Ormonde Plater at Through The Dust is applying to become bishop to head up a new group to be formed in the US as an alternative to the Episcopal Church. I can personally vouch for Ormonde's qualifications for the position.
UPDATE: From Ormonde Plater in the comments: To be specific, I was applying to the Botswana Anglicans in North America League (BANAL). They seem disorganized, though, and do not yet have a web site.
UPDATE 2: From Lapinbizarre in the comments: Inquiry on Thinking Anglicans into the ground rules for valid consecration in absentia mined the following nugget, posted by "cryptogram". I trust that it will inform and entertain:
"I was told a story years ago about some bishops in the Coptic church who were unable to attend an episcopal consecration in Egypt because the Nile was in spate. So they all breathed into a pig's bladder (the form of ordination being insufflation) and the bladder was sent by boat down the river, to be uncorked over the candidates. Sadly, en route it burst, thus consecrating a couple of goats as bishops in the church."
What a mine of information my commenters are.
You know, with the spiraling number of folks being consecrated by different African provinces as extra-territorial bishops "in partibus infidelium", one wonders if there might not be a market for this sort of thing - similar to the commercial degree mills, except that if one made use of validly-consecrated bishops, the orders confered would be "real". My suspicion is that the reception of valid episcopal consecration would satisfy the vanity of many of these individuals - a poster on Thinking Anglicans recently referred to linked photographs of the consecration ceremonies of a somewhat heterodox British group as "middle-aged man dress up", which summed things up pretty effectively.
ReplyDeleteConnoisseurs of this sort of thing will enjoy Peter Anson's "Bishops at Large", a study of irregular consecrations to Roman and Eastern-rite successions. The book was recently re-published by the Apocryphile Press and is available in paperback from Amazon for $24.99. The bizarre illustrations alone are worth the price of admission.
In fact, if any reader knows of venal but valid bishops, willing to confer cut-price ordinations and consecrations, have them drop me a line - I believe I would enjoy the experience.
To be specific, I was applying to the Botswana Anglicans in North America League (BANAL). They seem disorganized, though, and do not yet have a web site.
ReplyDeleteLovely acronym. They'll do. Where do I send the check?
ReplyDeleteOrmonde, I wanted them to go to your site for the complete info, but since you have done full disclosure here, I'll add an update.
ReplyDeleteps the web-page that led to the above-mentioned "middle-aged man dress-up" scans, also referred to the hitherto unfamiliar, to me, concept of episcopal "co-consecrators in absentia".
ReplyDeleteInquiry on Thinking Anglicans into the ground rules for valid consecration in absentia mined the following nugget, posted by "cryptogram". I trust that it will inform and entertain:
"I was told a story years ago about some bishops in the Coptic church who were unable to attend an episcopal consecration in Egypt because the Nile was in spate. So they all breathed into a pig's bladder (the form of ordination being insufflation) and the bladder was sent by boat down the river, to be uncorked over the candidates. Sadly, en route it burst, thus consecrating a couple of goats as bishops in the church."
Lapin:
ReplyDeleteI met one a few weeks ago. I was having a cup of coffee at Top Pot Doughnuts in Seattle and in the line in front of me was a nice man in a crimson shirt and clerical collar. I had to start a conversation.
He gave me a long talk on how his group of Old Catholics are in talks with the Old Catholics in Europe and expect to be recognized as real any day now. I suspect that will double his local congregation to 4 or 5 souls.
Anyway, from him I found that if I wanted it ordination to at least the priesthood would be a very easy thing to do. My masters in psychology would more than meet his demands for education for the laying on of hands. For about ten seconds I gave it some serious thought and then decided I wasn't too interested. After all of the anticlerical things I've said I couldn't quite join up, you know.
I am willing to bet that he would love a chance to have a fellow bishop in South Carolina if you are interested.
But you need to decide if you would look good in crimson. It is such a hard color to match with anything else. Do you really want to spend the time finding a whole new wardrobe?
Cardinals get to wear crimson. Bishops have to settle for plain old violet. Bishop Paul Marshall of Bethlehem says that "the introduction of purple shirts in this country in the 1960s and 1970s was a mistake." He doesn't wear them often.
ReplyDeleteOrmonde, Bishop Marshall is correct. The purple shirts were, indeed, a mistake. What is the purpose of the purple shirt? The bishops should rather hang a sign around their necks saying, "I am a bishop."
