Dear Friends in Christ,

Twelve or so years ago I helped start the Society of Catholic Priests in North America. It’s the North American branch of a society begun in England that represents the Catholic wing of the Church but also includes women and LGBT folks in its membership—in a way that other such societies did not traditionally.

If you can imagine being a faithful Anglican who held to the traditional doctrines of the Church around saints, Sacraments, and prayer for the dead but who also happened to love someone of the same gender or felt that those who did were not destined for eternal consequence, then you can imagine why I helped start the society.

All that is to say that it started for doctrinal reasons. I was convinced that the Creeds of the Church, in their expansive articulation of God’s love, included space for those marginalized by the life and doctrine of the contemporary Church.

I’m no theologian. I do not have the academic nor biblical training to claim that. I do, however, observe things with some detail. And what I observed of my LBGT parishioners and friends is that they were so deeply faithful that it spoke of such a deep, deep yearning for the love of God that I could not deny its holiness.

As many of you know, I am reflexively conservative.

I operate and was formed in politically conservative spaces. I think that’s what I found so compelling about the confusing intersections of the Episcopal Church. It represents the intersection of tradition, a conservative understanding of culture and values, with the modern attempt to situate those values within the lives of those trying to honestly live their love and to love those with whom they live even when it’s confusing.

I once asked a gay friend of mine how he ended up in the most liturgically conservative church in Connecticut. He said, “I was welcomed into a place where the wide umbrella of tradition shielded me from the narrowness of the world.”

I don’t know of a much better way to articulate my theology or liturgical sensibilities. The wide net of tradition is meant to hold the many not reject the few. And it’s not so few who would be rejected.

How many of us could say all of our devices, desires, and motivations are holy and blameless? Few I think. Yet the generous gift of orthodoxy is not that we are all just fine as we are but that we are all forgiven and offered a place at the Table by faith alone — not by merit or our striving but by mere faith.

The narrowness of the world is not our playground.

The wideness of God’s love is where we’re welcomed to rejoice. In that wideness is room for all that we humans can bring to bear. It’s there we bring our gifts of music, art, embroidery, sculpting, carving, painting, and more. It’s there we pour out all that we are for all that we’re called to be. It’s there that our aspiration for further on meets God’s acceptance of just where we are.

I’m not a theologian. But I’m convinced of the love of God.

I’m convinced that in our striving, singing, praying, and serving together that God is glorified. Sometimes that will look excessive. Sometimes it will look scant. Sometimes it will look restrained. Sometimes it will look innovative, boring, or tired. It will look like all we have to offer on that day. And it will be just enough. It will be just enough of what we can give on that day and it will be enough.

It always has been. It always will be.

Because God has given just enough too. And it’s all we’ve ever needed.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert