magisterial verity to dismissing it as another bit of eccentric transatlantic dithering, depending upon the particular bent the reader – or, as is typical in the blogosphere, readers of readers of those who read – was previously inclined. This postocracy of one hundred or so souls fired their pro forma salvos, then returned to bickering about whether their opponents are apostates or merely heretics.

In such a burst of by-the-numbers outrage, the “hate Kate” consortium – for whom anything other than text messaging Bishop Duncan “just kidding! keys 2 815 under mat lol” would be an inadequate response - excoriated the manner of the Presiding Bishop’s accession to the invitation of the panel to comment favorably upon this arrangement and assure the Christians of Fort Worth they will not have foisted upon them a bishop engaged in practices consistent with the canonically expressed will of the other 98% of Episcopalians.

While no doubt sublimating thoughts akin to those of a rabbi drafted to deliver an rousing keynote to a pork packers convention, the Presiding Bishop averred that, yes, the “Dallas Plan” was a plan that had been put in place and, yes, it was indeed a plan that had been executed exactly as planned, and, what can one say, but…there it is: a plan. And it will continue to be one, as planned.

Anglican authority thus exercised, tea followed.

Though admittedly the Presiding Bishop’s statement did not ring with the same conviction as her conflation of the Millennium Development Goals and the Great Commission, BC urges his readers inclined find fault to agree, in a spirit of Christian charity, it was certainly at least on par with the Presiding Bishop’s public endorsements of Jesus Christ and move on to more pressing topics such as the seating chart for next month’s Primates Meeting in Tanzania.

Brother Causticus will, in the meantime, occupy himself around his home parish of St. Euphemesius-By-The-Freeway with his usual tasks: stacking hymnals, sweeping floors, dusting the credence table. And replacing light bulbs. The church seems to have grown very dark of late.