Bishop Gene Robinson concelebrates Mass with--double horror--a woman priest.




From the London Sunday Times by Rosie Millard--7-27-2008

Interview: The Rev Gene Robinson
The homosexual US bishop causing uproar in the Church of England is unrepentant

The world’s first openly gay bishop greets me in a small park behind the sports hall at Kent University – although I tell the Rev Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, that we should probably have met down the road at Canterbury cathedral – maybe on the spot where Thomas à Becket was martyred.

He roars with laughter: “I don’t feel like a martyr. But by an accident of history I feel I am somewhat of a symbol.”

Indeed, and to some people a very unwelcome one. The only bishop out of 800 Anglican prelates not to be invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lambeth Conference at Kent University, Robinson decided that he would go anyway.

More than 200 African and Asian bishops are boycotting the conference in protest – not just because they want Robinson to keep away but also because the American bishops who consecrated him are attending. Clearly, even breathing the same air as a bishop who may once have shaken hands with a gay bishop is offensive to some people.

The arrival of Robinson has not so much spoilt the party as driven a noisy pantechnicon right through it. Everything else on the agenda has been kicked into second place: whether or not the Anglican church can tolerate gay clergy is practically the only thing anyone has wanted to talk about since the holy beanfeast – held only once a decade – began last week. And Robinson – small, trim and dapper in a purple ecclesiastical shirt – has been the nonguest that everyone (bar the bishops) has wanted to buttonhole.

“It’s a pity I chose this week to give up smoking,” he says, puffing gratefully on a Marlboro. I don’t think that even he had forecast what it would be like to be the target of venom from a global assortment of prelates (the Archbishop of Nigeria described gays as lower than dogs; the Archbishop of Kenya said “the devil has clearly entered the church”).

{Wow what lovely Christian statements. One wonders who needs the muzzle.}

Was the American bishop right to turn up? Surely arriving uninvited and then holding an open-air service last week for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual Anglicans outside the cathedral – just as the Archbishop of Canterbury was inside, saying, “Unity in diversity is the cherished Anglican tradition” – was a touch provocative? Even childish, some might say.

“I took a vow, as did all bishops, to participate in the councils of the church,” says Robinson. “I am only fulfilling my vow.” What about the vows of the 230 boycotting bishops? Haven’t you ruined the conference for them? “I can’t control their choices,” he says. “They were the ones who demanded I not be included at the table and the Archbishop of Canterbury acceded to their requests – and lo and behold that’s not enough. Even the bishops who consecrated me are found to be offensive.

“And my guess is that if the archbishop had not invited the entire American church, these [protesting] bishops still wouldn’t be here. Bullies never get enough.” {I agree. Maintaining Anglican unity is not their real agenda. Bishop Robinson is just the perfect storm around which to work out their own agenda.}

Is Rowan Williams, leader of the global Anglican community, really being bullied? “I believe so. I think most of the world perceives that as bullying.”
What do you think of Williams’s leader-ship? “He is in an almost impossible job. And I think that in giving in to some of the demands made on him, matters have got worse. Nothing short of total victory will satisfy them and I wonder when he is going to learn that.”

Robinson, 61, says he always knew that he was gay: “From the age of 13 I learnt to censor every word I was going to say – gay people do this all the time.” Yet he was married to a woman for 13 years, trying what he calls the “white-knuckle” method of suppressing his true sexuality.
“I grew up at a time when there were no role models: to be gay or lesbian was to be a failure. Oh, I shared the fact that I was attracted to men within two weeks of meeting [my ex-wife] Isabella. All of my real romantic relations previous to her had been with men. I felt ready for a relationship with her, but I was still unsure about marriage. Isabella assured me we’d deal with it together. And we did, 13 years later.”

By this time they had two daughters: Jamie, then 8, and Ella, 4. After Robinson read Jamie a gay children’s book about two men living together, she said: “I hope you find a boyfriend, daddy.” After the divorce, Isabella remarried and Robinson met his companion, Mark Andrew. There appear to have been few problems, if any: his daughters have loved having “three dads”, according to the bishop, and they happily spent every weekend with him and Andrew.

It seems, too, that even the most strait-laced of New England matrons in his New Hampshire diocese have taken him to their generous bosoms. He and Andrew celebrated their civil union in his own church just six weeks ago before an approving congregation. With that sort of grassroots assurance, it’s not difficult to see why Robinson feels that he can walk the Kent campus with confidence. Young people, particularly, seem to warm to him. “I have rarely met a person under 30 who can understand what all of this is about,” he says. “They all have gay and lesbian friends. It’s no big deal – and the fuss makes the church look hopelessly irrelevant.”

