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The Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops churns out pastoral documents every time it meets. They are without fail rich illustrations of the bishops using many words while committing themselves to very little.
60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley’s profile of Bishop Gene Robinson was a good introduction to the man — especially for anyone who has lived in a cave since Robinson’s election last summer. The story touched all the familiar bases: first openly gay bishop elected last June, heated debate at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in August, dissents at Robinson’s consecration in November, pew-level responses ranging from anguish to elation since then.
Christopher Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal had great fun last week in exposing the boilerplate style in two letters by Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. Many paragraphs that first appeared in a letter Griswold wrote to his fellow primates of the Anglican Communion (Aug. 19, 2003) found a new life in his letter to Alexey II, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (Dec. 19, 2003).
