Walter, you must know that ever since you and your cohort, Jack Spong, took to, knowingly, ordaining non celibate homosexual persons, that many people in this Church, like those who comprise the Diocese of Central Florida, and many others of us, regard you and those who have done as you do as apostate, as having abandoned some of the fundamental faith and practice of the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. You have departed from the teaching of the Church that has been upheld for 2,000 years, and what is more, probably 95 % of Christians in the world, including an overwhelming majority of the members of the Anglican Communion, also regard you as having done so.

Furthermore, this is not only a matter of sexual behavior, but an even more important matter is that so many priests and bishops, in your theological camp, no longer believe that Jesus is still the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Many deny the heart of the evangelical faith, that salvation, and the hope of the world, and our hope for Eternal life, is found in the Cross, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Why you even voted at GC 2003, along with the rest of the liberal revisionist bishops, NOT to reaffirm your commitment to the Chicago Lambeth Quadrilateral, with its strong affirmationof the authority of Holy Scripture as the Word of God. In doing so, you voted against "the Faith once delivered to the Saints", and in fact you repudiated your own Ordination vows!

Walter, in your lecturing to the Diocese of Central Florida, you spoke of reconciliation. However, in GC 2003 when you and others in the leadership of TEC forged ahead with a vote for the Consecration of Gene Robinson, you were utterly defying the rest of the Anglican Communion, who were pleading for TEC to hold off until there was at least a shred of consensus in the Communion for your action. Where then was your appeal for reconciliation? And yet you, Walter, speak about Central Florida engaging in "coercion"!

And after we of TEC have all but torn this Communion apart, and now in 2006, with the rest of the Communion having given us two years to respond to the Windsor Report, our response was all but a sham, with our squeaking and our quibbling not remotely in compliance with Windsor? What sort of act of reconciliation do you call that?

Walter, I fully respect your right, and that of the rest of the bishops and deputies to disagree on any matter with the rest of the Communion, but why not do so honorably, and without a pretense of compliance? Why not clearly declare that TEC is unwilling to pay the price set forth in the Windsor Report by the rest of the Communion, for us to remain in the Communion, and that therefore, we are choosing to walk our separate way, and that we wish the rest of the Communion well.

Finally, Walter, you allege that Central Florida has said to the rest of the Church, " It is my way or the highway!" And you are wrong, for the living truth is that it is TEC that has said just that, both in GC2003 and GC2006, and it is the rest of the Anglican Communion that has been told by us, "You accept our way, or you take the highway!"

+Ben Benitez is the retired Bishop of Texas
+Walter Righter is the retired Bishop of Iowa

The following statement by Walter Righter in connection with Bishop John Howe of Central Florida is what Bishop Benitez was referring too: "Efforts at reconciliation? My way or the highway - that is not an effort at reconciliation. It is an effort to coerce. If Rowan Williams grants them some kind of response to their request, which I personally do not think he has any authority to grant, he's enshrining stubbornness - not a body that has tried to reconcile! That is hogwash."

Walter Righter