Letter from the House of Bishops

The Episcopal Majority has posted a letter from our bishops. It recaps much of what we heard in the resolutions and statement, although it includes this bit:

...We also heard a well-documented report by the House of Bishops' Task Force on Property Disputes on the history and strategy of groups, including some in the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDAP) and others, to remove congregations and church property from The Episcopal Church. This report will be made available at a later date. We commend it, once publicly available, to diocesan Standing Committees...

It sounds like we're finally going to get serious about the pillaging purple shirts from foreign shores.

Then there's this:

...Finally, we believe that the leaders of the Church must always hold basic human rights and the dignity of every human being as fundamental concerns in our witness for Christ. We were, therefore, concerned that while the Communiqué focuses on homosexuality, it ignores the pressing issues of violence against gay and lesbian people around the world, and the criminalization of homosexual behavior in many nations of the world...

Well, they got even closer to naming the Church of Nigeria specifically.

A teaching tool will be offered by May. The final response to the Communique will be made in September.

The call for Dr. Williams to visit the House (which he has not done once since becoming Archbishop) was repeated. Note that the resolution requesting his personal appearance before the House was the only one that was passed unanimously.

I will speculate that Dr. Williams will decline this invitation, based on his brief and discouraging response so far.

J.

UPDATE: Susan offers some interesting tidbits from the closing news conference at Camp Allen. Note especially that Bp. Katharine did not "sign" the Communique, but when asked by Dr. Williams if she could "live with it," her response was "I'll take it back to the HoB."