If you tarry 'til you're better

You will never come at all.

An Episcopal priest has decided that Jesus' demand that you be reconciled to your brother before coming to the altar means he mustn't celebrate the Eucharist, or take it, until the church has dealt with its history of "white supremacy." Not surprisingly, he'll probably be defrocked.

He seems to be either objecting to God's denial of inherited punishment or claiming that we can make ourselves pure enough on our own. He'd do better, I think, to claim that inequalities of income or status represent current sins -- there's a little more of a tradition of that sort of claim.

Protests such as Ramey’s have been key to forcing change in the Episcopal Church, said the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, former dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School in New York City. Bishops ordained 11 women to the priesthood in 1974, in defiance of church policy. In 2007, five priests in Massachusetts refused to officiate weddings until the church allowed them to perform same-sex marriages.

FWIW, This Douglas the story cites is called "an expert on racial reconcilliation." She's written a book, but permit me to wonder who exactly she has managed to reconcile. I’ve said it before and will continue to say: you can’t be white and Christian. I don’t mean that in terms of looking like a white American, but instead, the construct of “white.” With allies like that...

It looks like he decided that his parish (he resigned, btw) was obstinately sinful because of the inaction of the greater church, and that he should declare his own interdict.