I Me Mine

I ME MINE is a Beatles song, writ­ten and sung by George Har­rison on the Let It Be album. It is also a way to de­scribe what hap­pened in Cali­fornia when Ba­rack Obama was elected pre­si­dent of the United States.

California's hate-filled anti-gay law gets spe­cial at­ten­tion be­cause gay peo­ple were already being mar­ried there. Texas did a pre­emptive strike on the sub­ject: pas­sing anti-gay laws on mar­riage be­fore any­body here had pro­posed. Mar­riage is so shaky here that same-gender people tying the knot would render opposite-gender mar­riage to shambles.

Little girl: "Johnny, are you the opposite sex? Or am I?"
K-Mart Photography radio commercial, 1970s

Arkansas and Florida were just as god­less and hate­ful in crea­ting mar­riage apart­heid in their states. Apart­heid: we can have it, but you can't.

Gay people were out-gunned, or so I'm told. They were bet­ter organized. The hate groups — such as the Ro­man Catholic Church — jumped in to do­nate a bunch of hate-money into the state.

Mormons added $20-million because mar­riage is a sacred institu­tion be­tween a man and a dozen or so women. I think it is very sad for the Mor­mons to do that. In the ear­ly 1980s, I worked for Bonee­ville, broad­casting com­pany owned by the Mor­mon church. Listen­ing to any Bonneville radio sta­tion, you would nev­er know it was run by a right-wing church. They seemed to have a "Live and Let Live" at­ti­tude. At the time, Mormons didn't drink coffee, but they had free gour­met cof­fee for their employees. That at­titude has obviously changed, and they want to impose their stu­pid ideas about what should consti­tute a mar­riage on everyone.

If Mormons and Romans don't consider a same-gender couple to be a proper or valid union, they should have such a rule ... but for their own adherents.

I'm also told that exit polls showed most population groups broke about 50::50 on the Cali­fornia proposi­tion. The excep­tion is the black popu­lation, who were 70::30 against equal rights for gay people.

Mormons: I ME MINE, and you have to do like we do. If you get out of step, we will pass laws the dis­allow equal rights and equal treat­ment. (Note to Mitt: if you don't fix this, it will still be an issue in 2012.)

Roman Catholics: I ME MINE, and your church exper­ience — Sacra­ment of Matri­mony — must com­ply with our canons.

African Americans: I ME MINE. "We got our deal done, and we don't care (70%) about gay pe­ople."

For all them, I have to keep remind­ing my­self: Love God, love your­self, love your neigh­bor as your­self, love your ene­mies. Some days I just don't want to.

OBAMA! Yes we did.

Barack Obama: President-elect. The good guys won for a change!

It has been a zillion years since I was a pimply-faced high school kid dating a black guy with an activist mother. The fact that he was black was a bigger deal with my parents than the fact he was another guy. His mom dragged Tony and me along to an out-of-town protest/rally/march/shin-dig.

It was the mid-1960s. The speaker was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, and my folks were hopping mad that I wanted to go. But go I did, continuing my streak of bucking my dad's button-up lips, button-down shirts. His friends were all right-wing Republicans, while his only son was way out on the left where the busses don't run.

I'd love to tell you that I went to the rally for The Cause, but frankly it was because I was head-over-heels for Tony and wanted to spend every waking moment with him.

I had no idea who this King guy was, other than the TV news called him a trouble-maker. I also had no idea what hatred was until we were faced with state troopers with barking dogs, pulling their leashes like they wanted to tear us limb-from-limb.

Rev. King was the calmest one there. He told us not to do anything other than be peaceful and walk together.

I wanted to pee in my pants. Tony and his mother seemed afraid but not as much as me.

That was my first -- but not my last -- chance to fight for equal rights for racial minorities. It wasn't my Number One thing: I had Vietnam to protest and Nixon to annoy. I had Gay Lib, too... which was not a trivial undertaking in the 60s in Texas.

