Episcopal Diocese

Just before she was ordained in 1977 as the first female priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Phebe Lewald graced her bishop with a small gift."

To expand the quality and variety of its ministries, and to encourage individual congregations to look beyond parish boundaries, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland embarks today on its first fund-raising appeal.The Episcopal Appeal, planned as an annual event, will emphasize raising money for the work of the church, not for church buildings, said the Right Rev. Robert W. Ihloff, bishop of Maryland. The aim, he said, is to promote a new energy in the church."This has to do with moving from a maintenance mode into a mission mode," Ihloff said.

The Rev. Ernest Russell Melbourne Parker, who attained his lifelong dream of becoming a priest in 1984 and had been vicar of Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Southwest Baltimore since 1994, died Saturday at St. Agnes HealthCare from complications of kidney failure. He was 80 and lived on Beechfield Road.Mr. Parker retired as an installer for Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. of Maryland in 1979 and entered the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., paying for his studies with an inheritance his wife had received.

The Rev. Roberto Maldonado is an Episcopal priest and rector of a Canton church. He also happens to be functioning as a Lutheran pastor.Far from triggering an ecclesiastical investigation, Maldonado's dual status anticipates the cooperation and sharing of resources that would result from the historic agreement approved last week between the Episcopal Church and the nation's largest Lutheran denomination.Maldonado and his church, La Iglesia de los Tres Santos Reyes (The Church of the Three Holy Kings)

HAGERSTOWN -- Here in its geographic heart, members of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland gathered yesterday to witness the ordination of the Rt. Rev. John Leslie Rabb as their bishop suffragan.With the field house of St. James School transformed into a cathedral and filled with hundreds of the faithful, Rabb received the symbols of his office of bishop: a Bible, a ring, a cross, the holy oil called chrism, the pointed cap known as a miter and the shepherd's staff.Rabb wore a cope, a ceremonial cape used by bishops, that he designed in hues of blue and green that recalled "The Canticle of the Sun," a poem by St. Francis of Assisi.

With a "decisive majority," the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland elected yesterday an Atlanta-based pastor who once led a Baltimore County parish to be its next suffragan bishop -- the diocese's second-highest post.The Rev. John L. Rabb, a former rector at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Arbutus, will replace Charles L. Longest, who retired in October after eight years in the post. Rabb is expected to take office in September.Rabb, 53, a native of Chicago, is known for his work on social issues in urban and suburban areas.

To attract baby boomers and generation X-ers to his new congregation, the Rev. Gene Bolin is trying something unorthodox and sharp-edged -- something a few even regard as irreverent and sacrilegious.The Episcopal priest in Walkersville has launched an advertising campaign targeting the hard-to-get -- people who have been turned off by religion or never embraced it to begin with -- and speaking to them in their language. And Pastor Bolin, as he prefers to be called, is getting results.The congregation has grown to 100 followers in less than a year and has received national media attention.

HAGERSTOWN -- Here in its geographic heart, members of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland gathered yesterday to witness the ordination of the Rt. Rev. John Leslie Rabb as their bishop suffragan.With the field house of St. James School transformed into a cathedral and filled with hundreds of the faithful, Rabb received the symbols of his office of bishop: a Bible, a ring, a cross, the holy oil called chrism, the pointed cap known as a miter and the shepherd's staff.Rabb wore a cope, a ceremonial cape used by bishops, that he designed in hues of blue and green that recalled "The Canticle of the Sun," a poem by St. Francis of Assisi.

In a gesture simple, yet powerful, Bishop Suffragan Charles L. Longest of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland last night relinquished his crozier, the shepherd's staff that is a symbol of the authority of his office.At his farewell Eucharist at the Church of the Redeemer in Homeland, marking his retirement after 38 years of priesthood, Longest handed the crozier to Robert W. Ihloff, bishop of Maryland."Robert, bishop of Maryland, on this eighth anniversary of my consecration to the episcopate, I place this crozier in your hand," Longest said.

A 16th-century document that was likely looted from an English castle during a civil war and somehow made its way into the archives of a Roman Catholic seminary in Emmitsburg is once again in Episcopalian hands.The parchment document, dated 1566 and signed by the Anglican bishop of Winchester, is a charter establishing the town council of Farnham, a village in Surrey. Yesterday Cardinal William H. Keeler of the Baltimore Roman Catholic Archdiocese presented the charter, written in an obscure Latin script and with the bishop's seal still attached, to Bishop Robert W. Ihloff of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.

