Please keep us in your prayers.

Bishop Leo and Diana Frade
Miami, Fla.

I was extremely disappointed by Minou Sutton’s letter concerning costs of drugs post organ donation and her negative attitude towards who deserves an organ [“Costs of organ donation,” September].

I lost my sister unexpectedly nearly two years ago due to a brain aneurysm and the comfort our family has received in the fact that she was an organ donor is profound.  We recently received a letter from a young man who had struggled with diabetes for 28 years. He received one of my sister’s kidneys and his life has been restored. He loves to ballroom dance and spend time with his 11-year-old son. It doesn’t matter to us what brought him to need the kidney. We are filled with joy in having given him renewed life!

A gentleman who received another of my sister’s kidneys had been on dialysis for six years.  I cannot believe that is cheap! He is now able to enjoy all activities again. There is no charge to the family who donates the organs. None. Yes, there are costs for the rest of the recipient’s life, just as with other illnesses.

As a volunteer working to promote organ donations, I always end my presentations with this statement: “If one of your children, parents or close friends or family members needed an organ transplant ( and I will add for Ms. Sutton, “no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the expenses”) wouldn’t you pray that someone else had taken the time and interest in claiming themselves an organ donor.”
In memory of my sister Karen Berquist, organ donor, giver of life.

I am an organ recipient and in my book organ donors are gifts from God.  They are so brave to give up their loved ones’ organs, so someone else (usually a stranger) may live.  I feel I have been given this transplant because there is still something that I need to accomplish for God. Perhaps it is just to make people aware of the desperate need for organ donations.

Ms. Sutton is under the false impression that liver recipients are “alcoholic or IV-drug abusers.”  Liver failure can be caused [by a number of diseases and infections]: Hepatitis A, eating tainted food, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, viral infections, inherited diseases, blocked bile ducts and even acetaminophen (Tylenol) overdose.  My liver failure was due to a blood disease that was monitored by my doctor.  Liver failure can stem from so many medical disorders.

Ms. Sutton thinks recipients are “financial burdens to their families.”  I thank God daily for the privilege to continue living.  I was in a coma and my husband made the decision to save my life.  Did he question the financial cost or did he want to preserve our family of two daughters ages 12 and 13?  My daughters are now a junior and a senior in high school.  They may not be able to attend an expensive private university but they will attend college.  Given the preference of more monetary items or their mom alive, they would definitely choose me.

Many organ recipients can go back to work and live relatively normal lives.  Yes, we will always have our medications to take, but other people are on meds too.  We are watched closely by our doctors so that we preserve this gift we have been given.  November 14th is National Donor Sabbath Day.  Please honor all donors for their gifts of life.

Like Martha Giltinan, I, too, have "cherished gay and lesbian friends," not to mention a gay family member. However, I do not see their same-sex attraction and love as any more broken than the rest.
As a marriage and family therapist, I have seen hundreds of married, heterosexual couples who, in my opinion, do not "complement each other as God intends." Many of these relationships are damaged by disrespect, hurtfulness, addiction, betrayal and abuse. I believe that how spouses regard and treat one another is far more important in God's eyes than their gender. Furthermore, who am I to tell my gay and lesbian friends or my brother that the love they feel for a partner is somehow inferior to the love I feel for my husband?

Bless all our unions. All of us, gay or straight, need all the help we can get.

I find myself tired of the same old stances on this issue of same-sex marriage [“Banns in Boston,” July/August]. “I will do it, I won’t do it; we can’t do, we must do it.”  The underlying problem, as I see it, is that we have never really defined marriage. We always presume we know what it is -- as the prayer book implies on page 423 -- however, we are restricted by state law as to who can enter into marriage.

Marriage wasn’t declared a sacrament until 1215 -- and then only because the church wanted to control the transfer of secular property (the Investiture Controversy). The definition of marriage has always been fluid. We can justify polygamy based on Old Testament patriarchs and kings (Abram, David and Solomon).  We can actually ban marriage if we read Paul’s injunction that says, “It is better to marry than to burn,” because preparing for the end of time does not allow time for a spouse and children.
Christian history is littered with all kinds of marriage arrangements and customs down to our own day. My grandparents’ marriage in 1902 was arranged when he was 28 and she was 24.  Marriage in the church proper only became an event for the wealthy and titled after Alexander VI had Lucretia Borgia’s second marriage in the Vatican (a political move).

The state licenses us to witness marriages for its benefit, and as the couples are the ministers of the marriage, we clergy are present only in the name of the community to bless the relationship, not make it legal.