Had Rev. King not been killed, he could still be alive today. I like to think that he would not be surprised to see Barack Obama elected because with somebody like Rev. King around, I'm convinced we already would have had our first person of color in the White House.

Anyway, Mr. Obama's election isn't the REAL news. The actual Big Deal is when we have a person of color eected and nobody notices.

Tony is dead now: AIDS. His mother is too: cancer. They didn't get to see the country come together, and they were of ages that makes this transition in power bitter-sweet for me personally. They didn't have the health care. Tony ended up into drugs and booze and one-night-stands. He didn't stand a chance. His mother did everything right, except get sick when she didn't have health insurance. I miss them both.

Of course, Tony would have been royally pissed that California passed that godless law making gay marriage illegal. He (and I think his mother too) would have been ready to go take on the bigoted goof-balls who decided a minority group like gays and lesbians shouldn't have equal rights.

It was sheer bigotry (or an insistence on feeling superior to another groups) that has told thousands of legally married couples that they are no longer married. They are single and "living in sin."


One TV report said the California law passed because African-Americans voted in unprecedented numbers. They went to vote so they could vote for Barack Obama. Good for them. Hurray for the good guys: we won finally.

But, excuse me? The black community thinks being gay is wrong? It is for crackers like me?

It is a promiscuous lifestyle for some, because gay people are never given society's blessing to be monogamous. Tony would have settled down if society had told him he was permitted to do that. But I know what Tony would be screaming today... and I don't like putting those kinds of words in ink.

Just this simple: gay people in California fought for the guy whose supporters yanked their most basic civil right away. Gay people in California are now staring at fellow citizens. I'm embarrassed for those fellow citizens and the shame they should be feeling.

I am so very happy that Barack Obama won the election. The good guys won.

Next time, do the good guys think it might be possible to win without pissing all over the rights of others?

"Government messes up everything it touches," said CNBC's stock wonk, Den­nis Kneale, and every­one on my TV screen chuckled and agreed.

He was talking about the U.S. government's plan to fix the eco­no­mic mess we're in. There was a meeting yesterday evening between all kinds of govern­ment work­ers: cabi­net sec­re­taries, fed­eral reserve gover­nors, sena­tors and mem­bers of con­gress. You had both Repub­licans and Demo­crats. And today, I haven't heard of a sin­gle part­ici­pant who dis­agreed with the need for the govern­ment to do some­thing dramatic.

And yet, CNBC's goof knows that the U. S. government will make a mess out of things.

Excuse me, but it is people like him and his buddies who caused the sit­ua­tion. It was the Re­pub­lican right-wing goof-balls who got the government off the backs of investment banks. What hap­pened was that greed kicked in, and we were standing on the edge of eco­no­mic melt-down.

A few minutes earlier, CNBC was interviewing one of the string of "ex­perts" who ex­plained the situa­tion to ignorant guys like me. We just fell off the back of a tur­nip truck, you know. This "expert" started by saying that he questioned his own support for govern­ment action when he heard that Sen. Barack Obama supported it. What we are sup­posed to know is that Sen. Oba­ma isn't ca­pable of sup­porting any­thing that works or is bene­ficial.

A bit later, CNBC identified their "expert" as a writ­er for The Wall Street Jour­nal. In other words, he is an employee of Rupert Murdock, one of the most bi­zarre right-wing guys in busi­ness.

The universe knows what to do with a vacuum. It stuffs what­ever it finds into it. The universe takes whatever means it has to destroy any vacuum it finds. Sena­tors Phil Gramm and John McCain got laws passed and signed to de­re­gulate every­thing in sight. With­out govern­ment controls, the market­place came in with its own set of controls.

Tell me what I'm sup­posed to do when a right-wing ty­rant buys up eve­ry news­paper in sight? The market­place says I need to go elsewhere, but there isn't an "else­where" be­cause one guy owns every­thing.

