WOODY WOODPECKER AND THE CHURCH OF WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW

Bishop Katherine Schori, spiritual doyen of what's left of the American Episcopal Church is answering questions on CSPAN as I write. I've been lucky enough to have missed seeing and hearing her until now. But no one's luck lasts forever. I'm not sure what I was expecting but the difference between her and any feminist college administrator is so infinitesimal as to require an electron microscope. It's all there, the mannish Woody Woodpecker haircut, the punctiliously PC gender/race/class language, the self satisfied pseudo intellectual smirk, and the total refusal to fill the role of Christian advocate. I get the impression that she would rather convert to Baha'i than do anything so vulgar as to proclaim Christ as the light of the world. I've met bartenders with more air of sanctity about them.

Her answer to the question of how we help Muslims avoid acting out violently against others was to enjoin Christians and Jews themselves from resorting to violence. This answer is obtuseness to the level of insult. Where in this world do Christian clergy preach violence against Muslims?

She got in the inevitable jabs about slavery and its legacy, and of course gender equality issues. She had to address the fracture of her church in two, which she dealt with by observing that the Church suffers the loss of people whenever they've adopted their latest avant-guard posture. She rather poisonously noted that the church lost membership when it integrated racially, thus intimating that those who object to her whims are bigots. Doubtless when the Episcopal Church formally rejects the divinity of Christ there will be a few million more "bigots" bolting for the doors. She sailed far beyond earth's atmosphere in response to the gay marriage question by remarking that since the Old Testament included references to King David's multiple wives and handmaidens, "When you talk to me about family values, I have to ask which family values you mean." Monogamy has been settled doctrine of both Christians and Jews for over two millennia but for the good Bishop nothing gets in the way of a good sophomoric quip to justify your latest assault on tradition. Why would any sane person adhere to a church who's only tradition is that it must have no traditions? If she seriously believes that the more primitive passages in the Torah invalidate Christian teaching on marriage, how would she make the case against human sacrifice? Did not God instruct Abraham to sacrifice Issac? And was not Abraham willing to do this? Well Katherine, you better have an answer, because we have already quietly given up on monogamy as law where it concerns our recent Muslim immigrants.

It's impossible to escape the impression that the good Bishop confuses her churches stained glass windows with that proverbial glass ceiling.