Anyone who thinks that the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. (TEC) elected themselves a crack genius theologian when they elected the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori as its Presiding Bishop last summer need only look no further than her recent comments supporting her attempt to stop Nigerian Anglican bishop Peter Akinkola from coming to Virginia this weekend to ordain Truro Church rector (and outspoken opponent of TEC’s progressive pro-gay agenda) the Rev. Martyn Mimms as a bishop in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), an alternative Anglican movement planted and supported by Akinkola’s Anglican Church of Nigera.

What exactly did the Presiding Bishop say that was so laughable, you might ask? Just this:

“Such action would violate the ancient customs of the church” in terms of the sacrosanct boundaries of individual bishops, the presiding bishop wrote in a letter released yesterday.

Oh really. I wonder, since when did Jefferts Schiori, or, for that matter, any Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop of the past two decades show any concern for the “ancient customs of the church”? Was it:

* In support and protection of an openly gay priest living in a non-celibate, so-called “committed relationship”, with another man upon his election as Bishop of New Hampshire?

* In continuing to protect and support the Rt. Reverend Charles Bennsion, Bishop of Pennsylvania, even after personal correspondence revealed he was aware of his brother John’s sexual abuse of a 14-year old girl while a parish priest in the Diocese of California, and that he was afraid that revealing such a fact would “cost him his job”. This, on top of the fact that Bennison has deliberately set out to destroy the lives of priests and parishes in his own diocese who dare oppose his revisionist, apostate agenda?

* Allowing the election of the Rt. Reverend Barry Beisner as Bishop of Northern California to stand, even though he was already on his third marriage?

* Refusing to condemn the inflammatory, divisive and anti-Christian writings of the former Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, who has written, among other outrageous views, that “…since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So, the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.”

This idea that Jefferts Schiori has anything to say about a fellow Anglican bishop coming onto her territory to ordain someone as bishop in an alternative (and competing) denomination is laughable. The fact is, were TEC more concerned about its own teachings and place in relationship to the traditional teachings of Christianity instead of whoring itself to the pro-gay and lesbian “rights” faction of the Church that openly defies the will and teachings of the Communion it (and Akinkola’s church, for that matter) ascribes to, there would be no Akinkola visit, and no alternative ordinations in a breakaway Anglican movement.

It should come as no surprise, then, that a TEC Diocese of Virginia spokesman issues a statement seething in its dispproval in overt racist tones (my boldings):

“We share the concerns of the presiding bishop,” said diocesan spokesman Patrick Getlein, adding the diocese still refers to the 11 parishes as “occupied by Nigerian Anglicans.”

He might well have just said, ‘the damned darkies are overrunning the plantation!’ You see, it’s comments like Getlein’s that reveal the true nature and feelings of the supposed “compassionate” progressives in TEC, who so often couch their hidden agendas in terms like “tolerance”, “acceptance”, and “diversity”. Not a whole lot of any of that in Mr. Getlein’s statement, I’d say, is there? But that’s the way it is in today’s Episcopal Church: tolerance, acceptance, and diversity only matters as long as you believe as the Getleins and Jefferts Schioris of the church do. Otherwise, you’re labeled “divisive”, or a “homophobe”, or (gasp!) orthodox – as if it were some ancient, communicable disease.

Here’s the bottom line: if Jefferts Schiori truly wants to find someone to blame for this so-called “violation of ancient customs”, methinks she need only look in the mirror at the apostate leader of an apostate church staring back at her. For it is she – and the church she represents – who have brought all of this upon themselves, and like they say, payback is hell.

Mark Krikorian of National Review Online has similar thoughts:

The female head of a church with a practicing homosexual bishop planning to “marry” his lover, a church that could accept into seminary the adulterous homosexual governor of New Jersey, a church that embraces splitting open babies’ skulls and vacuuming their brains out, is complaining about violating ancient customs? Wow.

To which, the incomparable Mark Steyn (whose work is always a must-read), adds this:

…What’s interesting about the Episcopal breakaway faction in the US is the indestructible assumption of the Presiding Bishop and her colleagues that they are the mainstream and the inevitable progressive future, and that the Nigerian bishops are the fringe and the doomed reactionary past. On any Sunday morning, there are more Anglicans in the pews in Nigeria than in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada combined. So much for head office.

If the Anglican Communion has a future, it won’t be thanks to Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori and the predictably reductive preoccupations of her ministry.

Indeed.