It certainly makes the Church of England’s famous reputation for tolerance seem rather weedy. While New Hampshire Anglicans have apparently celebrated their bishop’s civil union without turning a hair, the Church of England is still nervous of appearing to support the ordination of any homosexual. Robinson has been allowed to meet Williams only once – about three years ago. By comparison, he has had three one-on-one meetings with Barack Obama, the US presidential candidate.

“I had long wanted a meeting with the archbishop, but he was very unwilling to meet me,” says Robinson. In the end the meeting was so cloaked in secrecy that he was not even told the venue until almost the last minute.

Are we more prejudiced over here? “I would say you are just as far along this issue as we are, only you won’t admit it,” he says. “You have so many gay clergy, gay partnered clergy, gay couples who are both clergy. The bishops know it. Their congregations know it. But can you get anyone to talk about it? Oh no. I think it’s a hold-over from Victorian times.”

Irrelevant, out of touch with society, blinkered . . . no description could be more damaging for a church with a falling roll call that is signally failing to attract new generations. Robinson says Williams knows this. It’s also one of the reasons why he is happy to be a thorn in the side of Anglicanism: “I am simply not willing to let these guys meet without being reminded that in every single one of their churches, no matter what country it is in, they all have gay and lesbian people.”

Perhaps this is just what the Anglican church needs: a natural self-publicist who is equally comfortable hobnobbing with the likes of Sir Ian McKellan, the gay actor, as he is talking about the scriptures. Robinson seems happy to accept the mantle of missionary: “I think the American compulsion to talk about everything openly is a great strength – and a weakness. We appear unnecessarily brash, but I love that about us. I feel called to be as open as I can be about my life so that young lesbians and gay men will understand that they can have wonderful relationships, be mothers and fathers and [achieve] real distinction for themselves in their careers.

“Does anyone think that if I were hit by one of your marvellous double-decker buses this issue is going to go away? That’s what’s so remarkable about the Archbishop of Sudan’s statement this week that, if I resigned, the church would go back to being the way it was.”

He laughs: “There are faithful gay and lesbian people all over this church who are ready to serve as bishops. And if I dropped off the face of this earth tomorrow, that isn’t going to stop.”

Conforming somewhat to a certain archetype, Robinson loves cooking, keeps an immaculate house with Andrew, talks openly about having been tested for HIV and has masses of female friends who talk to him about their problems. But he is also a man of the church, who speaks about having his life saved by the Bible. He clearly has a profound faith: at dawn each day this week he has gone to a Canterbury monastery to pray with Franciscan monks.

Okay. So, if you believe the Bible is God’s word, what about all that stuff in the scriptures that forbids same-sex unions? “The scriptures were written in patriachal times,” he says, “times of slavery, times of polygamy. And when you go for a literalist reading you run into trouble. Women wear hats in church, for example, because St Paul said you should keep your head covered. And your mouth shut, by the way.

“We are arguing about scripture itself and not the God to whom it points. I have to wonder, as young men are knifing each other all over London and when more than a billion people try to exist on less than $1 a day, why the church is tearing itself apart over the issue of sexuality. It is such a waste of our time and energy.”

{You aren't the only one Bishop. Maybe it's because arguing about sex is a whole lot cheaper than trying to do something about unequal distribution of wealth.}

Doesn’t he worry that his presence could goad the boycotting bishops into doing something permanently destructive? There have already been murmurings about a “wounded” church. Isn’t he simply rubbing salt into the schism? “If someone chooses to feel wounded, that’s their responsibility,” he says. “I’m not attempting to storm into the pulpit and rip the microphone from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hands.”

No, but neither is he going to go quietly. Robinson has been making the most of his outsider status in Canterbury, holding “open nights” in which he hopes to convert waverers. The next “Conversation with Bishop Gene Robinson” is on Wednesday night. It’s a fringe event and on the fringe is precisely where he wants to be, subtly indicating that his camp is where true Christianity lies.

“Jesus spent the majority of his time with people on the margins and might well have been more interested in those on the fringes, those who have been excluded,” he says. So he’s even got Jesus backing him.

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The only thing which differentiates Gene Robinson from the thousands of other gay Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy is he is TRUTHFUL, HONEST and OPEN about it. Apparently to be accepted as a true Christian he is supposed to DECEPTIVE, DISHONEST, and CLOSETED.

