Bishop Daniel Herzog Comes Home

According to a story at The Living Church Foundation, Bishop Daniel Herzog, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Albany, NY, has entered into full communion with the See of Rome. While I don't think salvation hangs on such things, I do confess to a certain amount of excitement at such news. Is it nothing more than a feeling of pride that yet one more person is out there who sees things more or less the way I do, or is it genuine joy at the prospect of at least some partial restoration of that Unity for which Our Lord prayed so fervently? I suppose if I were honest I would have to say it's both, though I hope that someday I will grow up enough to feel only the latter. In writing to the new Bishop, William Love, of his decision, Bishop Herzog had this to say:

My sense of duty to the diocese, its clergy and people required that I not walk away from my office and leave vulnerable this diocese which I love. I believed that it was my responsibility to provide for a transition to the future. Your subsequent election and consecration discharged that duty and has given me the liberty to follow my conscience, and now resign my orders and membership in the House of Bishops.

It is certainly no reflection on you or your ministry which Carol and I both admire and respect and for which we pray daily. Needless to say, we have only fondness and appreciation for you and the diocese in whose ministry Carol and I have invested the past 35 years of our lives.

I can think of at least one other Episcopal Bishop that I would like to see make a similar decision, even prior to retirement. Then all would indeed be right with the world in my tiny little mind. Failing that, I take comfort in knowing that plenty of non-Catholics are already in a state similarity, if not Unity, that surpasses even what some of my fellow Catholics are able to muster. So things are, perhaps, not as bleak as they sometimes seem.