Episcopalians have been facing similar turning points for years, now -- and many, like myself, have been forced to pull out of the denomination in order to avoid compromising "the faith once delivered", as we learned it at our forebears' knees, and grew up with it, so that we could pass it on in turn.While Mr Haley isn't specific, I'm assuming that "similar turning points for years, now" refers to the various changes that occurred between TEC's ordination of women in the 1970s and the consecration as bishop of V Gene Robinson in 2004. I've got to say that I've got a problem with this view.
It reminds me of the various movements among elite-school alumni to rectify what they believe are similar missteps at their respective alma maters, usually regarded as watered-down or radicalized curricula, surrenders to political correctness, and the like. The usual refrain goes along the line of "things weren't that way when we were at [fill in the blank] in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s." In fact, I got involved in one of those movements until I recognized (fairly quickly) that the dissident groups were driven by the egos and transparent personal agendas of their leadership, and they had no credible set of solutions.
In fact, it's been recognized at least since F Scott Fitzgerald wrote about it in the 1920s, based on his experience at Princeton, that the Ivies and similar schools have long been intellectually shallow and have provided an education that, for better or worse, has never been much different from that available at most state universities.
I think Anglicanism is a similar case. Frederick Kinsman, an Anglo-Catholic, recognized by the 1920s, long before women's ordination, prayer book revisions, or gay bishops, that Anglicanism was a solidly Protestant denomination that allowed certain factions to deceive themselves that they were Catholic or evangelical. Thus we see the cry that TEC is "no longer orthodox" (but the rag-tag "continuing" groups somehow are?), or that it somehow ceased to be "catholic" in fairly recent decades, but Anglicanism was Erastian in its founding and has always followed political and cultural winds.
Anglicanism is a Protestant denomination. I've heard from wiser people than I that, in their opinion, Anglicanorum coetibus was a put-up or shut-up gesture, or at least its disappointing outcome can be interpreted in that light. For those who seriously feel that TEC somehow ceased to be catholic, or accommodating to the catholic-leaning, or something like that, in recent decades, there's an option.
:Mr Haley?
