Mary Glasspool, who was elected bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles yesterday, is canon to the bishops in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. She is properly referred to as the Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool.
Her election was of more than common interest, because she is the second openly gay person to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson having been elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
The Associated Press article on her election called her merely the Rev. Mary Glasspool and also said that she had been elected an assistant bishop. No. Both assistant bishops and suffragan bishops are auxiliaries to diocesan bishops, but an assistant bishop is appointed to serve in a diocese, and a suffragan bishop is elected to the post. The latter is harder to dislodge.
The article on her election in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun was apparently an unedited or lightly edited AP version. There was, regrettably, no staff contribution, though Canon Glasspool’s election had been pending over the weekend and was completed in the early evening.
Considering the apparent frenzy in some parts of the Episcopal Church in America to put homosexual clergy in prominent positions, I doubt the errata regarding her attributions will raise many hackles. This is just the flaccid left trying to push a secular point of view in a religious organization. Really too tacky of them. I'm glad to see that someone keeps current on Anglican lore, however.
ReplyDelete"Frenzy"? Two? Two is a "frenzy"? And how can the "flaccid" left even be in a "frenzy"?
ReplyDeleteLet's be reasonable. There have always been gay priests and bishops in the Anglican Church. The homosexual Anglo-Catholic priest, for example, was such a stock figure by the end of the nineteenth century that Samuel Butler made one a recognizable character in The Way of All Flesh (1903).
ReplyDeleteAs far as agendas are concerned, a cogent argument could be made that the opponents of the ordination and consecration of gay people are pushing an agenda to exclude these people, or at the very least keep them in the closet.