Execution isn't path to a peaceful society As Christians, church leaders and bishops in the Episcopal Church, we urge the General Assembly to act to abolish the death penalty ("Report fuels death debate," Dec. 13). As Christians, we are guided by the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Here he specifically rejects retribution by stating that even the teaching in the Old Testament of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is to be rejected in favor of the teaching that calls for reconciliation (Matthew, 6:38)

When the Rev. Canon Eugene T. Sutton was elected the 14th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, the first person he called was his 94-year-old grandmother, a devout Baptist who lives in a Washington nursing home. "Her prayers for me have made all the difference in the world," Sutton said. But more than that, he knew she could appreciate the twists of history that led to his election. Sutton, who will be consecrated tomorrow as the state's first African-American bishop, is the great-great-grandson of slaves.

Raymond C. Bryant, a retired Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. executive and former North Baltimore resident, died Tuesday of leukemia at the Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville. He was 86. Mr. Bryant was born in Baltimore and raised near Wyman Park. He was a 1940 graduate of Polytechnic Institute and earned a bachelor's degree in business from Loyola College in 1943. He also studied economics at the Johns Hopkins University. During World War II, he served in the Navy in the Pacific and attained the rank of lieutenant commander.

Four candidates from across the country have been chosen by a search committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland to replace retired Bishop Robert W. Ihloff. Among them is the Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, who was runner-up in an election last year as bishop of the church's California diocese. Sutton, 54, is the canon pastor of Washington's National Cathedral and director of the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage there. Other nominees are: The Rev. Jane Soyster Gould, 51, rector of St. Stephen's Memorial Church in Lynn, Mass.

FRESNO, Calif. -- The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin in California became the first in the nation yesterday to secede from the Episcopal Church, taking the historic, risky step as part of a years-long struggle within the church and global Anglican Communion over homosexuality and biblical authority. Delegates to San Joaquin's annual convention then also formally accepted an invitation to align the largely rural 14-county diocese with a conservative Anglican leader overseas, Archbishop Gregory James Venables of Argentina.

Juanita Fair, a retired administrative assistant to five Episcopal bishops of Maryland, died of leukemia complications Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The North Baltimore resident was 68. Born in Baltimore and raised on Aisquith Street, she was a 1957 graduate of Carver Vocational-Technical School, where she studied secretarial skills. "Juanita was one of a kind. She had a very personal relationship with God and with her church," said the Rev. Jesse L.A. Parker, her pastor at St. John's in the Village Episcopal Church.

Amid the heated national and global conflicts of the Episcopal Church, the Rt. Rev. Robert Wilkes Ihloff has managed to keep the calm in Maryland. Retiring this weekend after a dozen years as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, Ihloff is proud to have worked through many of the tensions that have beset the church elsewhere, from female clergy to the place of gays and lesbians. "It makes my retirement much easier in that I am very proud of this diocese in the way it functions and is administered," Ihloff said.

Dorothy C. Merritt, a homemaker who had been active in the affairs of historic Epiphany Episcopal Church in Odenton for many years, died from complications of dementia Wednesday at Genesis Multi-Medical Center in Towson. She was 88. Dorothy Constance Miller was born and raised in New Durham, N.H. After graduating from high school in 1934, she completed business and bookkeeping courses at McIntosh College in Dover, N.H. As a young woman, she played piano and wrote poetry that was published in Boston newspapers.

On July 20, 2005, DELIA GOULD DOLL, a figure in her own right in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. She was the widow of the Rt. Rev. Harry Lee Doll, 10th Bishop of Maryland, whose beloved wife and companion in ministry she was. She is survived by her three daughters, Millicent Shargel, of Talahasse, FL, the Rev. Chotard Doll-Fenik, of Wallawalla, WA and Rebecca Doll Clark, of Baltimore, two sons-in-law, Emanuel Shargel and Bernard Fenik, three grandchildren, Delia...

Two Southern California Episcopal parishes announced yesterday that they had broken with the national church over the issue of homosexuality, placing themselves under the jurisdiction of a conservative Anglican bishop from Africa. The announcement by All Saints Church in Long Beach, Calif., and St. James Parish in Newport Beach, Calif., escalated a confrontation within the Episcopal Church over the role of gay clergy and the proper interpretation of Scripture. The move marked the first time that any of the 147 parishes in the six-county Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese had made good on threats to pull out of the 2.3 million-member national Episcopal Church.