The Numbers For The ACNA In Texas

are just one more confirmation of Douglas Bess's assessment that the Continuers, in believing that great masses of Episcopalians would leave TEC when it changed the prayer book and ordained women, greatly miscalculated. The ACNA is a very slightly more conservative main line Protestant denomination than The Episcopal Church, pretty much the only difference being that it finesses the problem of same-sex attraction among bishops and priests somewhat more than TEC does -- and that's it; the ACNA has women priests and uses the 1979 TEC Book of Common Prayer.

The great majority of Episcopalians and ex-Episcopalians simply don't fetishize the 1928 prayer book, and for them, the ordination of women isn't controversial. So what do the Continuing losers do? They have another feckless conference, and

Four continuing bishops recently sent an appeal to ACNA's College of Bishops, asking to have only men in Holy Orders and to use an historic Anglican liturgy. Archbishop Mark Haverland (ACC), Peter Robinson (UEC), Bishop Brian Marsh (ACA), Bishop Walter Grundorf (APA), and Bishop Paul Hewett (DHC) all signed the appeal.

UPDATE:I'm increasingly wondering about David Virtue: I count five, not four, "continuing bishops" in the list above.

In other words, these losers appeal to the ACNA to turn itself into another like-minded bunch of losers! I think you have to give people credit for having some basic common sense: the ordination of women is an issue that's tied up with a much bigger theological approach, which includes the authority of the Pope. The idea of being sorta-kinda Catholic (including the absurdity, cited farther down the Virtue link, that you can be Catholic and also ascribe to the virulently Protestant 39 Articles) isn't selling, has never sold, and will never sell. The ACNA appears to understand this. The Continuing losers don't.