A Confession

Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed me from the dust in your image and likeness, and redeemed me from sin and death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ. Through the water of baptism you clothed me with the shining garment of his righteousness, and established me among your children in your kingdom. But I have squandered the inheritance of your saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.

Especially, I confess to you and to the Church that I have repeatedly surrendered to rage against my more conservative brothers and sisters in Christ when I have seen them praising schism and when I have seen their complaints against Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and the House of Bishops. My anger has been as strong as what I would feel if I saw a priest take the consecrated host, spit on it, throw it to the ground, and grind it into the floor with their heel. I have not become angry because their complaints are without foundation (the most distressing complaints are all plausible). I have become angry because the complaining and their choice of venues in which to do the complaining seems to me to undermine the authority of the PB, the HoB, and of your Church. I even have become angry with those whom I believe are only striving to do what is best for your Church. I find it difficult to see airing their very real concerns publicly and frequently without any apparent contact with those in authority in TEC as anything other than a profound rebellion against the Church, and schism is even more clearly a rebellion. Every rebellion seems to me to be a rebellion against you, my Lord, at its heart, not because you have established human authorities in such a way as to lift them above error, but because when they give a command or a ruling they have usurped your authority in order to do so. This usurpation has never angered me because I see that humans, in their sinfulness, need government to maintain a semblance of peace and justice apart from you, and I also see that proper obedience to human authority forms us in the habits of obedience which might help us obey you better. However, since all authority in heaven and on earth are yours, O Lord, when we rebel against and undermine human systems of authority we have also rejected your authority and have begun to form ourselves in a habit of acting as if we are Lord instead of Christ Jesus. This is why I have become angry. I see them placing themselves on your throne to give judgement on the Church and the world while claiming that you have required them to sit upon your seat of judgement.

I confess, my Lord, that I have also desired to sit upon your seat of judgement, desired the ability to coerce those with whom I have become angry. I long to be able to force them to be silent in public and express their concerns privately with those whom your Church has placed in authority over them, following the pattern I see reflected in monastic customaries and rules and following the monastic tradition which teaches that obedience is expressed as surely in humbly telling one's superior when a task assigned is thought to be impossible or illegal and asking clarifying questions when something is obscure as it is in immediately doing as one has been told.

Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance. Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me to the blessed company of your faithful people;through him in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.