The USCCB even gives this as pastoral advice to their gay members. They more or less state you are welcome to be with us at the table if you are celibate and in the closet. Celibate is not enough, you must also be 'discrete' which I read as deceptive. SWhould fellow parishioners ask you about your single dating status be very deceptive, don't make an issue of your orientation.

Where in the Gospels does Jesus tell us we must be deceptive, dishonest, and closeted about the truth of ourselves in order to follow Him? I've looked and failed to find it. However, with the issue of homosexuality that has been the long standing traditional advice. I have never understood what makes homosexuality the sins of sins. It's obviously not that big a deal to the younger generations, who don't seem to be able to fathom it's unique sinfulness anymore than I do.

They, just like me, read the doom and gloom message given by the righteous right about the drawbacks of this 'disordered lifestyle' and see right beyond the message to the fact that most of the drawbacks are the result of attempting to live your truth in a culture that refuses to deal with the existence of that truth. This is the cultural world espoused by Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola who considers gays worse than dogs and the spawn of Satan, and Benedict XVI who has decided the gay 'lifestyle' is the biggest threat to world peace. These are pretty stressful descriptors for a young gay person to hear. Stressors which will most certainly impact the length of their lives, and in too many cases lead them to deal with their orientation by ending their lives---their celibate lives.

Even using the term 'lifestyle' implies homosexuality is willfully chosen rather than an ontological fact of life which must be accepted as a personal truth. Like heterosexuality, only when gayness is accepted as a fact of one's life, can any meaningful decision be made about how to express that truth. Unfortunately the major religious institutions do everything they can to make that acceptance as difficult as possible. Is Bishop Gene correct when he says it's the last vestiges of Victorian sexual sensibilities? That it's a sort of game we all play with ourselves, knowing full well the truth is far different from the deception we choose to participate in?

The problem is it's the will full participation in the deception which undercuts the message of Christ and the credibility of ecclesiastical teaching, not homosexuality itself. In other words the real sin is the games played around homosexuality, especially the games played by closeted gay clergy. Bishop Gene Robinson must be especially threatening to them. It's too bad, because his real message is exactly the opposite. If you live openly and honestly your people will accept you for who you are and get on with their lives. They can't, if you won't.

I treasure the courage of Bishop Gene Robinson and his choice to be present at Lambeth. If his walking honestly around the edges of this conference inspires just one more bishop to come out with their truth, it's one more light shining in the trumped up wilderness surrounding homosexuality and Christianity.

When I look at Bishop Gene, I see Fr. Mykal Judge, and I hope Fr. Mykal is giving Bishop Gene an additional boost of courage. It grieves me that a man like Fr. Judge, who was very much Christ personified to his diverse flock, has become something of a conundrum because it's now common knowledge he was gay. It doesn't even seem to matter that he was celibate. Somehow the very fact he refused to live his gay truth deceptively has cast stain on his candidacy for sainthood.

This is happening at the same time the Church has decided to dig up Cardinal Newman and separate him from the love of his life---the man Cardinal Newman stated unequivocally he wished to be buried with. Cardinal Newman was also celibate, but also capable of loving a man very deeply. Deeply enough that he compared his grief at the death of Fr. St. John, to that of husband who loses his spouse.

The deception being played out here is that Cardinal Newman's love for Fr. St John is being spun as the love between two friends. In this scenario the Church isn't really separating two people who really profoundly loved each other like a husband and a wife. The married metaphor, which Cardinal Newman used himself for their love, implies sexual expression. Can't have that kind of association with a candidate for sainthood whose candidacy is seemingly being used as an invitation to invite Anglicans who have issues with women clergy. I wonder what Cardinal Newman would have to say about being separated from Fr. St. John so he can be used to entice Anglicans who don't like the idea of women clergy.

It all gets so complicated it makes my head spin. It could all change with one simple understanding. Homosexuality is about the same exact kind of love that heterosexuality is about. It's not about the sexual activity anymore than heterosexuality. It's about the love one has for another person. Cardinal Newman thought of the love he had for Fr. St John in the only way he could have, that of a deeply married couple, because that's exactly what it was. It doesn't mean their love had to have a sexual expression even though they lived together in the same house for years. Why is it so difficult to accept that two people of the same sex can love each other exactly as two people of the opposite sex?---or for that matter, as irresponsibly and selfishly.

Do heterosexual Christians really need to single out gays as scapegoats for their own sexual hangups and their own sexual sins? If so, they've never accepted their own sexual truth and maybe this is the real issue.