How thankful I am to at last read something that echoes my own grief at the evil of torture [Vicki Gray’s commentary “Echoes of evil,” July/August]. I carry this suffering in my heart – even as I know these victims are God’s own, and how Christ is weeping over Abu Ghraib… and the Detention Center in Elisabeth, N.J., just a few miles from our Diocese.

I don’t know what to do with the stories I hear from the detainees about their suffering at the hands of our government. I don’t know who to tell about my own outrage hearing the prison doctor describe to me what “fun” the correction officers have with the newly arrived women and girls from Africa, south America and Asia – when these male officers persuade them to strip naked and have breast examinations.

A young African woman was raped by a corrections officer and it just wasn’t news. Human rights lawyers finally managed to achieve parole for the prisoner, but there is no understanding of the sin.

I believe torture is a sin against the Holy Spirit -- and we have to leave the judgment to God – but hypocrisy in calling this evil merely “un-American” is something for which we all will pay.

This is a brief response to the column in the September issue by Sarah Frank [“When the circle is broken”]. She asks, in her conclusion, what she as one person can do in her church at a time of dissension and division.  I think the answer is in something else Sarah has said in her column:  keeping Jesus at the center of the circle.

As Sarah noted so well, we can be drawn nearer to and understand better our friends and our foes when we look at each other through Christ.  This doesn't mean division and dissension will just melt away; but Sarah's task, and that for all of us, is to help everyone in our parishes keep their focus on the One who loves us all in spite of ourselves, and who asks us to do the same.

I was very grateful for the column "Threats, promises, rescue techniques," [by the Rev. Jennifer Phillips, September].  Thanks very much for letting people know that small church can have a place.  I grow so weary of mega-church mentality.  It seems we have adopted the business model for non-profits, including churches.  "Grow or die" is accepted as truth, but it's not always so. Not even for business.   

And it's very hard to counter that with authority when it is accepted at all levels.  Some of us need the intimacy of small churches.  We're not closing ourselves off.  We're not turning away newcomers.  We just don't want to belong to large units. Thanks for giving legitimacy to an alternative way.

Thank you for Jennifer Phillips’ marvelous column on “littlest and least parishes.”
Mother Phillips, clearly conveying a sense of “having been there,” captures eloquently and sensitively the plight of small parishes struggling to maintain their identity and unique purpose in a society that places a premium on size and numbers for their own sake.

As a member of a small but stable congregation of “committed, gospel-literate, mission-minded, mutually caring members,” I feel encouraged , even as I know we must continue to do all we can to grow and to reach out to those who can be brought into a closer communion with God and with one another.

Each Sunday, as I experience once again the love, fellowship and devotion of my fellow congregants, I wish we were greater in number but I hardly think we are failing.

Amanda Hughes and David Crean are the reason J2A [Journey to Adulthood] has spread carefully across the English-speaking world [“First steps on a lifelong journey: J2A inspires teens – and congregations – to more vital ministries,” September].

They began slugging around the country about a decade ago telling the story of what wonders God had done in their congregation, St. Phillips in Durham, N.C.  They told us how they and others at St. Philips listened, prayed, cried, lost sleep, found peace, and listened some more for what God might really be calling us to be with the youth placed in our care. David and Amanda turned over years of their lives to this work, eating bad hotel food, missing their families, just to teach folks hungry for this new and substantive way to be with teenagers.

Their willingness to tell their story caused an entire generation of Christian educators to turn our heads aside, like Moses to the burning bush, to a possibility that had not yet occurred to us.  We had been longing for ways to help youth fall in love with the church, and what we discovered was that the church must first fall in love with the youth. 

David and Amanda’s love, awe and respect for youth still shines through every lesson plan, liturgy, and parent’s meeting. Now when we experience the Holy Spirit raging alongside the hormones in the lives of teens, we are not afraid. We feel it wash over us, and celebrate this fresh, troubling and holy revelation of God in our lives.

In 1982, I left the Roman Catholic Church and the active ministry of that “denomination” over issues of authority.  Ever since my college years, I had come to the realization that papal infallibility was an expeditious way for Pius IX to save himself and the papal states.  Many of the USA Roman Catholic bishops attending the First Vatican Council had major problems with that doctrine.

Should I now begin to consider leaving the Episcopal Church for similar reasons?  We are not Roman Catholics and yet Canterbury (through what is reported will be the strongest recommendation of the Lambeth Commission) will have to consider excommunicating us until we repent of whatever sin some Anglican primates erroneously feel we have committed.

