Sitting on the rude stone foundation of a long-gone oratory, you can see a narrow strip of golden sand that forms the beach at Cannes. It is quiet on the little scrap of land known as St. Honoratus. It is hard to imagine this tiny island as a monastic center that evangelized and settled much of France. From this epicenter of learning, monks brought the saving word of Christ, agricultural training and scholastic enterprise, while they recruited new clergy to build the next generation of the church. Among the island's graduates are Saints Hilary of Arles and Lupus of Troyes. It is suspected by many that Patrick, apostle to the Irish, was taught by monks from this glorious place. One of the most notable inhabitants of these islands gives them their current name, the Isles de Lerins.

St. Vincent of L6rins is best known for writing the Comminitorium sometime before his death in 450. It was a guide for the catholic faith in an age when many competing ideologies attempted to infiltrate Christianity. One of the most remembered and repeated items within his guide was the Vincentian Canon, a statement intended to aid in the identification of Christian truth. He set up a hierarchy of determinants for establishing orthodox Christian teaching. First, he claimed, is the ultimate ground on which Christian truth rests, holy scripture. Only if there are disputes as to meaning of scripture is the authority of the church to be used to assure correct interpretation. This authority was derived from the tradition of the church and was a major consideration in determining doctrine. The "canon" was "Quod ubique, quod semper quod ab omnibus creditum est", or What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. This trio of universality, location and time was used to distinguish between the true and the false in the tradition of the church.

These ideas are repeated over and over again in the Western Church and appear explicitly in Anglican Bishop John Jewel's great defense of the Church of England, Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562). They are expanded upon with brilliance by one of the young men he mentored, Richard Hooker (1554-1600), in his Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. These are foundations for the doctrine of our church from the beginning and reach to bedrock in the understanding of the faith in the early and later church.

The Episcopal Church has never been a quiet place. Beyond question we are the rough and tumble carriers of a seldom placid Christian heritage. Our Mother Church, the Anglican Communion, spent 300 years after separation from Rome in pitched battle over polity, prayer book, liturgy, evangelistic style and social activism. For us in the Episcopal Church to think we own these debates exclusively or undertake them only in our own time would display abysmal ignorance. I consider these internal spats a struggle for the truth which God reveals to his community. This kind of debate compels discussion, sifting of ideas, and reasoned measuring of impact from change delivered to the future church. It is after all the ayes and nays are put to rest that we forge a new pattern for the life of the Episcopal Church. Unfortunately, the arena for our struggle to discover God's call in a rapidly changing world has caused some decisions which concern me.

With each battle and its subsequent fallout, the Episcopal Church has trimmed a variety of groups from its ranks. The arguments I hear claim we have a handful of overly narrow church members who decide to cut themselves off to protect their rigid views. Certainly this has been the accusation lodged against the Prayer Book Society and now focuses on the more conservative bishops in our church. I disagree with this view. Those plotting the course and throwing the switches for both the national church and various dioceses have expressed a cavalier attitude toward the members who have departed for more orthodox territory. Indeed there is expressed delight that they are gone. We have a prevailing attitude among the current leadership that those who disagree are best off if they leave.

By the same reckoning, this means the Episcopal Church, if it disagrees with the Church Catholic, could appropriately be asked to withdraw, or be expelled, for holding incorrect doctrine. We are no longer a part of the Christian faith as understood by the larger body of Christ if we do not use the means for establishing standards Anglicanism and the entire Western Church have used as a guide. We also set a course at odds with that of the Orthodox Church. We are heretical, teaching false doctrine, if we move to endorse in our tiny church what the greater church has never entertained. Two examples currently causing distress are rites blessing samesex relationships and rites altering the traditional formula, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." These changes will be discussed at General Convention in Philadelphia. The move has no specific warrant in holy scripture, and it is unmindful of the reference points of the Vincentian Canon. Instead of believing and doing that which has been believed "everywhere, always, and by all," we propose to do that which in the church has been believed nowhere, never and by none.

Yes, like so many of us, I want "no outcasts" -people rejected through hardness of heart, institutional barriers, or lack of inclusive behavior by this wonderful Episcopal Church. Yet neither do I want to be made an outcast from the body of Christ because our attempts at being open hearted breach the rules of Christian living that have guided "all" the faithful 11 everywhere, always." As convention approaches, pray God grants us the heart and mind to remember we are part of the Church Catholic, even while we decide what is needed for our own church.