From the "Shudder and Cringe" Page - McGreevey Testifies to His Ambitions

I'm still trying to hold down the nausea and this blanket isn't touching the chills.  No, I'm not sick with one of those yucky spring colds - I just read the coverage in the New York Daily News of the McGreevey divorce trial.

A tip o' my kepi to Robroy and to StandFirm for flagging this one, and for seeing that I don't eat dinner tonight.

Remember McGreevey?  Former New Jersey Governor who resigned over having an extra-marital affair with a male employee?  And the male employee claimed McGreevey threatened and physically abused him?  And now the male employee is claiming that he participated in three-ways with McGreevey and his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, in the two years prior to his election as Governor.  She, of course, denies it and maintains her claim that McGreevey defrauded her into marriage by concealing his bi-sexuality and later homosexuality, for purposes of furthering his political career.  There are also allegations of McGreevey having his young daughter sleep in the same bed with he and a male lover.  Yeah, that McGreevey.

And remember how General Seminary, where McGreevey is now matriculating (No, it doesn't mean THAT!), scrambled to claim that he was NOT in their program for the Episcopal priesthood, but was there as a non-Divinity student, because he had not gone through discernment, etc.?  This week, under oath (for what little that means to these people), in Court, McGreevey claimed poverty in trying to defeat Matos' claim for alimony, and stated that his ambition "was to become an Episcopal priest and do youth ministries."  Uggh.  Hang on.  Here comes the nausea again.

Okay, so, umm, maybe McGreevey can join up with Michael Royse Penland, formerly of St. Gregory's - Boca Raton.  Remember him?  Wasn't he actually a youth minister?  The Episcopal priest was arrested in Waynesville, NC, for soliciting sex in a park restroom while in town to perform last rites for an aunt.  Penland admitted to having been soliciting gay sex in a similar fashion for several years, dating to while he was in Seminary at Sewanee and before he took his ordination vows.  He had been doing so despite having been married for 17 years.  In case you've forgotten the Penland case, read my posts here and here .

Not that I have even a modicum of sympathy for the P.O., but one would think, if she had any sense whatsoever, that she would do something to persuade the powers that be at General to quietly send McGreevey off into that good night. (Strong-arm them, perhaps?  She's quite good at it.)  After all, if one's stated goal is to legitimize and be inclusive of the GLBT folks, McGreevey is the last thing she needs.  McGreevey brings home to roost all of the bad old stereotypes that unfortunately remain a fact of life for a portion of the gay community that could care less about sexual monogamy.

For the rest of the remaining Episcopalian pew potatoes, the McGreevey story only confirms the impression which has been perpetuated by Gene Robinson, et al., that TEO is "the gay church."  While most rank-and-file 'Piskies cling to the belief that the gay issues do not affect their local churches, the reality is that they do.  I cannot tell you how many times, while I was still Episcopalian and said so, I got the response, "Oh, you go to the gay church."  If you could get past that perception and move the discussion to theology, once again the Episcopalian was lost at the point of being asked, "What does your Church believe?" because the answer is, in a word, "nothing," or maybe "everything."  McGreevey remaining in the news and telling the world that his ambition, which is apparently unfettered, is to be an Episcopal priest and a youth minister, will render Episcopal clergy-hood even more laughable than the abandonment of Scripture has already left them.

Comments

[robroy]

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I cannot tell you how many times, while I was still Episcopalian and said so, I got the response, "Oh, you go to the gay church."
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Thank you. I get the exact same response and I am so tired of it. I had this conversation with Tobias Heller which he poo-poo-ed. What two faces associate with the TEO? KJS and VGR. A woman and a woman-wannabe (his words not mine...June bride).

We already have a Metropolitan Church which has 44,000 members. How successful will a second gay church be?

(And sorry about the nausea.)