Maybe the time has come for the colonies to once more reassess their relationship to the empire and to again bid farewell to a body (the Anglican Communion) that no longer seems to be very practical and meaningful.

I have always presumed Episcopalians to be of above-average intelligence. However, when Doris Niemann posed the question: "Should congregations insist on better manners from children attending services?" everyone got it wrong!

Preferable to insisting on better manners, parents should instill proper manners throughout all stages of a child's development. Social graces are an essential element to success. Consideration of others is a reflection upon one's self. Appropriate behavior separates the winners from the losers. Doors will open -- or shut in your face -- based upon behavior.

At the ballpark, yelling is considered enthusiasm, at a tennis match it is considered obnoxious. Disruptive behavior in the locker room is merely high spirits, but may be threatening to life in an operating room. Loud noises are discouraged in the public library. Are you catching my drift?
Knowing when, where and how to use social graces is learned behavior. Families who neglect a child's social skills do a tremendous disservice to the child. Failure to encourage a child in proper deportment risks hobbling that youngster's future.

Versatile social skills are akin to being multilingual and permit one to move with confidence and ease throughout a variety of social settings. A child needs to learn that behavior acceptable at a football game is probably unacceptable at a funeral. Now, you are all bright boys and girls -- though your answers have, thus far, been disappointing. Certainly, when you reconsider Ms. Niemann's question, you will arrive at the appropriate response.

How ironic that the Rev. Martha Giltinan, a female priest, would come from a literalist hermeneutic with regard to gender issues [“Banns in Boston,”  July/August].  She seems to misunderstand both the essence of what it means for the church to be “radically counter cultural” (I thought it was to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves) as well as the essence of sexuality, a human mystery that is beyond a means of self-fulfillment or sexual preoccupations.

We as Episcopalians are taught that a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.  We can all name some homosexual relationships that embody that inward and spiritual grace, modeling the symbol of the union of Christ and the Church.  And we can, conversely, name some heterosexual marriages which fall short of that description.  This is something we all know for sure – not the will of God or what God intends to which the Rev. Giltinan alludes.

As long as the issue is framed in terms of “them’ and not “those among us,” none of us has fully understood the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

While reading the article “Banns in Boston: Yes we should marry them” [July/August] by the Rev. Anne Fowler, I could not fail to notice the great love and concern she feels for the oppressed and downtrodden.  I could not fail to notice, also, a misunderstanding she shows of what is the Book of Common Prayer.  She referred to the language of the Book of Common Prayer as if it were a document independent from the Bible.  That is not the case.  Very noticeable also is the confusion as to the basis of what the church faith should be.

She wrote that she is “moved by the faith and hope of my parishioners who ask that the church bless their love and commitment fully and unequivocally.”  The church’s faith, and so that of the leaders, should be based on the person of Jesus Christ, not on the parishioner’s needs and hope of what they may consider to be their personal needs.

A Christian church that provides support and helps others is doing a lot of good, but it is not following Christ’s example and teachings if the truth of the gospel is not taught.  She believes that what she is doing is correct, but her actions -- well-intentioned as they are -- lead her parishioners to the grave.

Re: “Banns in Boston,” I must take issue with several statements in the column by the Rev. Martha Giltinan. She states that “Same-sex partners … do not complement each other as God intends.” In marriage, the need to complement the partner consists most importantly in the love, support, encouragement, faithfulness and wisdom that each partner can impart.

When the Rev. Giltinan states that “same-sex attraction is … human brokenness” she is making a value judgement that equals condemnation.

I do agree with the Rev. Giltinan that “It is our vocation, as disciples, to challenge culture…” If so, we must speak out in favor of gay marriage, because “culture” continues to condemn it. For far too long, our fellow citizens have followed a culture of homophobia and archaic interpretations of Scripture while ruining the lives of countless good-living and deeply spiritual gays and lesbians. Let us love, accept and celebrate the marvelous diversity of God’s creation.

The Rev. Martha Giltinan [“Banns in Boston: No, we should not marry them,” July/August] writes that “Scriptures and the church universal’s teaching proclaim that there are two and only two paths for obedient sexual expression: the lifelong marriage of one man and one woman, or chastity. So far as Scripture is concerned, this statement just is not true. God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Gen. 1:28) God does not say, “Marry or be chaste;” God says, “Marry!”

