MINNEAPOLIS — The election of an openly homosexual man to a position of leadership in a major Christian denomination brought sadness to Paulist Father James Lloyd, a Catholic priest and licensed psychologist in New York.

Father Lloyd works with Courage, a Catholic apostolate that helps people who struggle against committing homosexual acts.

“This is a real backward step,” said Father Lloyd of the election of the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire at the U.S. Episcopal Church's triennial convention Aug. 5 in Minneapolis. “They're trying to say it's not core to the faith. But sexuality is pretty core to the human being. To say it's not core is a deception.”

Father Lloyd, speaking from his office in New York City, said Robinson's new position would influence other people's decisions and behaviors.

“People will say, ‘If a bishop can do it, it must be okay,’” Father Lloyd said. “The act is objectively sinful. But this will encourage other people to something that will mess up their lives.”

Robinson has stated publicly that his homosexual relationship, which began around the time he divorced his wife and left his two children, is a chaste one. He has also described it as “sacramental” — a means of supernatural grace, Colin Stewart, executive vice president of the Family Research Council, pointed out.

“What Anglican orthodoxy has traditionally identified as sinful behavior and ‘incompatible with Scripture’ Robinson has in other words called a grace,” Stewart said in a statement. Approval of Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire has “ignited a constitutional crisis that is potentially of seismic proportion and could very well fracture not only the Episcopal Church but the 75-million-member Anglican Communion as well.”

The confirmation of Robinson as well as the Episcopal Church's recognition of same-sex unions also presents “new ecumenical challenges” to Catholic-Anglican relations, said Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, Calif., chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Though the Catholic Church remains committed to “prayerful and honest dialogue,” the developments “reflect a departure from the common understanding of the meaning and purpose of human sexuality and the morality of homosexual activity as found in sacred Scripture and the Christian tradition,” Bishop Blaire said.

Episcopal Church delegates stopped short of writing a new liturgy for the blessing of same-sex unions. But a resolution passed by the U.S. branch of the church's House of Deputies, made up of clergy and lay people, recognized that “local faith communities” that perform such unions are “operating within the bounds of our common life.” The convention's House of Bishops passed the resolution Aug. 6.

Robinson's approval also involved lay collaboration, beginning with a vote in the diocese and confirmed by the House of Deputies. Final approval came on a 62-45 vote of the House of Bishops on Aug. 5, immediately after which 19 bishops moved to the front of the convention room to show their disapproval over the action.

“The bishops who stand before you are filled with sorrow,” said Bishop Robert Duncan of the Pittsburgh Diocese. “This body has divided itself for millions of Anglican Christians around the world, brothers and sisters who have pleaded with us to maintain the church's traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality. With grief too deep for words, the bishops who stand before you must reject this action.”

Duncan said he would call upon the 38 primates around the world to intervene in the crisis.

Significant Impact

Likewise, archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called for a meeting of bishops in October to focus on the dispute. He appealed for opponents not to act too fast in response to Robinson's approval. But Williams acknowledged it would have a “significant impact” on the Anglican Communion — the Church of England and the 37 autonomous national or regional Churches in communion with the Archdiocese of Canterbury.

Bishops opposed to Robinson's election also plan to meet in October in Plano, Texas. There has been public talk about Episcopal bishops and priests dissatisfied with the developments joining the Catholic Church. So far, there is no indication that this vote would encourage a significant number of Episcopalians to convert.

The International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church, which was established in 1992 out of a desire to recover the “fullness of the ancient church,” issued a statement reaffirming its belief that the sanctity of marriage is reserved for a union between a man and a woman. The church, based in Potomac Falls, Va., applauded the recent Vatican document rejecting legal efforts to sanction same-sex marriage.

Some delegates to the convention smeared ashes on their foreheads or wore black armbands as a sign of mourning after the vote.

And there was negative reaction from Anglican bishops around the world.

“It's wrong and it's against the Bible,” Bishop Joseph Mutie Kanuku of the Machakos Diocese in Africa, east of Nairobi, Kenya, told the New York Times. “How can we go against God's words? Two men being joined is contrary to nature and contrary to the Bible.”

The Rev. Keith Roderick, canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, based in Peoria, Ill., and head of an organization monitoring the persecution of Christians worldwide, said the Episcopal Church's decision does nothing to help the plight of such Christians.

“It is apparent that the Episcopal Church continues to ignore the concerns of the world's majority of Anglicans who live in developing countries,” Roderick, secretary-general of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, told the Register. “The bishops who live in areas with large Muslim populations are not only disturbed by this action but they now have much to fear from their neighbors who see the Episcopal Church's actions to be … forbidden and detestable — as if Christians in these areas needed another bull's-eye painted on their backs.”

Roderick characterized the process leading to Robinson's confirmation as bishop as “doctrine by dysfunction.”

“On the one hand, the church consents to ordaining a man who divorces his wife to live together with his male lover, then resolves not to consent to the ‘blessing’ of same-gender unions; in the name of inclusivity, affirms a priest as fit for the episcopacy who practices his sexual life outside of marriage and then says the church is not ready to redefine marriage as inclusive of same-gender couples, making the priest now bishop guilty of leading what the church still concludes is an immoral life,” he commented.

He noted that “sound theological debate” over the legitimacy of Robinson's ordination was ignored.

Josh Mercer is based in Washington, D.C.