Government may mess things up, but I know what to do with a sena­tor or pre­sident who mes­ses things up. I work to get them defeated. That isn't always suc­cess­ful be­cause incum­bents have an advan­tage. It isn't always suc­ces­sful when one lives in Texas (where citizens elected George W as gov­er­nor and pre­si­dent. Twice!)

It isn't always successful, but it is possible. I want public po­licy to be de­bated in pub­lic by peo­ple who are ac­count­able to the pub­lic, not in a board room where the parti­ci­pants do things solely for their own per­sonal bene­fit.

The government is the worst group for deal with this eco­no­my... ex­cept all the other groups.

Jim Rankin (Elijah)

Jim Rankin died. He died 3 years ago, and I only found out about it today. He was 63 years old.

Jim was a really good author, with multiple titles on the Old Catholic Church. He was in a different branch of the church, so I have a bit of cover in not knowing about his demise.

Some of his books have become intensely difficult to find. My favorite is impossible to find, and it is only 8 years since initial publication.

If you ever run across this book, please let me know!

Publisher: Dry Bones Press (Aug 2000)
ISBN-10: 1883938899
ISBN-13: 978-1883938895

Imported stuff from an old blog

2006 comment

B is for Bishop,
And B is for Blog:
This Catholic guy,
He rides a Hog!

— Reader Marti Martinson, Washington DC

(NOTE: "Hog" refers to the bishop's Harley-Davidson.)

---

Episcopus Vagans (2006)

What I am now is an Episcopus Vagans. I am not in any jurisdiction. There is no bishop/cardinal/pope/poobah over me. I am still a loose cannon, but now I have my on deck to roll around on!

The model is the ancient churches. There were no "priests" until Christianity moved into the country-side. The pastor of a church did everything. When people outside the towns were baptized, pastors recognized they couldn't be everywhere.

The solution was for the pastors to create a kind of assistant pastor, people who could move around out in the sticks. Eventually, the pastor in the city became known as the bishop for his jurisdiction. The itinerant minister was called a priest.

Priests were given permission to say Mass and hear confession. Sometimes there was an archpriest who could ordain priests on special permission of the bishop.

I believe this is still a good model. Synods and denominations perform little good, except to stress how fractured and dysfunctional Christianity is. Every town and village should be served by a bishop/priest who knows and understands the needs of his or her community.

It doesn't mean that I believe everyone should be ordained who raises his hand. We already have that in the Universal Life Church (ULC). What I think is that no consecrated bishop should have to answer to any other bishop.

According to this model, the priesthood is but one final stopping point before becoming a bishop: just like the deaconate is typically not a terminal Order but a probationary stop before the priesthood.

The liturgy used for my consecration is at the Global Library.

---

Apostolic Succession (2006)

An important thing for bishops is called apostolic succession. Here's why it is important: only a bishop can consecrate and ordain. You can't just wake up one morning and declare you are a priest or a bishop.

If only a bishop can make a bishop, it is logical that any bishop can trace his/her lineage all the way back to the original apostles.

I can do that, and I have dozens of separate lines of succession that lead back to the apostles.

My personal pedigree is documented online—
Bishop Wynn Wagner succession details

In a nutshell, upstream from me are...

• Wedgwood/Leadbeater (Liberal Catholic)
  
• Gul (Old Catholic)
  
• Carlos Duarte Costa (Roman Catholic / Brazil)
  
• Cranmer (Church of England)
  
• Philippine Independent Church
  
• Ancient Celtic Church
  
• Greek Orthodox
  
• Armenian Catholic
  
• Chaldean Churchm
  
• Chalcedonian (“Byzantine”) Orthodox
  
• Syrian Orthodox “Jacobite” Church
  
• Coptic Church

...and so forth. The lineage document has the details.