ReplyDeleteSomeone has just posted to StandFirm saying that TEC should agree to a moratorium on "ordaining homoerotic bishops". Now there, as the late, great Molly Ivins used to say, is a concept.
ReplyDeleteDennis, neither purple nor scarlet is my colour - I have enough of both in my cheeks already - so maybe this needs rethinking. In the summer of 1968 I crossed Parliament Square in a cab as a session of the Lambeth Conference poured out of Westminster Abbey. To this day I remember just how many subtly discordant shades of purple and violet can exist. I also remember the comments on the bishops by my companion, an elderly lady, imprisoned three times in the early years of the last century for her suffragette activities. She had participated in the Great Oxford Street Smash-in and taught me how to safely destroy a plate-glass window, at the same time avoiding injury to myself. Unfortunately, in addition to a hammer, this operation requires that one carries a fur muff, which kind-of limits things.
Lapin! You don't have a fur muff! That's grounds for banning, you know.
ReplyDeleteNo muff and no likelyhood of ever needing one down here in SC - though should I ever decide to add anything so outré to my wardrobe, I'll have a damned good story to tell. Then again, there's Homeland Security to consider - this week's Fourth Circuit ruling has yet to clear the Supremes, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteTime to take a peek at Viagra-laced oysters. You couldn't invent this cr-p, could you?
It really is all about the clothes. And the accessories. Ormonde, have you been able to find out much about BANAL's costumes? I realize this may not be easy due to the lack of a website, but it is important to work out ahead of time whether you will look good in the gear.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, and finally as regards the episcopal consecration of four-legged goats, Wikipedia has an entry on insufflation which reveals a potential treasure-house of bizarre liturgical practice. Seriously. Don't see how I can have survived 60-odd winters yet never, until now, have encountered this.
ReplyDeleteThis text is a link to a page on
the World Wide Web.
Lapin, re the Wiki link, there's "insufflation", "exsufflation," and just plain "sufflation". I can only say who knew? Not me. And after 70+ years.
ReplyDeleteMary Clara, they probably wear those hideous rochets and chimeres designed to keep English bishops from freezing to death. I'd rather dress like those women in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
ReplyDeleteYou go, Ormonde.
ReplyDeleteSo, Mimi, I've been busy doing stuff and just came upon this lovely entry, but I must protest the use of Botswana in this way. It is such a small country... there is another, _larger_, country on the continent that needs a league... Burundi . It has at least 4 and maybe 5 times the number of citizens as Botswana. Does that appeal to you Ormonde? And there are probably more Burundians living in North America who need protection from the non-traditional Anglicans of TEC.
ReplyDeleteHe breathes thrice upon the waters in the form of a cross . . .
ReplyDeleteHow fantastic can a person's breath-control get?!
good Lord. In working with clients with anxiety and panic attacks I often have to teach them some breathing techniques (counting their breath, etc) as a way to lower their anxiety.
ReplyDeleteI never knew how religious breathing could be!
(And sorry for calling the shirt crimson. Maybe it was a red purple. I don't know. Even though I'm gay and should be able to instantly identify any color by name I'm never really good at this sort of thing! When I was a kid I could never understand why the crayon people had so many different versions of each color until my mom explained to me that they were each colors in their own right.)
Dennis, perhaps you picked up something useful for your clients.
ReplyDeleteMy children used to ask for the big Crayola box with 64 colors, which I always thought a little ridiculous. 32 colors seemed sufficient to me, and that's what they got. We were on a rather tight budget back then, so I thought I was justified.
Recently, one of my sons told his wife that he always resented the fact that he never got the crayon box with 64 colors. She passed the word on to me about this failure in mothering on my part.
This son of mine wanted all the shades of pink and purple, and he's not even gay.
Mimi, perhaps you should give your son that box of crayons for Christmas! The colors have changed slightly since we were younger, but you do what you can when you can, eh?
ReplyDeleteSusan, thank you. That is brilliant! I will give him his box of 64 crayons this Christmas.
ReplyDeleteYou'd best give 'em all 64 crayons or Lord knows what you'll start in your Old Age.
ReplyDeleteLapin, yes, yes. Not one without the others. Three boxes of 64 count crayons coming up for Christmas.
ReplyDeleteToday was my grandson's birthday, and I almost forgot. I called him, and the answering machine picked up, so I sang Happy Birthday to him on the machine. Do you think that will make up for my forgetting? He'll get a check in a few days.
He turned 13 today. That mades 2 teenagers in the family.