Bishop Michael Martin's recently leaked draft document "Go in Peace Glorifying the Lord by Your Life" is probably the pettiest, nastiest, most malicious episcopal letter I have ever read. The level of micromanaging displayed in this 7,700 word screed beggars belief. The letter—which runs twenty printed pages—sets a new bar for pedantry with its obsessive attempts to regulate every minute aspect of the liturgy in the Diocese of Charlotte, right down to what prayers a priest says privately while vesting alone in the sacristy. It is a stunning display of small-mindedness by a prelate of exceptional hubris, who announces that he is going to "set his own preferences aside" before he ruthlessly imposes them on his clergy, who lauds "the rich tradition that has been handed down to us" before systematically destroying it with the zeal of a Jacobin, who claims to "encourage unity in worship" while proposing liturgical norms guaranteed to plunge his diocese into chaos. Its dissonance reaches Orwellian levels of double speak.