In our modern world of medical miracles, many same-sex couples are raising a new generation in obedience to God’s first scriptural commandment, while many heterosexual marriages remain childless by “mere human love and preference.” Which of the two groups, say ye, is closer to following God’s commandment? When we get to heaven there will be no marrying or giving in marriage (Luke 20:35). Sex, like all earthly life is a temporary, sometime thing. It is necessary, but not perfect.

No one understands why God chooses to create me left-handed and my daughter lesbian. However, since God is neither left- nor right-handed, neither heterosexual nor homosexual, surely this one difference does not make either of us less a child of God, created in God’s likeness and image – despite the persecution which both our groups still endure in many parts of the  monotheistic world.

My daughter and her partner, both female, are just as different from each other as my wife and I are. They have exactly the same tensions and conflicts because each of us is a willful, stubborn, self-regarding, independent creation. Their union is not “one of many expressions of human brokenness;” rather, like all loving relationships, it is “a sign and symbol of God’s radical, reconciling love made visible among us.”

In response to the letter from Minou Sutton about organ transplants, I would like to show her that she is wrong on two counts.

One, most transplant patients do not become ill because of lifestyle choices and, two, the cost of anti-rejection medications does not bankrupt families.

I know these facts because our priest, the Rev. Canon Dalton Downs, rector of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., received a heart over eight years ago. He has not gone bankrupt. The gift of life given him by a young woman who died prematurely allowed Father Downs to resume his priesthood at full power!

Certainly he must take medications, but they have not put him in the poorhouse.

Finally, all too many young children and infants are born with defective organs and they can survive and thrive when given new organs. When young people die their gift of life is the most generous memorial a person can leave behind. We still pray for Dawn Alexander, whose gift has given new life. How better to leave this earth.

Minou Sutton [“Costs of organ donation,” Letters, September] suggests that organ transplants lead to expense for recipients and their families. I submit that it is up to the families to decide how they want to use their financial resources. Many of us would prefer to see added years for our loved ones rather than save a few dollars, but that is clearly not her decision.

She suggests that some people, alcoholics, drug abusers and smokers are not worthy of transplants because they have abused their bodies. Most of us fail to observe perfect health habits, and she seems totally unaware of the numbers of addicts, drug abusers and smokers, overweight people, over stressed people, and those with other self-inflicted health problems who have repented, used such donations, and established loving and contributing lives.

I am especially surprised that she does not seem to be aware of the transplants of eye lens which do not involve extensive debt and are of extreme benefit. Why would she want these to be destroyed at her burial when they could be used? Why would any Christian want to destroy such a resource rather than give it to others who are alive?

I do agree with the premise that the tactics used in Abu Ghraib Prison were beyond deplorable and those in charge should be held accountable. I do not agree with your analogy comparing the behavior in Abu Ghraib to the concentration camp Auschwitz. It is in no way comparable to the Nazis in the Jewish concentration camps during World War 2.

This commentary undermines the Jewish faith and experience by trivializing the horrors that were the “Holocaust” and sabotaging the very Judeo-Christian foundation and tradition that are a part of Christianity.

The comments lack historical knowledge and would be better printed in some far left literature not this newspaper. I read this commentary as nothing more than a political diatribe cloaked in a sanctimonious religiosity lacking a true understanding of theology and history.

Apparently Vicki Gray has joined the bush Bashing crowd. Instead of understanding the awful events (9/11 especially) happening under Bush’s watch, even Christians join this crowd. I thank God we a have a president who publicly declares his belief in God and His commandments and one who believes firmly that freedom belongs to oppressed people and that tyrants cannot be tolerated.

Those who hate and bash our president are playing right into the hands of Osama bin Laden, other terrorists and Hussein followers.

There are many presidents who have had to deal with threats of war or the awful results of war. If these leaders didn’t have the courage of their convictions, we might not have our USA today.

The treatment of divorced clergy is left to the whim of the local bishop. Some Bishops remove any cleric who divorces. The Rev. William Swing, Bishop of the Diocese of California, has a three divorces and you’re out rule.

Swing’s policy is based on the unproven notion that three divorces reflect a character defect on the part of the cleric. Many clergy have character defects and often do quite well in ministry. Racism, sexism, cowardice and penuriousness are rampant among clergy and are not punishable. There is no evidence anywhere that three divorces are the result of character defects.

The bishop’s policy is unilateral, arbitrary, lacks compassion and does not take into consideration individual cases. I suggest that the House of Bishops consider this matter seriously and provide clear guidelines for the bishops and clerics to follow.