I found this:-
http://www.conservativetruth.org/article.php?id=1870
Useful..........(Just an exerpt)
Apostate: One who has forsaken the faith
Episcopacy: Government of the church by bishops
Next October 7-9 The American Anglican Council will meet in Dallas. Although the meeting was organized by two Episcopalian dioceses (Dallas and Fort Worth), thousands of Episcopalians and Anglicans from all over the world will attend. It is likely that the Council will declare the Episcopalian Church is in heresy.
Why is everyone so excited? Unless you live in an area without TV or newspapers, you know that the General Convention of Episcopal Church, USA, has ratified the appointment of Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man, as Bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese. Robison left wife and two children to live a homosexual lifestyle. As an Episcopal priest he has lived for over ten years in a homosexual relationship with the knowledge and approval of the leaders of his church.
Like all Protestant churches, the Episcopal Church started out as an evangelical organization, although it is the Protestant denomination that is closest to the Roman Catholic Church in its theology and liturgy. Over the years, it became more and more liberal, drifting away from its Biblical roots.
To put things in perspective, let me offer a short history of the Episcopal Church, USA. You can study this further by following the links at the end of this article. I gathered the information for this history from those websites and from interviews with both Episcopalian and Anglican priests.
The Church of England was brought to the United States by English settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the American Revolution the name became a problem for obvious reasons, so it was changed to the Protestant Episcopal Church, which eventually became known as the Episcopal Church, USA (ECUSA).
From the Catholic Encyclopedia,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01624b.htm
The word itself in its etymological sense, signifies the desertion of a post, the giving up of a state of life; he who voluntarily embraces a definite state of life cannot leave it, therefore, without becoming an apostate. Most authors, however, distinguish with
Benedict XIV (De Synodo di£cesanâ, XIII, xi, 9), between three kinds of apostasy: apostasy
a Fide or
perfidi£, when a
Christian gives up his faith; apostasy
ab ordine, when a cleric abandons the ecclesiastical state; apostasy
a religione, or
monachatus, when a religious leaves the religious life. The Gloss on title 9 of the fifth book of the Decretals of Gregory IX mentions two other kinds of apostasy: apostasy
inobedientiæ, disobedience to a command given by lawful authority, and
iteratio baptismatis, the repetition of baptism, "quoniam reiterantes baptismum videntur apostatare dum recedunt a priori baptismate". As all sin involves disobedience, the apostasy
inobedientiæ does not constitute a specific offense. In the case of
iteratio baptismatis, the offence falls rather under the head of heresy and irregularity than of apostasy; if the latter name has sometimes been given to it, it is due to the fact that the Decretals of Gregory IX combine into one title, under the rubric "De apostatis et reiterantibus baptisma" (V, title 9) the two distinct titles of the Justinian Code: "Ne sanctum baptisma iteretur" and" De apostatis " (I, titles 6, 7), in Corpus juris civilis ed. Krueger, (Berlin, 1888); II 60-61. See München "Das kanonische Gerichtsverfahren und Strafrecht" (Cologne, 1874), II, 362, 363. Apostasy, in its strictest sense, means apostasy
a Fide (St. Thomas, Summa theologica, II-II, Q. xii a. 1).
