From Utah-
In the bleakest hours of her 14-year tenure as Episcopal bishop of Utah, the Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish was tempted to resign.
All around the diocese, priests and lay people felt neglected and angry with what they saw as betrayal — Irish’s secret slip into alcoholism just three years into her term.
When she returned in the spring of 2000 after several months of out-of-state treatment, plenty of people were hoping she would step aside.
“It was pretty bad when I came back,” Irish acknowledges. “There were some testy times.”
And yet Irish refused to walk away from the job she felt called to in 1996 — her charge to shepherd the 6,000 Utahns who practiced the faith she had adopted as an adult.
“I knew I didn’t want to grow old and feel I’d failed,” Irish says. “That’s all I can tell you. That was not going to happen to me.”
Now, Irish, 70, is retiring on her own terms.
On Nov. 6, her successor, the Rev. Scott Hayashi, will be consecrated, and Irish and her husband — the Rev. Frederick Quinn, a retired foreign-service officer whom Irish married in 2001 — will move to Washington, D.C.
More here-
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/49773500-76/irish-bishop-episcopal-church.html.csp
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