The PB in Jerusalem

"This morning we were spat on by a young Jewish man. Howsimilar must have been Jesus' journeys the last week of his life."

The Holy Saturday press release from the Episcopal News Service offered this quote from an address in Jerusalem by the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. The full article from which the release is excerpted contains similar veiled criticisms of the free state of Israel, just as past bulletins from the Palestinian territories frequently mentioned the “occupying” Israeli forces. No mention was made of Palestinian leadership or their terrorist allies.

Perhaps it’s not completely surprising that the Jewish man spat at American Christians who he could have suspected of mouthing anti-Israeli platitudes--and who might not have acknowledged that Israeli Christians and Muslims are free to practice their religion and even serve in the Israeli Parliament while, across the borders, Christian Palestinians are being forced to leave the Palestinian territories and Jews are slain. If the Israelis have put up barriers and checkpoints, it is to try to keep their children from being blown to bits.

I hesitate to speculate how “Jesus would have felt;” perhaps he might have been sympathetic to the disturbed “young Jewish man,” who like many Jews in the Holy Land, rarely have a peaceful night’s rest. --J. Douglas Ousley

 

Bishop Moore

The poet Honor Moore has written a memoir of her father, Bishop Paul Moore; an excerpt has just appeared in The New Yorker. 

I include the link to this article but I hasten to add that I hope people will think twice before they read it. It contains some very hurtful comments on a Bishop of New York who was beloved to me and many people of this diocese. Bishop Moore would have been the first to admit that he was unsure about a lot of things and that he was far from perfect. It is too bad that, despite advice to the contrary from the current Bishop of New York in a recent (and rare) pastoral letter, critics of Bishop Moore's vision of freedom for all people are likely to have a field day with this memoir. 

As one of the my colleagues remarked, the memoir genre is out-of-control. The tendency at funerals to puff up the departed is later countered with extreme criticism, which is all the more potent, given that the dead are unable to give their side of the story. As for Bishop Moore, may he rest in peace.  --J. Douglas Ousley