Within 12-hours of its posting, the apostolic succession document was found and sent around to most Liberal Catholic bishops in the USA. The LCCI is my former affiliation. Msgr Tony Howard (Frisco TX) is the one who sent the document. And within a few hours after he sent it out, I got three people telling me that he had done this. Of course I don't mind that he found it and shared it with others! That is why the document is online, for God's sake. It does underscore that everything on the internet is available to everyone.

---

The vagabond bishop (2006)

I am an “episcopus vagans,” which means a bishop with no particular jurisdiction.

“Vagans” is a cool word. It comes from vagus -- first used in the 1400s. It means a wanderer. Our word vagabond comes from vagus. Our word vagrant comes from the same place but through an indirect route.

The early church didn't have bishops and priests. It only had priests, but today's bishop does what the priest did in the ancient church. When Christianity made inroads into rural areas, the pastor/priests knew they needed help. The solution was to ordain assistant priests who could baptize and preach and share the Lord's Supper with those outside the cities.

These assistants did nothing on their own: they were a kind of assistant to the pastor. The words slowly changed: the assistants came to be called priest, and the pastors became to be called Elders or Presbyters or Bishops.

My consecration as a bishop takes me back to the ancient church. I am just a priest with a church. Thanks to Bishops Plummer, Jones, and Bryant, I am a whole / complete priest. There is no jurisdiction.

Our church is not part of a larger group, and that is just the way the congregation likes it.

St Mychal Judge is truly like the ancient church. The pastor is a whole priest and can ordain and confirm.

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

---

Stepping down the energy (2006)

One of the hard things I had to learn as a priest was to "step-down" the energy of the Eucharist before making it available to members of the congregation.

There's a part of the Mass where the priest offers the body and blood back to God. The "Angel of the Mass" takes our oblation to God's altar in heaven.

After the Angel departs, the energy of the host and wine are only a fraction of what they had been only a few seconds earlier. I secretly used this "trick" of the liturgy to step-down the energy. In other words, the Angel did most of the work for me.

When I celebrate Mass as a bishop, the trick no longer works. Either there is more energy (with the Angel taking the same amount but leaving the additional power)... or the Angel has stopped helping me stap-down the power.

The Angel is definitely present. Its departure is still explosive, and yet there remains a strong energy on the alter.

I don't know what to do with this change yet. Hopefully nobody will get zapped too strongly before I figure out how to step-down the higher energy level.

---

From priest to bishop (2006)

I said "bishop" in front of my name would never happen. Never is a relative term. What I should have said was that I never wanted a jurisdiction to manage... to diocese to oversee.

In the primitive church, there were no priests. The town's pastor was what we would now call a bishop. It was only after Christianity started moving into rural areas that pastors discovered they couldn't be everywhere at once. Travel into the words wasn't very fast on foot or horse. The pastor needed to have an assistant. The pastor became the bishop, and the assistant became the priest.

Even today, priests are assistants to the bishop. They can only do sacraments and other ministries okayed by the bishop for that jurisdiction. There is a absolute hierarchy in most sacramental churches.

The arrangement works when there is a good working relationship between the bishop and his/her priests. It was this relationship that failed.

On May 6, 2006, The Most Rev Dr John Plummer (Tennessee) and The Most Rev Rob Angus Jones (California) and The Most Rev James Bryant (Texas) came to St Mychal Judge Church in Dallas Texas. In a special Eucharist service, they consecrated me as a bishop. One of our parishioners -- Robert Putnam -- "gave me away" and all of the congregants were invited to come up at the start of the service and lay their hands on me as a way of supporting my consecration.

Here are some snapshots of the consecration service: http://www.mychaljudge.com/gallery

The rite was kind of typical: mild substrate of chaos resting on a foundation of rock.
Afterwards I was completely buzzed... probably more than in all my ordinations combined (cleric, doorkeeper, reader, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon, and priest).

- - - - -

Later in the afternoon we got a frantic phone call: one of my consecrating bishops had dropped a glass jug which shattered into a zillion pieces. One large piece stabbed his foot, nicking an artery. He had a geyser. Fortunately, he was able to put something on the wound until three of us could get to him and take him to the emergency room.

