Episcopal Foes Vow to Fight Ordination of Gays

Charging that the Episcopal Church is beset by moral confusion, 10 conservative bishops vowed Tuesday to take their fight against the ordination of non-celibate gays and the blessing of same-sex unions to the church’s highest policy-making body.

They also served notice that they will form a new “fellowship” within the church to minister to parishes whose bishops fail to uphold traditional church teachings on sexual morality.

However, the 10 prelates left the 2.5-million-member denomination in suspense over whether they will appeal a church court acquittal of a liberal bishop on heresy charges for ordaining a non-celibate gay man as a deacon in 1990. The court ruled two weeks ago that there is no church doctrine prohibiting such ordinations.

The 10 bishops, who filed the charges against retired Bishop Walter C. Righter of Iowa, called the 7-1 court ruling “deeply flawed and erroneous.” They have until June 15 to file an appeal. Righter, 73, was an assisting bishop in Newark, N.J., when he ordained the Rev. Barry Stopfel as a deacon. Stopfel, who is now a priest, lives with his life partner in the parish rectory at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Maplewood, N.J.

“The court’s disclaimer notwithstanding, its decision has swept away two millennia of Christian teaching regarding God’s purposes in creation, the nature and meaning of Christian marriage and the family, the discipleship in relation to sexuality to which we are called as followers of Jesus, and the paradigm of the church as bride and Christ as bridegroom,” the bishops said in a statement.

The court ruling leaves no doubt that the Episcopal Church needs a law specifically barring such ordinations and the blessing of same-gender unions, the bishops said.

The law would be proposed at the church’s General Convention in Philadelphia in July 1997. The conservative bishops will meet at least once before the convention to map their strategy, said Bishop James Stanton of Dallas, one of the 10 who brought the charges.