While I personally believe that this church should authorize the blessing of life-long, stable, and committed monogamous couples, it is nevertheless disappointing that yet another bishop ("Asheville Cathedral Will Offer Same-Sex Blessings") has acted impulsively and unilaterally to offer same-sex blessings in his diocese [TLC, Oct. 22].

General Convention has not yet given approval to develop liturgies or have blessings for same-sex unions. Resolution D039 recognized that there are couples in this church who are living in life-long non-marital relationships, but it did not authorize rites for blessing these unions. Nor is our polity congregational or presbyterial.

So one has to ask, as has been asked of other bishops before him, by what authority does the Bishop of Western North Carolina underwrite his action? Absent a valid collegial authority, we are left with a kind of diocesan anarchy which seriously threatens the unity of this church.

And was it only a grammatical gaffe when the bishop said, "I want to be supportive of whatever a congregation decides is the appropriate ministry for them to support their people pastorally"? Does he, can he actually, really mean "whatever"? One's imagination runs wild with the possibilities. Withal, the combination of this unilateral decision and this fractured syntax appears, regrettably, to be just now descriptively accurate of how some bishops practice conflict resolution.

The Bishop of Western North Carolina by this action joins the too-long list of ordinaries who somehow suppose that their private wisdom supercedes the authority of everything in our tradition, including General Convention and the will of both its houses.

(The Rev.) Harmon L. Smith

Durham, N.C.