Calif. Bishop Respects ‘Very Key Symbol’

From The Living Church-

Responding to requests from two bishops elsewhere in the Anglican Communion, the Bishop of El Camino Real did not attend the consecration of Bishops Diane Jardine Bruce and Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles on May 15.

A friendship began forming among the Rt. Rev. Mary Gray–Reeves and her two brother bishops — the Rt. Rev. Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester, England, and the Rt. Rev. Gerard Mpango, Bishop of Western Tanganyika, Tanzania — during the Lambeth Conference of 2008. The bishops formed companion relationships among their dioceses, and celebrated those new ties during a service in September 2009 at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, San José, Calif.

Bishop Gray–Reeves wrote that her fellow bishops asked her to abstain from granting consent to Bishop Glasspool’s election or from participating in her consecration.

“In our system, it is consents that allow a bishop to be ordained,” Gray–Reeves wrote in a letter requested by Louie Crew, founder of Integrity, a nonprofit organization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Episcopalians and their supporters. “I consented to Mary’s election without hesitation. The laying on of hands makes a bishop, and in other provinces where there is no consent process like ours, this is a very key symbol.”

Gray–Reeves wrote that she “did not come easily to the decision of not attending,” adding: “But the truth is, Mary and Diane had plenty of bishops to get the job done, and my hands were not needed there on May 15th. They were needed to reach other places and so I did.”

More here-

http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2010/5/25/el-camino-real-bishop-respects-very-key-symbol