Or as I told him later: "Dude, I am sooooo upset with you. This was supposed to be my day... it was supposed to be All About Wynn... and here you go trying to carve a stigmata in yourself to get some attention... humph."

He is fine.

---

From Liberal to Old (2006)

I resigned as a Liberal Catholic (LCCI) priest the first of May, 2006. The biggest reason is a problem that developed between me and the Ordinary (i.e., bishop). Leaving was my choice: nobody suggested it.

Other factors sealed my decision:

• The LCCI doesn't permit same-gender marriage ceremonies.
  
• There are some flaws in the liturgy used to consecrate a bishop. (minor)
  
• The LCCI Eucharist suppresses the notion that it is a sacrifice.

After consulting some members of the congregation and all three of our seminarians, we pulled the plug. As of today, no member of the congregation has objected, and all of the seminarians said they wanted to go along with the change.

Reminder: everything in this post dates to 2006. You will find more recent postings beyond this. We are not in chronological order for this post.

Do the Math

In 2000, two former oil men took the top two positions in the US government. We can assume they knew something about oil and oil companies.

Before they began running things, gasoline was under $1.50 per gallon. Seven years of oil company rule, and the price of gasoline is over $4.00 per gallon.

Minding the Country's Doubloons

Somebody was on TV saying something like "we can't trust the government to spend our money." The second half of that is business can be trusted. The rule of profit is somehow the infallible principle that will keep the country upright, and anything else is suicidal.

It is a insipid thought that right-wing pundits use all the time. It is said off-the-cuff, as though it is an obvious point. Everybody knows that the government can't be trusted with our money. Right?

Actually, they are correct: the government really cannot be trusted to spend our money. They recognized half of the problem and assumed they could skip directly to their conclusion. So government can't be trusted.

But neither can unbridled corporations. Businesses don't have any kind of inside dope on how to do things. In fact, if we let them run around with our money, they'll quickly become speculators. The corporation works for the benefit of the corporation. When it does things that benefit workers or consumers, it is because it helps the corporation.

There is no noblesse oblige. At best, it is enlightened self-interest, which is something that requires the head corporate guy to be enlightened.

Neither corporations nor government should be able to squander my money.

The big difference is that the government of a democracy is supposed to debate and decide things in a public forum. That is opposite of a corporation, which does everything it can in secret. When was the last time you were invited into a board of directors of a major corporation?

If our elected representatives make a mess of things (and they will), we can send them packing at the next election. Try that with General Motors or Exxon/Mobile.

I have to remind myself not to fall into the trap of the right-wing special interests. Right now, they control the radio and television networks. They done an awesome job of reshaping the way we think about government.

We can fix illegal immegration once and for all

I have an opinion on what to do with Mexican nationals flooding into the USA, and it fixes much of the unfair practices of dealing with Communist China.

Why can't somebody figure out how to shift some of the money going to the Communists? Shouldn't we be active in trying to create jobs south of our border?

I certainly understand why Mexican nationals try to go north for work. If I were in their position, I'd be doing the same thing. But......

If workers in Mexico can get better jobs in Mexico, they don't need to risk their life and liberty to get into another country.

Cuba and/or China

Why don't we have economic ties to Cuba? They're right next door. Shouldn't we favor Communist countries in our own hemisphere, rather than favoring Communist China halfway around the world?

The answer, of course, is that politicians need to pander to the Cubans now living in Florida. It can't be because Cuba is a communist country, and it can't be because the Cuban government is oppressive. China does the same thing, and shipping from China would take gobs more energy than a little puddle-jump to Cuba.

I went to a store looking for a business card holder and a pen holder. Office Depot did not give me any choice: they tried to force me into doing business with Communist China. Every desk set on the Office Depot shelves was imported from China. That isn't free trade. That's a monopoly.

