++Rowan Snookers the Orthodox . . . Again.

After having proclaimed the diocese the basic organizational body of the church and after having encouraged dioceses to sign up for the Covenant even if their provinces do not, now at the moment when the remaining orthodox TEC dioceses are struggling to somehow stay distinctly orthodox, Rowan pulls away the football by saying only provinces, not dioceses, can officially sign on to the Covenant. Oh, dioceses can endorse the Covenant – and that would be just wonderful! – but it would only be symbolic with no “institutional effect”.

Gee, thanks Your Grace.

This once again confirms Rowan is no friend of the orthodox and is not to be trusted.

As for those orthodox remaining in The Episcopal Church, Texanglican sums up the situation well:

Please, folks still trapped in the these handful of [orthodox] dioceses, it is time to admit the facts. Nothing you can do at the diocesan level will ever make you meaningfully different from the rest of TEC as long as you remain members of the national body. Your bishops are still ultimately answerable to PB Schori. You are still subject to TEC's constitution and canons and to its disciplinary procedures. And most importantly, the heretical majority of TEC's bishops and standing committees will have an absolute veto over whomever your elect to be your next bishop.

Your staunch defense of orthodoxy could evaporate rapidly if your bishop unexpectedly leaves office. The powers that be will insure that your next bishop is "reasonable" and "moderate"--one of those respectable "conservatives" who politely states his traditionalist positions at church meetings and then faithfully implements whatever the decision of the TEC governing body in question are without further cavil. Once such a "reasonable" bishop is in place a majority of your parish clergy will be cut from the same cloth in less than a decade. By 2025 most of the people still left in the once "orthodox" dioceses of TEC will hardly remember what all this fuss was about.

More purely symbolic declarations are pointless at this juncture. Either act to separate from TEC now or come to terms with where your denomination is inevitably heading. Further resistance inside TEC is futile. The TEC ship has left the shore of traditional Christianity and is rapidly sailing away into the brave, new sunset of radical inclusion. Loudly proclaiming that you are not part of the vessel's journey while you still stand on its deck watching the shoreline recede is simply a denial of reality.

And trust in Rowan to rescue you from inevitable shipwreck is also a denial of reality.