China is the Saudi Arabia of cheap goods. The Saudis account for more of the world's crude oil than anyone else. China is the "sole source" when a merchant wants cheap.

"W" vs gay marriage

George W Bush is less popular than same-gender marriage among Republicans.

Wow.

Gay marriage and equal rights have long been one of the defining stances of the radical right wing. They now like George W Bush less than gay marriage. (77% to 72%; source:Chris Matthews).

Raging against the Playground Bully

So there was this guy at work, who got through his day by intimidating others. He was the bully of the playground.

One day when I was in his office, he said something about “revealing personal secrets.” It was the way bullies start their game.

I quickly confronted him: “Where you going to tell somebody I'm a faggot?”

It was a move he didn't expect, and he didn't know how to deal with it. I paused for a few seconds to observe my work. It was good.

Then I said, “Let's both get on the same page,” adding a bit of Corporate Jargon to seem like I fit in there.

“The manager who hired me knew I was gay before she hired me. You did know that, didn't you? In fact, most of my department knows I'm gay. The president of the corporation knows I'm gay, for Pete's Sake. My father knows I'm gay. My mother knows I'm gay.”

I added, quickly, “My boyfriend is beginning to suspect that I'm gay.”

This is conversation karate. The bully had nothing to say.

“Just so I know what's going on, who were you going to tell?”

The important thing is that he and I worked at the same place for another 15 years. Not once in that time did he ever treat me with anything but respect. If it wasn't respect, then it was fear that I was unbalanced and likely to go off on him again with the slightest provocation or excuse.

Confronting problems straight-on has always been the easier way, the softer way. (And the way that offers the most entertainment.)

John Selig

The name of this blog came from John Selig. He has done more work as an activist than anyone I know.


John also has a sense of humor that is quite singular and dangerous. Not that John twists the knife of humor after he stabs. Oh, no... John makes sure he uses a knife large enough that no twisting is required.

He also announced that he found the best name for a store that sells used Indian clothing: “Whose Sari Now?”

Oiy.

My absolute favorite John'ism is what he sometimes uses in a fast food restaurant--

Cashier (aka The Innocent Victim):	“Is there for here or to go?”
John (aka The Sniper):	“Which do you recommend?”

From Rev Michael Pfleger

If you took a sound-bite of Jesus saying "You've got to hate your brother and your mother and your sister and your father in order to love me" and loop that around, they'd say Jesus was a mad man. If you did a visual of Jesus turning tables over in the temple and that's all you showed, you'd say he was crazy. You can define people how you want with sound bites. -- Rev Michael Pfleger, St. Sabina Church, Chicago

Is the 2008 race really historical?

I hear that the 2008 race for president of the US is "historic."

True: we have a person of color heading up the Democratic party, and he beat out the woman who blew through any glass ceilings. Plus, I don't think that the final 3 all being senators has never happened.

But for race and gender, it isn't history. Better said: it isn't the real history.

The real history of presidential campaigns won't be reported. It can never be reported.

The real history is when a person of color or a woman or an openly gay person runs for president and nobody notices their race or gender or sexual orientation.

Apologizing for a campaign

The first time I ever saw Bill Clinton was in the early 1970s. He worked in Texas on behalf of George McGovern's campaign for president.

One thing from that campaign stuck with me all these years. I don't know if Bill Clinton said it, but I'm sure he heard it.

We all knew that Dick Nixon was going to win, of course. Here's what somebody said--

Even if we don't win this thing, you're involved in a campaign that you will never have to apologize for.

We didn't do any dirty tricks, so far as I know. We were idealists trying to change the nation.

Fast forward to 2008. I wasn't around for Hillary Clinton's campaign, but I think there is more than idealism. I sense a "win at all costs" attitude... "if I can't win, nobody will win" scorched earth approach.

I don't sense the idealism of the McGovern race, and I wonder if Senator Clinton or her staff will ever feel the need to apologize for it.